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.

Read story
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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Fruit preserving, canning, and pickling

Damson Jelly.

480 · First Edition, 1896 · Report an issue

Ingredients

  • damsons
  • three-fourths as much as fruit juice sugar

Method

  1. Wipe and pick over damsons; then prick several times with a large pin.
  2. Make same as Currant Jelly, using three-fourths as much sugar as fruit juice. ( Currant Jelly. )

From Currant Jelly.

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

Method

  1. Currants are in the best condition for making jelly between June twenty-eighth and July third, and should not be picked directly after a rain.
  2. Cherry currants make the best jelly.
  3. Equal proportions of red and white currants are considered desirable, and make a lighter colored jelly.
  4. Pick over currants, but do not remove stems; wash and drain.
  5. Mash a few in the bottom of a preserving kettle, using a wooden potato masher; so continue until berries are used.
  6. Cook slowly until currants look white.
  7. Strain through a coarse strainer, then allow juice to drop through a double thickness of cheese cloth or a jelly bag.
  8. Measure, bring to boiling point, and boil five minutes; add an equal measure of heated sugar, boil three minutes, skim, and pour into glasses.
  9. Place in a sunny window, and let stand twenty-four hours.
  10. Cover, and keep in a cool, dry place.

Original 1896 Text

damsons three-fourths as much as fruit juice sugar Wipe and pick over damsons; then prick several times with a large pin. Make same as Currant Jelly, using three-fourths as much sugar as fruit juice.

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