Fannie Merritt Farmer

Over the weekend, I came across this jewel of a cookbook.

The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer, copyright 1922. This is actually the fifth or sixth edition as the first was published in 1898.

Fannie Farmer, known as the "Mother of level measures" was not only the moving force behind standardizing cooking measurements but also an advocate of proper nutrition for the sick. After suffering from a stroke at a young age, Fannie turned her energy to cooking. She attended the Boston Cooking School in 1889 and stayed on as an assistant, eventually becoming principle in 1891. She later founded her own cooking school and spent the rest of her life teaching and lecturing.

"Cookery is the art of preparing food for the nourishment of the body. Prehistoric man may have lived on uncooked foods, but there are no savage races to-day who do no practise cookery in some way, however crude. Progress in civilization has been accompanied by progress in cookery. Much time has been given in the last few years to the study of foods, their necessary proportions and manner of cooking them. Educators have been shown by scientists that this knowledge should be disseminated; as a result, "Cookery" is found in the curriculum of public schools of many of our towns and cities."

This will actually be my third edition of Fannie Farmer as I have a reprint of her first edition cookbook and a 1980 revised edition. After 100 years, her cookbook and methods still live on.

Do you have a Fannie Farmer cookbook? Perhaps passed down from a mother or grandmother?