Check the label — your Thanksgiving stuffing may have a Cal Poly connection

You may have seen Mrs. Cubbison’s brand stuffings and dressings as you shopped for Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe you have some in your pantry.

But did you know Mrs. Cubbison (unlike Betty Crocker) was a real person — with a local connection?

The real Mrs. Cubbison, born Sophia Huchting in San Diego County, began studying household arts at Cal Poly in 1909. In addition to her studies, she also played on the girl’s basketball team, served as class vice president during her first year, literary editor of the Polytechnic Journal and held various student body positions, including treasurer and secretary, according to a news release from Cal Poly.

The Polytechnic Journal, which was both a student literary magazine and a yearbook, called Huchting “a girl of great ability as a student and an athlete,” the university said.

When she graduated from Cal Poly in 1912, she was one of eight women in a class of 25.

At the time, total expenses for a Cal Poly student during a nine-month school year ranged between $240 to $300, excluding railroad fare. Tuition was not charged at that time, the university said. Huchting paid her way through school by feeding farmworkers, according to the Mrs. Cubbison’s website.

After her time in San Luis Obispo, she moved back to the San Diego area and married Henry Cubbison. The couple borrowed $300 to open a Los Angeles bakery and business grew — in the 1920s, the pair got into the dried bread market with “Mrs. Cubbison’s Melba Toast and Zwieback.”

Friends loved her homemade stuffing, so she decided her company should launch a pre-made poultry stuffing line, according to Cal Poly. That line of stuffings has been sold in 11 western states since the 1950s.

In addition to grocery aisles, Mrs. Cubbison’s legacy lives on through a pair of endowments her heirs created after her death in 1982: the Sophie C. Cubbison Discretionary Endowment and the Sophie C. Cubbison Food Science and Nutrition Endowment. The total amounts for both of these endowments have grown to more than $213,000 as of 2017, according to Cal Poly.

This story was originally published November 22, 2017 at 10:17 AM with the headline "Check the label — your Thanksgiving stuffing may have a Cal Poly connection."