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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Poultry and game

Roast Wild Duck.

229 · First Edition, 1896 · Report an issue

Ingredients

  • 1 wild duck
  • to taste salt
  • to taste pepper
  • 2 fat salt pork, very thin slices
  • for basting fat
  • as needed apples, pared, cored, and cut in quarters
  • 3 small onions
  • as needed dry bread
  • as needed boiling water
  • to taste salt
  • to taste pepper
  • to taste melted butter
  • to taste finely-chopped onion

Method

  1. Dress and clean a wild duck and truss as goose.
  2. Place on rack in dripping-pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cover breast with two very thin slices fat salt pork.
  3. Bake twenty to thirty minutes in a very hot oven, basting every five minutes with fat in pan; cut string and remove string and skewers.
  4. Serve with Orange or Olive Sauce. ( Olive Sauce. )
  5. Currant jelly should accompany a duck course. ( Currant Jelly. )
  6. Domestic ducks should always be well cooked, requiring little more than twice the time allowed for wild ducks.
  7. Ducks are sometimes stuffed with apples, pared, cored, and cut in quarters, or three small onions may be put in body of duck to improve flavor.
  8. Neither apples nor onions are to be served.
  9. If a stuffing to be eaten is desired, cover pieces of dry bread with boiling water; as soon as bread has absorbed water, press out the water; season bread with salt, pepper, melted butter, and finely-chopped onion.

Kitchen Notes

  • A dripping-pan is a roasting pan.

Original 1896 Text

1 wild duck to taste salt to taste pepper 2 fat salt pork, very thin slices for basting fat as needed apples, pared, cored, and cut in quarters 3 small onions as needed dry bread as needed boiling water to taste salt to taste pepper to taste melted butter to taste finely-chopped onion Dress and clean a wild duck and truss as goose. Place on rack in dripping-pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cover breast with two very thin slices fat salt pork. Bake twenty to thirty minutes in a very hot oven, basting every five minutes with fat in pan; cut string and remove string and skewers. Serve with Orange or Olive Sauce. Currant jelly should accompany a duck course. Domestic ducks should always be well cooked, requiring little more than twice the time allowed for wild ducks. Ducks are sometimes stuffed with apples, pared, cored, and cut in quarters, or three small onions may be put in body of duck to improve flavor. Neither apples nor onions are to be served. If a stuffing to be eaten is desired, cover pieces of dry bread with boiling water; as soon as bread has absorbed water, press out the water; season bread with salt, pepper, melted butter, and finely-chopped onion.

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