A Special Day for Fanny.

January 7

The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook by Fannie Merritt Farmer was first published on this day in 1896 in the USA. It rapidly became a best-seller, and in fact has been constantly updated and is still in print, becoming one of the best selling cookbooks in history. I wonder how many celebrity chef-authors of today will still be in print in a hundred years’ time?

What was the secret of Fannie's success?

Fannie was the child of enlightened parents, and was destined for college until a stroke at the age of 16 left her an invalid for several years, with a permanent limp. At the age of 30 she enrolled in the already famous Boston Cooking School where she studied nutrition and related food sciences as well as cookery and household management. She was a star pupil and almost immediately became principal of the school, and her book was published a few years later.

Fannie was required to pay for the first print run, in return for which she retained ownership of the copyright. The publishers paid dearly for their lack of faith, for the success of the book delivered the proceeds largely to her, not themselves. A story to warm the hearts of many authors, I would say!

No doubt the association with the famous cooking school helped with the first few sales, but the book would not have become a best-seller on that basis alone. Fannie’s book succeeded because she took a lot of the guesswork out of cookery. She explained the science behind cooking processes, and standardised the system of measurements – there was no ‘dash of this’ or ‘little of that’ in her book. Fannie became known as the ‘mother of level measurement’, and The Boston Cooking School Cookbook was referred to as The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

As the United Nations has declared this the International Year of the Potato, I intend to give you more potato recipes – and perhaps even get on with that Potato Timeline I have previously promised. From Fannie’s book, a classic recipe:

Shadow Potatoes (Saratoga Chips)
Wash and pare potatoes. Slice thinly (using vegetable slicer) into a bowl of cold water. Let stand two hours, changing water twice. Drain, plunge in a kettle of boiling water and boil one minute. Drain again, and cover with cold water. Take from water and dry between towels. Fry in deep fat until light brown, keeping in motion with a skimmer. Drain on brown paper and sprinkle with salt.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Leprosy in the time of Potatoes.

Quotation for the Day …

Cookery is the art of preparing food for the nourishment of the body. Prehistoric man may have lived on uncooked foods, but there are no savage races today who do not practice cookery in some way, however crude. Progress in civilization has been accompanied by progress in cookery. Fannie Merritt Farmer.

Fannie’s Birthday.

Today, March 23rd ….

Fannie Merritt Farmer was born in Boston on this day in 1857 - which may not mean much to those of you who are not cookbook afficionados. If you like cooking and baking however, you have reason to be grateful as she brought a new level of science to cookery and recipe writing which led to her being called “the mother of level measurements.” If you are an aspiring cookbook writer she could be your guru – her Boston Cooking-School Cookbook (1896) was still being reprinted a hundred years later.

Fannie was set for a college education, her family being progressive for the time and believing in education for girls. Then in her teens she had some sort of illness – perhaps polio – and was an invalid for several years and walked with a limp all her life. There were few occupations open to women who needed to make their own living in those days, and Fannie at the age of about thirty enrolled in the Boston Cooking School, aiming to be a cookery teacher. She did better, and remained on as its assistant principal in 1891. Later she left and started her own school, and one way or another she taught cooking and nutrition until a few days before she died at the age of 56.

Fannie felt that her legacy would be her teaching and writing on nutrition and invalid cookery, in which her own health problems had provided a particular interest, but I am sure that she wouldn’t mind that I have chosen a couple of classic cake recipes for today - for what is a birthday without cake? These are from her book A new book of cookery : eight hundred and sixty recipes, covering the whole range of cookery ... published in 1912.

Grandmother's Pound Cake
1 cup butter, 1 2/3 cups sugar, 5 eggs, 2 cups flour
Work butter until creamy, using the hand, and add sugar, gradually, while beating constantly; then add eggs one at a time, beating vigorously between
the addition of each. When the mixture is of a creamy consistency, fold in the flour and turn into a buttered and floured cake pan. Bake one hour in a slow oven.

Lady Baltimore Cake
1 cup butter, 3 ½ cups flour, 2 cups sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 cup milk, 1 teaspoon vanilla, Whites 6 eggs .
Cream butter and add sugar gradually, while beating constantly. Mix and sift baking powder and flour and add alternately with milk to first mixture; then add flavoring and cut and fold in whites of eggs, beaten until stiff and dry. Turn into three buttered
and floured seven-inch square tins and bake in a moderate oven. Put layers together with Fruit and Nut Filling and cover top and sides of cake with Fruit and Nut Filling, then with Ice Cream Frosting.

Fruit and Nut Filling.
3 cups sugar, 1 cup raisins seeded and chopped, 1 cup water 1 cup chopped pecan nut meats, Whites 3 eggs 5 figs, cut in thin strips.
Put sugar and water in a smooth graniteware saucepan, bring to the boiling point and let boil until syrup will spin a thread when dropped from tip of spoon. Pour gradually, while beating constantly, on whites of eggs, beaten until stiff, and continue the beating until mixture is of right consistency to spread ; then add remaining ngredients. One-half this quantity may be made and used between layers only.

Ice Cream Frosting.
2 cups sugar, Whites 2 eggs, 1/3 cup water, ½ teaspoon vanilla.
Put sugar and water in smooth graniteware saucepan; bring to the boiling point and let boil until syrup will spin a thread when dropped from tip of spoon. Pour gradually, while beating constantly, on whites of eggs, beaten until stiff (but not dry), and continue the beating until mixture is of right consistency to spread; then add flavoring.

[see a real version of the cake at Culinary Types]

Monday’s Story …

On the road again.

This Day Last Year …

Every scrap of fat was saved in WW II

Quotation for the Day …

Progress in civilization has been accompanied by progress in cookery. Fannie Farmer.

Sweet Beets.

Today, January 2nd …

The conditions of war have often been a powerful force for developments in food technology. There is the challenge of feeding large numbers of troops - often in awful situations - for example. As we saw in a previous story, the production and acceptance of condensed milk got a huge boost during the American Civil War when it proved ideal for this situation.

Another common effect of war is that normal supply lines for imported foods may be disrupted, and unless an alternative source or alternative product is found, the populace must do without. As the Napoleonic wars dragged on for the decade after Trafalgar, France found herself in danger of being without sugar. A prolonged and successful blockade of continental Europe by the British meant that cane sugar from the Caribbean was not getting into the country – and sugar was not merely a luxury in a country at war, it was vital for food preservation.

Napoleon’s need to feed a huge land army had already spurred advances in the preservation of food by canning, and he now turned his attention to an alternative source for sugar. He had heard of the pioneering work done on the extraction of sugar from beets by Marggraf in Berlin 50 years earlier, and the progress made by Marggraf’s student, Franz Achard, but it was still not possible to produce large quantities efficiently. On March 25th 1811 he issued a decree intended to stimulate experimentation in this area. It set aside 80,000 acres of land for production of beets, and established schools, scholarships, and factories in beet sugar production.
On this day in 1812 Napoleon awarded the Légion d'Honneur to Benjamin Delessert for his technical advances in the clarification of sugar which enabled the process to be carried out on a viable scale. By 1814, there were 40 beet sugar factories were in operation in France, Belgium, Germany, and Austria. The industry did temporarily decline after Napoleon’s defeat., but eventually revived, and by the late 19th century, beets had again become the major source of sugar.

Did Napoleon actually realise his wish to tell the British they could dump their sugar in the Thames? I don’t know, but he sure started something – 30% of the world’s sugar now comes from beets.

Beetroots are a fine vegetable in their own right of course, with their intrinsic sweetness being brought out by roasting, or counter-balanced with vinegar in pickling. It is not even necessary to extract the sugar to enable beets to be used in “sweet” or dessert-type dishes. In previous stories we have seen beets used in wartime puddings, pink pancakes, and mincemeat for pies (links to these are below).

To keep it simple, here are a couple of recipes from the classic Boston Cooking School Cookbook by Fannie Farmer (1896) – one in case your beets are not sweet enough, and one in case they are too sweet for your taste.

Sugared Beets.
4 hot boiled beets.
3 tablespoons butter.
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar.
1/2 teaspoon salt.
Cut beets in one-fourth inch slices, add butter, sugar, and salt; reheat for serving

Pickled Beets.
Slice cold boiled beets and cover with vinegar.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Fame through Advertising.

A Previous Story for this Day …

Last year the story for the day was about Montelimar Nougat, and was called "A Sweet Start to the New Year".

On this Topic …

Wartime Beetroot Pudding from Nella Last.
Eighteenth century Pink Pancakes.
Wisconsin Mince-Meat

Quotation for the Day …

The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious. Tom Robbins

A lusty and masculine food for Rustics.

Today, November 28th …

Half a century before the chestnut blight wiped out the chestnut forests of America, Henry Thoreau went into the woods on this day in 1856, to look for a lost comb. He “Unexpectedly [did] find many chestnuts in the burs which have fallen some time ago. Many are spoiled, but the rest, being thus moistened, are softer and sweeter than a month ago, very agreeable to my palate.”

This is the nut that John Evelyn (1664) said was “amongst the delicaces of Princes in other Countries … [and] is a lusty, and masculine food for Rustics at all times”. He bemoaned the fact that in England they were fed to swine, but then went on to suggest that “we might propagate their use, amongst our common people ...".

The chestnut must surely lay claim to being one of the most versatile of foods – eaten fresh or preserved (dried, canned or frozen), raw or cooked, as a staple or a delicacy, in all dishes from soup to nuts (Ouch! Sorry!) and for all consumers – the pigs, the poor, and the posh.

The French attempted to destroy the chestnut economy of Corsica in 1789. They called the chestnut “the food of laziness”, because by providing the Corsican Rustic with his staple “wooden bread” and his stock with fallen fodder, it allowed him to neglect the fields. It was however very acceptable for the rich and Princely French to enjoy the pick of the crop in a variety of luxurious ways - as soup, stuffing for turkey, sweetened purée, and especially as “marrons glacées”.

Nowadays we associate chestnuts with family celebrations such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, which might be a good time to remember that they also had a medicinal use in the past. As well as being “a first-rate remedy for cough and spitting of blood", please remember that “melancholy and Old Persons, also those who abound with gross and tartarous Humours ought to abstain from them.”

Those of your Christmas guests who are not gross and tartarous by nature might enjoy these easy Christmas recipes from “The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook” by Fannie Merritt Farmer (1896)

Devilled Chestnuts.
Shell one cup chestnuts, cut in thin slices, and fry until well browned, using enough butter to prevent chestnuts from burning. Season with Tabasco Sauce or few grains paprika.

Chestnut Gravy.
To two cups thin Turkey Gravy add three-fourths cup cooked and mashed chestnuts.

Tomorrow … Inside entertaining.