Fannie Farmer
Encyclopedia
Fannie Merritt Farmer was an American culinary expert whose Boston Cooking-School Cook Book
became a widely used culinary text.
, Massachusetts
, USA, to Mary Watson Merritt and John Franklin Farmer, an editor
and printer
. Although she was the oldest of four daughters, born in a family that highly valued education and that expected young Fannie to go to college, she suffered a paralytic stroke
at the age of 16 while attending Medford High School. Fannie could not continue her formal academic education
; for several years, she was unable to walk and remained in her parents' care at home. During this time, Farmer took up cooking, eventually turning her mother's home into a boarding house that developed a reputation for the quality of the meals it served.
At the age of 30, Farmer, now walking (but with a substantial limp that never left her), enrolled in the Boston Cooking School at the suggestion of Mrs. Charles Shaw . Farmer trained at the school until 1889 during the height of the domestic science
movement, learning what were then considered the most critical elements of the science, including nutrition
and diet for the well, convalescent cookery, techniques of cleaning and sanitation
, chemical analysis of food, techniques of cooking
and baking, and household
management. Farmer was considered one of the school's top students. She was then kept on as assistant to the director. In 1891, she took the position of school principal.
, in 1896. Her cookbook introduced the concept of using standardized measuring spoons and cups, as well as level measurement. A follow-up to an earlier version called Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book, published by Mary J. Lincoln in 1884, the book under Farmer's direction eventually contained 1,849 recipe
s, from milk toast
to Zigaras à la Russe. Farmer also included essays on housekeeping, cleaning, canning
and drying fruit
s and vegetables, and nutritional information.
The book's publisher (Little, Brown & Company) did not predict good sales and limited the first edition to 3,000 copies, published at the author's expense. The book was so popular in America, so thorough, and so comprehensive that cooks would refer to later editions simply as the "Fannie Farmer cookbook", and it is still available in print over 100 years later.
Farmer provided scientific explanations of the chemical
processes that occur in food during cooking, and also helped to standardize the system of measurements used in cooking in the USA. Before the Cookbooks publication, other American recipes frequently called for amounts such as "a piece of butter
the size of an egg
" or "a teacup of milk." Farmer's systematic discussion of measurement — "A cupful is measured level ... A tablespoonful is measured level. A teaspoonful is measured level." — led to her being named "the mother of level measurements."
Farmer left the Boston Cooking School in 1902 and created Miss Farmer's School of Cookery. She began by teaching gentlewomen and housewives
the rudiments of plain and fancy cooking, but her interests eventually led her to develop a complete work of diet
and nutrition for the ill, titled Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent. Farmer was invited to lecture at Harvard Medical School
and began teaching convalescent diet and nutrition to doctor
s and nurses. She felt so strongly about the significance of proper food
for the sick that she believed she would be remembered chiefly by her work in that field, as opposed to her work in household and fancy cookery. Farmer understood perhaps better than anyone else at the time the value of appearance, taste, and presentation of sickroom food to ill and wasted people with poor appetite
s; she ranked these qualities over cost and nutritional value in importance.
and were picked up by newspapers nationwide. Farmer also lectured to nurses and dietitians and taught a course on dietary preparation at Harvard Medical School
. To many chef
s and good home cooks in America, her name remains synonymous today with precision, organization, and good food.
Fannie Farmer died in 1915, aged 57, and was interred in Mount Auburn Cemetery
, Cambridge, Massachusetts
.
Boston Cooking-School Cook Book
The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer is a 19th century general reference cookbook which is still available both in reprint and in updated form...
became a widely used culinary text.
Biography
Farmer was born in MedfordMedford, Massachusetts
Medford is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, in the United States, on the Mystic River, five miles northwest of downtown Boston. In the 2010 U.S. Census, Medford's population was 56,173...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, USA, to Mary Watson Merritt and John Franklin Farmer, an editor
Editor in chief
An editor-in-chief is a publication's primary editor, having final responsibility for the operations and policies. Additionally, the editor-in-chief is held accountable for delegating tasks to staff members as well as keeping up with the time it takes them to complete their task...
and printer
Printer (publisher)
In publishing, printers are both companies providing printing services and individuals who directly operate printing presses. With the invention of the moveable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450, printing—and printers—proliferated throughout Europe.Today, printers are found...
. Although she was the oldest of four daughters, born in a family that highly valued education and that expected young Fannie to go to college, she suffered a paralytic stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
at the age of 16 while attending Medford High School. Fannie could not continue her formal academic education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
; for several years, she was unable to walk and remained in her parents' care at home. During this time, Farmer took up cooking, eventually turning her mother's home into a boarding house that developed a reputation for the quality of the meals it served.
At the age of 30, Farmer, now walking (but with a substantial limp that never left her), enrolled in the Boston Cooking School at the suggestion of Mrs. Charles Shaw . Farmer trained at the school until 1889 during the height of the domestic science
Family and consumer science
Family and consumer sciences is an academic discipline that combines aspects of social and natural science. Family and consumer sciences deals with the relationship between individuals, families, and communities, and the environment in which they live...
movement, learning what were then considered the most critical elements of the science, including nutrition
Nutrition
Nutrition is the provision, to cells and organisms, of the materials necessary to support life. Many common health problems can be prevented or alleviated with a healthy diet....
and diet for the well, convalescent cookery, techniques of cleaning and sanitation
Sanitation
Sanitation is the hygienic means of promoting health through prevention of human contact with the hazards of wastes. Hazards can be either physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease. Wastes that can cause health problems are human and animal feces, solid wastes, domestic...
, chemical analysis of food, techniques of cooking
Cooking
Cooking is the process of preparing food by use of heat. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely across the world, reflecting unique environmental, economic, and cultural traditions. Cooks themselves also vary widely in skill and training...
and baking, and household
Household
The household is "the basic residential unit in which economic production, consumption, inheritance, child rearing, and shelter are organized and carried out"; [the household] "may or may not be synonymous with family"....
management. Farmer was considered one of the school's top students. She was then kept on as assistant to the director. In 1891, she took the position of school principal.
Cookbook fame
Fannie published her best-known work, The Boston Cooking-School Cook BookBoston Cooking-School Cook Book
The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer is a 19th century general reference cookbook which is still available both in reprint and in updated form...
, in 1896. Her cookbook introduced the concept of using standardized measuring spoons and cups, as well as level measurement. A follow-up to an earlier version called Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book, published by Mary J. Lincoln in 1884, the book under Farmer's direction eventually contained 1,849 recipe
Recipe
A recipe is a set of instructions that describe how to prepare or make something, especially a culinary dish.-Components:Modern culinary recipes normally consist of several components*The name of the dish...
s, from milk toast
Milk toast
Milk toast is a breakfast food consisting of toasted bread in warm milk, typically with sugar and butter. Salt, pepper, paprika, cinnamon, cocoa, raisins and other ingredients may be added. In New England, milk toast refers to toast that has been dipped in a milk-based white sauce...
to Zigaras à la Russe. Farmer also included essays on housekeeping, cleaning, canning
Canning
Canning is a method of preserving food in which the food contents are processed and sealed in an airtight container. Canning provides a typical shelf life ranging from one to five years, although under specific circumstances a freeze-dried canned product, such as canned, dried lentils, can last as...
and drying fruit
Fruit
In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...
s and vegetables, and nutritional information.
The book's publisher (Little, Brown & Company) did not predict good sales and limited the first edition to 3,000 copies, published at the author's expense. The book was so popular in America, so thorough, and so comprehensive that cooks would refer to later editions simply as the "Fannie Farmer cookbook", and it is still available in print over 100 years later.
Farmer provided scientific explanations of the chemical
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
processes that occur in food during cooking, and also helped to standardize the system of measurements used in cooking in the USA. Before the Cookbooks publication, other American recipes frequently called for amounts such as "a piece of butter
Butter
Butter is a dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented cream or milk. It is generally used as a spread and a condiment, as well as in cooking applications, such as baking, sauce making, and pan frying...
the size of an egg
Egg (food)
Eggs are laid by females of many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, and have probably been eaten by mankind for millennia. Bird and reptile eggs consist of a protective eggshell, albumen , and vitellus , contained within various thin membranes...
" or "a teacup of milk." Farmer's systematic discussion of measurement — "A cupful is measured level ... A tablespoonful is measured level. A teaspoonful is measured level." — led to her being named "the mother of level measurements."
Farmer left the Boston Cooking School in 1902 and created Miss Farmer's School of Cookery. She began by teaching gentlewomen and housewives
Housewife
Housewife is a term used to describe a married woman with household responsibilities who is not employed outside the home. Merriam Webster describes a housewife as a married woman who is in charge of her household...
the rudiments of plain and fancy cooking, but her interests eventually led her to develop a complete work of diet
Diet (nutrition)
In nutrition, diet is the sum of food consumed by a person or other organism. Dietary habits are the habitual decisions an individual or culture makes when choosing what foods to eat. With the word diet, it is often implied the use of specific intake of nutrition for health or weight-management...
and nutrition for the ill, titled Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent. Farmer was invited to lecture at Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....
and began teaching convalescent diet and nutrition to doctor
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
s and nurses. She felt so strongly about the significance of proper food
Food
Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals...
for the sick that she believed she would be remembered chiefly by her work in that field, as opposed to her work in household and fancy cookery. Farmer understood perhaps better than anyone else at the time the value of appearance, taste, and presentation of sickroom food to ill and wasted people with poor appetite
Appetite
The appetite is the desire to eat food, felt as hunger. Appetite exists in all higher life-forms, and serves to regulate adequate energy intake to maintain metabolic needs. It is regulated by a close interplay between the digestive tract, adipose tissue and the brain. Decreased desire to eat is...
s; she ranked these qualities over cost and nutritional value in importance.
Later life
During the last seven years of her life, Farmer used a wheelchair. Despite her immobility, Farmer continued to lecture, write, and invent recipes, giving her last lecture 10 days before her death. Her lectures were republished by the Boston Evening TranscriptBoston Evening Transcript
The Boston Evening Transcript was a daily afternoon newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts, published from July 24, 1830, to April 30, 1941.-Beginnings:...
and were picked up by newspapers nationwide. Farmer also lectured to nurses and dietitians and taught a course on dietary preparation at Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....
. To many chef
Chef
A chef is a person who cooks professionally for other people. Although over time the term has come to describe any person who cooks for a living, traditionally it refers to a highly skilled professional who is proficient in all aspects of food preparation.-Etymology:The word "chef" is borrowed ...
s and good home cooks in America, her name remains synonymous today with precision, organization, and good food.
Fannie Farmer died in 1915, aged 57, and was interred in Mount Auburn Cemetery
Mount Auburn Cemetery
Mount Auburn Cemetery was founded in 1831 as "America's first garden cemetery", or the first "rural cemetery", with classical monuments set in a rolling landscaped terrain...
, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
.
External links
- Feeding America: Fannie Merritt Farmer
- The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, 1896 edition, by Fannie Merrit Farmer
- The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, 1918 edition, by Fannie Merritt Farmer
- Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent, 1904 edition, by Fannie Merritt Farmer
- Fannie Farmer at Find A GraveFind A GraveFind a Grave is a commercial website providing free access and input to an online database of cemetery records. It was founded in 1998 as a DBA and incorporated in 2000.-History:...