Fanny Farmer

 

Labor Day is coming and we think of simple folks who just worked hard. Fanny had a stroke at 16. It paralyzed her severely, she was wheelchair bound and had to relearn to talk.  What, she wondered, could she do with her life now? As she began to recover some ability to communicate, she gave much thought to how she could serve her family.   She would become the family cook!. Forget marrying into a leading Boston Brahmin clan or careers. Faith in God suddenly consumed her. She would just be a household servant.

            But as Fanny Merritt Farmer learned to cook, she was struck by how hard it was.  First, cookbooks relied on a lot of intuitive cooking experience.  They would list ingredients as “a hand full of flour,” or “pinch of salt” or “enough whiskey to taste.” Most cooks were women, considered emotional and none too scientific. Plus, no one explained how to serve the food.  Was one to just dump it altogether on a plate, or separate it?  And what was the manner of consumption—mopping up gravy with bread or what?  Fanny’s attempts at recipes were very much trial and error. But with good intuition, she managed to solve the mysteries.  She found there were Old English measures-- teaspoons, tablespoons, and cups, that had precise meaning and she wrote copious notes.  Food had to be served so it was pleasing to the eye, taste and smell.  Eventually her health recovered until she could walk with a cane and she turned her parents’ house into a boarding house renowned for wonderful food. Mrs. Charles Shaw encouraged her to go to Boston Cooking School. And so at age 30, in 1889, she limped into classes and began.  Combining what she knew on her own, she learned nutrition, cooking for the ill, and household management.  First their top student, then assistant director, in 1891, she was hired as principal.

            The school already had a recipe book, but Fanny re-did the recipes including her measures.  She was very matter-of-fact in explanations, leaving nothing unexplained.  A cup of flour meant a level cup, sifted to ensure against variation in density. She wrote articles on housekeeping, drying fruits, pickling and canning.  1850 recipes were compiled.  And then using her father, an editor, as a guide, she published the Boston Cooking-School Cookbook.  The publisher, Little & Brown, thought no one would buy it. It was too encyclopedic.  The 1896 printing was just a few copies which soon sold out. It took America by storm.  Demand for measuring cups and spoons became a growth industry. For the first time, exact recipes were to be found. The book was comprehensive, a definitive work on American cooking. People nicknamed the title “The Fanny Farmer Cookbook”. And it is still in publication today.

            Farmer eventually started her own cooking school but never forgot her mission to help those who were sick.  It eventually led her to develop a complete work of diet and nutrition for the ill, Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent, which contained thirty pages on diabetes.  She explained digestion and which foods were able to digest easily and rapidly.  She thought hard about presentation.  A plate must look beautiful and tempting for those who were not inclined to eat.  At length she investigated nutrition and how important it was to health.

            In 1906 she suffered another stroke. Amazingly, it did not stop her lectures to chefs, dieticians and Harvard Medical School.  Her lectures were picked up by the Boston Evening Transcript and printed regularly, even reprinted in the Tulsa World in that new state of Oklahoma. “The time is not far distant when knowledge of the principles of diet will be an essential part of one’s education. Then mankind will eat to live, be able to do better mental and physical work, and disease will be less frequent.” To food preparers worldwide she was the epitome of organized artistic cooking.  But as Fanny once said, “In Jesus Christ, no one’s life goes to waste.”