Happy Birthday to culinary expert and food revolution leader Fannie Farmer (b. March 23, 1857, in Boston, MA), who reshaped American cuisine by popularizing the use of precise measurements. She made a scientific approach to cooking and its delicious results accessible to Americans in their own homes through her influential cookbooks. Her first major cookbook was The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, published in 1896, which took the name of the educational institution she essentially took over and remade. The book was soon popularly referred to as the Fannie Farmer cookbook. Further explaining Farmer’s measurement innovations, historian Laura Shapiro writes: “Her particular innovation was the refinement known as level measurements, which she promoted forcefully with every recipe she published. Previously even the strictest use of measuring implements retained the old notions of a ‘rounded’ spoonful and a ‘heaping’ cupful . . . To Fannie Farmer it seemed simpler and more rational to dispense with the imagery entirely and call a tablespoonful a level tablespoon, using a knife to level the surface after the spoon had been filled.” By discouraging reliance on a cook’s personal culinary knowledge to estimate measurements, Farmer made cooking success more attainable for all.
Citations: Laura Shapiro, Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009 [1986]), 100-101, 103-104, 106, 109, https://archive.org/details/perfectionsaladw0000shap_b8k3; “Fannie Farmer around 1900,” photograph (location unknown, c. 1900), public domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Farmer#/media/File:Fannie-Farmer-circa-1900-BPL.jpg.
Comments