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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Beef

Dumplings.

182 · First Edition, 1896

Ingredients

  • 2 cups flour.
  • 4 teaspoons baking powder.
  • ¾ cup milk.
  • ½ teaspoon salt.
  • 2 teaspoons butter.

Method

  1. Mix and sift dry ingredients.
  2. Work in butter with tips of fingers, add milk gradually, using a knife for mixing.
  3. Toss on a floured board, pat, and roll out to one-half inch in thickness.
  4. Shape with biscuit cutter, first dipped in flour.
  5. Place closely together in a buttered steamer, put over kettle of boiling water, cover closely, and steam twelve minutes.
  6. A perforated tin pie plate may be used in place of steamer.
  7. A little more milk may be used in the mixture, when it may be taken up by spoonfuls, dropped and cooked on top of stew.
  8. In this case some of the liquid must be removed, that dumplings may rest on meat and potato, and not settle into liquid.

Original 1896 Text

Dumplings. 2 cups flour. 4 teaspoons baking powder. ¾ cup milk. ½ teaspoon salt. 2 teaspoons butter. Mix and sift dry ingredients. Work in butter with tips of fingers, add milk gradually, using a knife for mixing. Toss on a floured board, pat, and roll out to one-half inch in thickness. Shape with biscuit cutter, first dipped in flour. Place closely together in a buttered steamer, put over kettle of boiling water, cover closely, and steam twelve minutes. A perforated tin pie plate may be used in place of steamer. A little more milk may be used in the mixture, when it may be taken up by spoonfuls, dropped and cooked on top of stew. In this case some of the liquid must be removed, that dumplings may rest on meat and potato, and not settle into liquid.