The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book
general reference cookbook #AfibWk
The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1896) by American culinary expert Fannie Farmer is a 19th-century general reference cookbook which is still available both in reprint and in updated form. It was particularly notable for a more rigorous approach to recipe writing than had been common up to that point.
In the preface Farmer states:
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.
Farmer's 1896 compilation became the best-selling cookbook of the era.
In 2007, that period of American culinary history was recreated in an elaborate dinner using the Victorian cooking methods outlined in this book. The extensive preparations and the ultimate results were described in a book entitled Fannie's Last Supper by Christopher Kimball, and an American public television program of the same name was broadcast in 2010.
Publication history
When Little, Brown & Company was preparing the first edition of Fannie Farmer's cookbook, they were not confident it would sell well. As such, the first edition, released in 1896, had a limited run of only 3,000 copies. It proved an immediate success.
Facsimiles of the original book are still in print.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.