Fannie Farmer

1857-1915

Appears in
Great Cooks and Their Recipes
Great Cooks and Their Recipes

By Anne Willan

Published 1977

  • About

“Original Menus” from Curtice Brothers Co. of Rochester, New York, who were early into satisfying the American appetite for processed foods. This leaflet advertized sweet corn, “whole boneless ham” and tomato ketchup.

Cookery,” wrote fannie Merritt Farmer, “is the art of preparing food for the nourishment of the body.” To that forthright if somewhat for-bidding statement she added: “Progress in civilization has been accompanied by progress in cookery.” The year was 1896, the place Boston – a city believed by many of its citizens to be “the hub of the universe” – and the writer a thirty-nine-year-old semi-invalid who had already earned a considerable reputation as the dynamic principal of the Boston Cooking School.