Fannie Farmer

If you check out page 96 of Mackenzie Lee's

Bygone badass broads: 52 forgotten women who changed the world you will get an introduction to the incredible Fannie Farmer. Fannie Farmer brought level measurements to cookbooks, and as someone who is culinary challenged, I'm forever grateful. She is known as "the mother of level measurements.

Fannie's history of health-related problems and disability are detailed in The poison squad: one chemist's single-minded crusade for food safety at the turn of the twentieth century by Deborah Blum. At 16 Fannie suffered what the doctors called a "paralytic stroke" and was unable to walk for several years. The doctors wrote her off as being unable to earn an education. They were very wrong. At 30 Fannie enrolled in The Boston Cooking School and it wasn't much longer, that she was running the place. In 1902, she started her own cooking school.

Jeff Potter's Cooking for geeks: real science, great cooks, and 6good food tells us how Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking School Cook Book published in 1896, was the first cookbook to provide precise measurements. (It also has information about the oldest known recipe - Beer, and information on why one shouldn't eat ripe bananas outside during Bee season).

Consider the fork: a history of how we cook and eat by Bee Wilson mentions the pros and cons of Farmer's "volumetric" way of cooking and how it is a uniquely American way of cooking. It also mentions that the first cookbook to be written by an American specifically for Americans was Amelia Simmons' American Cookery: The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables in 1796.

A thousand years over a hot stove : a history of American women told through food, recipes, and remembrances by Laura Schenone gives a list of the women, who along with Fannie Farmer, ran cooking schools, women's magazines, and the lecture circuit in the early 1900s, sharing their knowledge at expositions, women's clubs, and business events among others.

Fannie Farmer died in 1914 but her legacy lives on. By the 1950s the Boston College Cooking School Cookbook had topped over 2 million in sales.

The Fannie Farmer large print cookbook by Farmer, Fannie Merritt

The Fannie Farmer junior cookbook by Scobey, Joan

This is one that I opened, saw that it gave descriptions for the size and use of various kitchen items, such as a teapot, and realized that it was at my level.  My own copy of this book should be on its way.

Links:

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=womanshomecomp

Food and cookery for the sick and convalescent, by Fannie Merrit Farmert