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.
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 ↓Pineapple Bavarian Cream. ½ box gelatine or 2½ tablespoons granulated gelatine. ½ cup cold water. 1 can grated pineapple. ½ cup sugar. 1 tablespoon lemon juice. Whip from 3 cups cream. Soak gelatine in cold water. Heat pineapple, add sugar, lemon juice, and soaked gelatine; chill in pan of ice water, stirring constantly; when it begins to thicken, fold in whip from cream, mould, and chill.