January 7: The
first "Fannie Farmer Cookbook," officially titled The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, was
published on this day in 1896. In her preface, Farmer graces her culinary guide
with a quotation from John Ruskin's 1866 book on mythology, Ethics of the Dust:
Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of
Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits
and balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and
groves and savory in meats. It means carefulness and inventiveness and
willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of your
grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist; it means much testing and
no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian
hospitality; and, in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always
ladies—loaf givers.
As described in Christopher Kimball's just published and
highly praised Fannie's Last Supper,
the loaf-giving could sometimes get elaborate. In the excerpt below, Kimball
explains his subtitle, "Re-creating One Amazing Meal from Fannie Farmer's
1896 Cookbook":
And so, in 2007, with Fannie Farmer's original 1896 Boston
Cooking School cookbook in hand, using a twelve-course menu printed in the back
of the book and an authentic Victorian coal cookstove installed in our 1859
Boston townhouse, I set out on a two-year journey: to test, update, and master
the cooking of Fannie Farmer's America, re-creating a high Victorian feast that
I hoped to serve in perfect succession to a dozen celebrity guests….
Daybook is contributed by Steve King, who teaches in the English Department of Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. His literary daybook began as a radio series syndicated nationally in Canada. He can be found online at todayinliterature.com.
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