Fannie Merritt Farmer was an influential New England cooking teacher with a flair for marketing and promotion.Her 1896 “The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book” and myriad subsequent editions have made her a household name for more than a century.
Often called the “mother of level measurements” for her insistence on the use of measuring cups and spoons in cooking and in recipes, Farmer shaped the appetites of a nation through her cookbook.
She offered a tantalizing mix of traditional Yankee favorites and “exotic” continental dishes, many rooted in the cooking of France.
Framing her language and concepts in scientific terms, she sought to lift cooking from the dangerous drudgery of ages past into the bright, shining domestic science fit for the 20th century on the horizon.
For “The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book,” Farmer’s ambitions were plain in the preface: “It is my wish that it may not only be looked upon as a compilation of tried and tested recipes, but that it may awaken an interest through its condensed scientific knowledge which will lead to deeper thought and broader study of what to eat.”
The woman had vision and gumption. Born in 1857 in Boston, she was stricken at 17 with what the Boston Globe once called “a stroke of paralysis.” Many read that as polio.
She fought to regain use of her body and, at 30, entered the Boston Cooking School as a pupil. She rose to become the school’s principal in just a few years. Faced with a skittish publisher, Farmer took on the cost of publishing the book herself, shrewdly retaining the rights.
Farmer opened her own school in 1902; the Boston Cooking School folded shortly thereafter. And she wrote five more cookbooks while revising the first.
“She was absolutely the most successful businesswoman,” said Chris Kimball of Cook’s Illustrated and “America’s Test Kitchen” fame.
Farmer died Jan. 15, 1915, at age 57. But her story did not end there.
In 1919, a new candy company named itself Fanny Farmer.
Her original cookbook lived on through several editions. The task fell to the family of Farmer’s sister, Cora D. Perkins. Cora’s daughter-in-law, Wilma Lord Perkins, edited “The Fannie Farmer Cookbook” for more than 40 years.
Rights to the cookbook were eventually sold, leading to a dramatic intervention in the 1970s by Judith Jones, the legendary Knopf editor whose authors included Julia Child. For Jones, who grew up with only one cookbook — Farmer’s — in the house, the book had lost its character.
“Nobody who was a real cook was guiding it,” Jones said.
She chose James Beard’s assistant Marion Cunningham to revamp Farmer’s book. Cunningham’s 1979 revision was such a success it helped make the reputation of this food-world insider while reinforcing Farmer’s.
Other books over the years have been spun off from Farmer’s legacy, including, in 2004, “Fannie in the Kitchen,” by Deborah Hopkinson. The subtitle to this illustrated children’s book, released in 2004, reads: “The Whole Story From Soup to Nuts of How Fannie Farmer Invented Recipes With Precise Measurements.”
And that’s why Farmer still matters today — that precision counts.
“Her recipes are accurate. You can trust the amounts,” Jones said. “She really widened our horizons and really brought things to people they had never tasted before.”
Brownies
1cup sugar
1/4cup melted butter
1egg, unbeaten
2squares Baker’s chocolate, melted
3/4teaspoon vanilla
1/2cup flour
1/2cup walnut meats, cut in pieces
Mix ingredients in order given. Line a seven-inch square pan with paraffine paper. Spread mixture evenly in pan and bake in slow oven. As soon as taken from oven turn from pan, remove paper, and cut cake in strips, using a sharp knife. If these directions are not followed, paper will cling to cake, and it will be impossible to cut it in shapely pieces.
Makes 16 squares. Per piece: 135 calories, 7 g fat, 3 g saturated fat, 21 mg cholesterol, 18 g carbohydrates, 2 g protein, 5 mg sodium, 1 g fiber.
Notes: If you try Farmer’s recipe, you should know: “Paraffine” paper is another name for wax paper. The “slow oven” of Farmer’s age was the 325-degree oven of the 1965 edition of “The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.”
Although the original mentions no buttering of the paper, the 1960s recipe calls for buttering the pan, lining the bottom with wax paper, then buttering the wax paper. Though Farmer mentions no baking time, the later recipe calls for baking 30 to 35 minutes, or until the brownies are “dry on top and almost firm to the touch.”
We used a 7-inch square baking pan. We lined it with parchment paper, leaving two long ends to lift the brownies out of the pan. Go down to a 6-inch square pan if you can’t find a 7-inch.
This recipe, from the 1906 edition of “The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book,” is believed to be the first for a chocolate brownie in a cookbook. It makes a lower, denser treat than today’s thicker, cakelike brownies.
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