First Person Singular by Wendy Braitman

filed in Single Women's Hall of Fame, Who Are We?

Fannie Merritt Farmer

January 13, 2009 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Fannie Merritt Farmer is on my mind this week. 112 years ago, she published her first book, The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, and it catapulted her to fame. It also made her rich. When a publisher wasn’t willing to take a risk on an unknown, she ponied up the initial printing costs and retained the copyright. With over 4 million copies sold, it is one of the best-selling cookbooks of all time. She authored five more books, lectured around the country (including Harvard Medical School) and for ten years, wrote a column in Women’s Home Companion, a popular magazine of its day. She became a cottage industry, an early twentieth century Celebrity Chef.

Farmer was raised in a family that valued education, no matter that its recipients were mostly female. She was destined for college. When an illness paralyzed her left leg and she couldn’t finish high school, she spent her marriageable years convalescing at home. She forever after walked with a limp. Not exactly bride material. 

While working as a “mother’s helper” to bring in extra money for her family, Farmer showed a knack for cooking and was encouraged to enroll in the “Boston Cooking School,” one of the few potential employment opportunities for women without a high school diploma. She rose quickly through the ranks and was eventually hired as the school principal, before leaving to start her own cooking academy in 1902.

Fannie Farmer loved to eat, and her recipes reflected this gusto. With red hair, bright blue eyes and a well-padded frame, she was a dynamo onstage at cooking demonstrations and lectures. At a time when recipes called for a “piece of butter” or a “handful of flour,” Farmer vigorously promoted the use of precise measurements. She implored her readers to use a knife to level the surface of their measuring teaspoons and cups, and earned a place in history as the “Mother of Level Measurements.”

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