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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Cakes, cookies, frostings, and confections

Ginger Snaps.

405 · First Edition, 1896

Ingredients

  • 1 cup molasses.
  • ½ teaspoon soda.
  • ½ cup shortening.
  • 1 tablespoon ginger.
  • 1½ teaspoons salt.
  • 3¼ cups flour.

Method

  1. Heat molasses to boiling point and pour over shortening.
  2. Add dry ingredients mixed and sifted.
  3. Chill thoroughly.
  4. Toss one-fourth of mixture on a floured board and roll as thinly as possible; shape with a small round cutter, first dipped in flour.
  5. Place near together on a buttered sheet and bake in a moderate oven.
  6. Gather up the trimmings and roll with another portion of dough.
  7. During rolling, the bowl containing mixture should be kept in a cool place, or it will be necessary to add more flour to dough, which makes cookies hard rather than crisp and short.

Kitchen Notes

  • Original calls for a moderate oven — about 350°F.

Original 1896 Text

Ginger Snaps. 1 cup molasses. ½ teaspoon soda. ½ cup shortening. 1 tablespoon ginger. 1½ teaspoons salt. 3¼ cups flour. Heat molasses to boiling point and pour over shortening. Add dry ingredients mixed and sifted. Chill thoroughly. Toss one-fourth of mixture on a floured board and roll as thinly as possible; shape with a small round cutter, first dipped in flour. Place near together on a buttered sheet and bake in a moderate oven. Gather up the trimmings and roll with another portion of dough. During rolling, the bowl containing mixture should be kept in a cool place, or it will be necessary to add more flour to dough, which makes cookies hard rather than crisp and short.