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.

Browse the book ↓

Want to make your own card from a photo, URL, or recipe text? Turn a recipe photo into a card.

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

Prune Almond Filling.

436 · First Edition, 1896 · Report an issue

Ingredients

  • White Mountain Cream
  • one-half cup selected prunes, stoned and cut in pieces
  • one-third cup almonds, blanched and chopped

Method

  1. To White Mountain Cream add one-half cup selected prunes, stoned and cut in pieces, and one-third cup almonds blanched and chopped. ( White Mountain Cream. )

From White Mountain Cream.

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

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

White Mountain Cream one-half cup selected prunes, stoned and cut in pieces one-third cup almonds, blanched and chopped To White Mountain Cream add one-half cup selected prunes, stoned and cut in pieces, and one-third cup almonds blanched and chopped.

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