Fannie Farmer

Fannie Merritt Farmer (23 March 1857 – 16 January 1915) was an American culinary expert whose Boston Cooking-School Cook Book became a widely used culinary text.

Education Fannie Farmer was born on 23 March 1857 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, to Mary Watson Merritt Farmer and John Franklin Farmer, an editor and printer. The family was Unitarian. For the next several years she was unable to walk and remained in her parents' care at home. During this time Farmer took up cooking, eventually developing a reputation for the quality of the meals her mother's boarding house served.

Farmer developed a substantial limp that never left her. At the age of 30 she enrolled in the Boston Cooking School at the suggestion of Mrs. Charles Shaw. However, the book was so popular in America, so thorough, and so comprehensive that cooks would refer to later editions simply as the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and it is still available in print over 100 years later.

Farmer provided scientific explanations of the chemical processes that occur in food during cooking, and helped to standardize the system of measurements used in cooking in the USA. Farmer also lectured to nurses and dietitians, and taught a course on dietary preparation at Harvard Medical School. and was interred in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One hundred and three years later, The New York Times published a belated obituary for her.

Works

A complete list of editions may be found at Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.

[Republication of What to Have for Dinner: Containing Menus with Recipes for their Preparation (1905).]