Cover of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book
The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book
Fannie Merritt Farmer
First printing, 1896 · Little, Brown and Company, Boston
Portrait of Fannie Merritt Farmer
Fannie Merritt Farmer
1857–1915

Principal of the Boston Cooking-School. Author of the first American cookbook to require level, standardized measurements. Published the first printing at her own expense after Little, Brown doubted it would sell.

Hundreds
of recipes
Original
page scans
1896
first edition
Card My Recipe

The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book

Fannie Merritt Farmer · 1896

Preserved from a verified first printing and organized as a working browser of recipes, menus, and reference sections. Recipe text remains verbatim to the 1896 book, with Kitchen Notes kept separate from the source text.

The book first appeared in 1896 after Farmer financed publication herself when Little, Brown doubted that a manual built on precise level measurements would find a wide readership. Its success brought the book into regular trade publication and helped fix cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons as the standard language of American recipe writing.

Born in Boston in 1857, Farmer went on to lead the Boston Cooking-School and to codify the level cup, tablespoon, and teaspoon that still structure American recipe writing. Her book is both a practical manual and a record of how domestic instruction was formalized at the end of the nineteenth century.

The book below keeps the table of contents, recipe cards, scanned page links, and menu structure together so the original volume can still be read and cooked from as a whole.

Browse the book ↓

Articles

Timing and reference page from the 1896 first edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book
History
How Fannie Farmer Standardized American Cooking

Why the 1896 first edition mattered, and how level measurements, sequenced method, and kitchen instruction traveled from the Boston Cooking School into ordinary recipe writing.

Read story
Current live Strawberry Short Cake I. recipe view from the Fannie Farmer collection
Preservation
From Historical Cookbook to Recipe Card

How a dense nineteenth-century cookbook page becomes a readable, source-linked card without quietly rewriting the historical record.

Read story
Cakes, cookies, frostings, and confections

Buttercups.

433 · First Edition, 1896 · Report an issue

Ingredients

  • 2 cups molasses
  • 1 cup sugar
  • ½ cup boiling water
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • ½ teaspoon cream of tartar
  • fondant flavored with vanilla

Method

  1. Boil ingredients (except fondant) until, when tried in cold water, a firm ball may be formed in the fingers, not stirring until the last few minutes of cooking.
  2. Pour on a buttered platter, and when cool enough to handle, pull until light colored.
  3. Shape on a floured board, having strip wide enough to enclose a roll of fondant one inch in diameter.
  4. Place fondant on candy, bring edges of candy together, and press firmly over fondant.
  5. With both hands pull candy into a long strip.
  6. Cut in small pieces; each piece will consist of fondant encircled with molasses candy.
  7. Care must be taken that candy is not cooked too long, as it should be soft rather than brittle.

Original 1896 Text

2 cups molasses 1 cup sugar ½ cup boiling water 2 tablespoons butter ½ teaspoon cream of tartar fondant flavored with vanilla Boil ingredients (except fondant) until, when tried in cold water, a firm ball may be formed in the fingers, not stirring until the last few minutes of cooking. Pour on a buttered platter, and when cool enough to handle, pull until light colored. Shape on a floured board, having strip wide enough to enclose a roll of fondant one inch in diameter. Place fondant on candy, bring edges of candy together, and press firmly over fondant. With both hands pull candy into a long strip. Cut in small pieces; each piece will consist of fondant encircled with molasses candy. Care must be taken that candy is not cooked too long, as it should be soft rather than brittle.

Suggest a correction