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.

Hundreds
of recipes
Original
page scans
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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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.

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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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Cakes, cookies, frostings, and confections

White Mountain Cream.

423 · First Edition, 1896 · Report an issue

Ingredients

  • 1 cup sugar
  • ⅓ cup boiling water
  • 1 White of egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla or lemon juice
  • ½ tablespoon lemon juice

Method

  1. Put sugar and water in saucepan, and stir to prevent sugar from adhering to saucepan; heat gradually to boiling point, and boil without stirring until syrup will thread when dropped from tip of spoon or tines of silver fork.
  2. Pour syrup gradually on beaten white of egg, beating mixture constantly, and continue heating until of right consistency to spread; then add flavoring and pour over cake, spreading evenly with back of spoon.
  3. Crease as soon as firm.
  4. If not beaten long enough, frosting will run; if beaten too long, it will not be smooth.
  5. Frosting beaten too long may be improved by adding a few drops of lemon juice or boiling water.
  6. This frosting is soft inside, and has a glossy surface.
  7. If frosting is to be ornamented with nuts or candied cherries, place them on frosting as soon as spread.

Original 1896 Text

1 cup sugar ⅓ cup boiling water 1 White of egg 1 teaspoon vanilla or lemon juice ½ tablespoon lemon juice Put sugar and water in saucepan, and stir to prevent sugar from adhering to saucepan; heat gradually to boiling point, and boil without stirring until syrup will thread when dropped from tip of spoon or tines of silver fork. Pour syrup gradually on beaten white of egg, beating mixture constantly, and continue heating until of right consistency to spread; then add flavoring and pour over cake, spreading evenly with back of spoon. Crease as soon as firm. If not beaten long enough, frosting will run; if beaten too long, it will not be smooth. Frosting beaten too long may be improved by adding a few drops of lemon juice or boiling water. This frosting is soft inside, and has a glossy surface. If frosting is to be ornamented with nuts or candied cherries, place them on frosting as soon as spread.

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