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.

Hundreds

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Original

page scans

1896

first edition

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The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book

Name: Mutton Broth.
Ingredients: 3 lbs. mutton (from the neck).; 2 quarts cold water.; 1 teaspoon salt.; Few grains pepper.; 3 tablespoons rice or 3 tablespoons barley.

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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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.

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Recipes prepared for the sick

Mutton Broth.

501 · First Edition, 1896

Ingredients

3 lbs. mutton (from the neck).
2 quarts cold water.
1 teaspoon salt.
Few grains pepper.
3 tablespoons rice or 3 tablespoons barley.

Method

Wipe meat, remove skin and fat, and cut in small pieces. Put into kettle with bones, and cover with cold water. Heat gradually to boiling point, skim, then season with salt and pepper. Cook slowly until meat is tender, strain, and remove fat. Reheat to boiling point, add rice or barley, and cook until rice or barley is tender. If barley is used, soak over night in cold water. Some of the meat may be served with the broth.

Original 1896 Text

Mutton Broth. 3 lbs. mutton (from the neck). 2 quarts cold water. 1 teaspoon salt. Few grains pepper. 3 tablespoons rice or 3 tablespoons barley. Wipe meat, remove skin and fat, and cut in small pieces. Put into kettle with bones, and cover with cold water. Heat gradually to boiling point, skim, then season with salt and pepper. Cook slowly until meat is tender, strain, and remove fat. Reheat to boiling point, add rice or barley, and cook until rice or barley is tender. If barley is used, soak over night in cold water. Some of the meat may be served with the broth.

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