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.

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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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Fish and shellfish

Salted Codfish Hash.

160 · First Edition, 1896 · Report an issue

Ingredients

  • salt pork
  • fish
  • potatoes

Method

  1. Prepare as for Fish Balls, omitting egg. ( Fish Balls. )
  2. Try out fat salt pork, remove scraps, leaving enough fat in pan to moisten fish and potatoes.
  3. Put in fish and potatoes, stir until heated, then cook until well browned underneath; fold, and turn like an omelet.

From Fish Balls.

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

Method

  1. Wash fish in cold water, and pick in very small pieces, or cut, using scissors.
  2. Wash, pare, and soak potatoes, cutting in pieces of uniform size before measuring.
  3. Cook fish and potatoes in boiling water to cover until potatoes are soft.
  4. Drain through strainer, return to kettle in which they were cooked, mash thoroughly (being sure there are no lumps left in potato), add butter, egg well beaten, and pepper.
  5. Beat with a fork two minutes.
  6. Add salt if necessary.
  7. Take up by spoonfuls, put in frying-basket, and fry one minute in deep fat, allowing six fish balls for each frying; drain on brown paper.
  8. Reheat the fat after each frying.

Original 1896 Text

salt pork fish potatoes Prepare as for Fish Balls, omitting egg. Try out fat salt pork, remove scraps, leaving enough fat in pan to moisten fish and potatoes. Put in fish and potatoes, stir until heated, then cook until well browned underneath; fold, and turn like an omelet.

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