The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book

Fannie Merritt Farmer

First printing, 1896 · Little, Brown and Company, Boston

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

Name: Fried Smelts.
Ingredients: salt.; pepper.; flour.; egg.; crumbs.; Sauce Tartare.

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 ↓

Fish and shellfish

Fried Smelts.

154-155 · First Edition, 1896

Ingredients

salt.
pepper.
flour.
egg.
crumbs.
Sauce Tartare.

Method

Clean smelts, leaving on heads and tails.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper, dip in flour, egg, and crumbs, and fry three to four minutes in deep fat.
As soon as smelts are put into fat, remove fat to back of range so that they may not become too brown before cooked through.
Arrange on hot platter, garnish with parsley, lemon, and fried gelatine.
Serve with Sauce Tartare.

Original 1896 Text

Fried Smelts. Clean smelts, leaving on heads and tails. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, dip in flour, egg, and crumbs, and fry three to four minutes in deep fat. As soon as smelts are put into fat, remove fat to back of range so that they may not become too brown before cooked through. Arrange on hot platter, garnish with parsley, lemon, and fried gelatine. Serve with Sauce Tartare.