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.

1000+
Preserved Recipes
567
Original Pages
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.

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Poultry and game

Chicken Fricassee.

221-222 · First Edition, 1896

Ingredients

  • three tablespoons butter.
  • four tablespoons flour.
  • one and one-half cups stock.
  • one-half cup cream.
  • two cups stock.
  • salt.
  • pepper.
  • boiling water.

Method

  1. Dress, clean, and cut up a fowl.
  2. Put in a kettle, cover with boiling water, and cook slowly until tender, adding salt to water when chicken is about half done.
  3. Remove from water, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dredge with flour, and sauté in butter or pork fat.
  4. Arrange chicken on pieces of dry toast placed on ahot platter, having wings and second joints opposite each other, breast in centre of platter, and drumsticks crossed just below second joints.
  5. Pour around White or Brown Sauce.
  6. Reduce stock to two cups, strain, and remove the fat.
  7. Melt three tablespoons butter, add four tablespoons flour, and pour on gradually one and one-half cups stock.
  8. Just before serving, add one-half cup cream, and salt and pepper to taste ; or make a sauce by browning butter and flour and adding two cups stock, then seasoning with salt and pepper.
  9. Fowls, which are always made tender by long cooking, are frequently utilized in this way.
  10. If chickens are employed, they are sautéd without previous boiling, and allowed to simmer fifteen to twenty minutes in the sauce.

Original 1896 Text

Chicken Fricassee. Dress, clean, and cut up a fowl. Put in a kettle, cover with boiling water, and cook slowly until tender, adding salt to water when chicken is about half done. Remove from water, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dredge with flour, and sauté in butter or pork fat. Arrange chicken on pieces of dry toast placed on ahot platter, having wings and second joints opposite each other, breast in centre of platter, and drumsticks crossed just below second joints. Pour around White or Brown Sauce. Reduce stock to two cups, strain, and remove the fat. Melt three table- spoons butter, add four tablespoons flour, and pour on gradually one and one-half cups stock. Just before serv- ing, add one-half cup cream, and salt and pepper to taste ; or make a sauce by browning butter and flour and adding two cups stock, then seasoning with salt and pepper. Fowls, which are always made tender by long cooking, are frequently utilized in this way. If chickens are em- ployed, they are sautéd without previous boiling, and al- lowed to simmer fifteen to twenty minutes in the sauce.