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
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1896
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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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Portrait recipe card preview of Strawberry Short Cake I. 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

Crescents.

443 · First Edition, 1896 · Report an issue

Ingredients

  • ¼ lb. almond paste
  • 2 oz. confectioners' sugar
  • white of 1 small egg
  • almonds, blanched and finely chopped
  • Confectioners' Frosting
  • lemon juice

Method

  1. Mix same as Macaroons. Shape mixture, which is quite soft, in a long roll. ( Macaroons. )
  2. Cut pieces from roll three-fourths inch long. Roll each separately in chopped nuts, at the same time shaping to form a crescent.
  3. Bake twenty minutes on a buttered tin sheet in a slow oven.
  4. Cool and frost with Confectioners' Frosting, made thin enough to apply with a brush, and flavored with lemon juice until quite acid. ( Confectioners' Frosting. )
  5. Other nuts may be used in place of almonds.

From Macaroons.

This recipe follows the method of Macaroons. . Read the method above for any substitutions or additions specific to this recipe.

Method

  1. Work together almond paste and sugar on a smooth board or marble slab.
  2. Then add whites of eggs gradually, and work until mixture is perfectly smooth.
  3. Confectioners at first use the hand, afterward a palette knife, which is not only of use for mixing but for keeping board clean.
  4. Shape, using a pastry bag and tube, on a tin sheet covered with buttered paper, one-half inch apart; or drop mixture from tip of spoon in small piles.
  5. Macaroon mixture is stiff enough to hold its shape, but in baking spreads.
  6. Bake fifteen to twenty minutes in a slow oven.
  7. If liked soft, they should be slightly baked.
  8. After removing from oven, invert paper, and wet with a cloth wrung out of cold water, when macaroons will easily slip off.

Kitchen Notes

  • Original calls for a slow oven — about 300°F.

Original 1896 Text

¼ lb. almond paste 2 oz. confectioners' sugar white of 1 small egg almonds, blanched and finely chopped Confectioners' Frosting lemon juice Mix same as Macaroons. Shape mixture, which is quite soft, in a long roll. Cut pieces from roll three-fourths inch long. Roll each separately in chopped nuts, at the same time shaping to form a crescent. Bake twenty minutes on a buttered tin sheet in a slow oven. Cool and frost with Confectioners' Frosting, made thin enough to apply with a brush, and flavored with lemon juice until quite acid. Other nuts may be used in place of almonds.

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