November 16, 2023 • 44 mins
Fannie Farmer’s practical, scientific guide to home cooking, ‘The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book,’ changed the way we write recipes amidst a rapidly changing world. Anney and Lauren dig into the life and legacy of Fannie Farmer.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie Reeve.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I'm moarn vocal Bum and today we have an
episode for you about Fanny Farmer.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yes, who is someone we've talked about a few times.
We've mentioned a few times, I should.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Say, certainly in talking about her cookbook, The Boston Cooking
School Cookbook.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Yes, that does come up a lot. And it has
been a while since we've done what shul we call
a profile and deliciousness.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Ah, yes, yeah, yes, yeah. So you can see our
previous entries in this loosely connected mini series. We've talked
about Julia Child and other people.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Isabella Beaten, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Oh uh huh uh huh, yep, yeah, Edna Lewis, we
talked about joy of Cooking, Irma Ron Bauer.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yes, we have talked about cookbooks and kind of the
nature of cookbooks and stuff through various episodes, so lots
of stuff to explore. But this episode was really really
interesting to me because I didn't know this. I didn't
know this at all, And despite the fact that we
(01:30):
talk about it often or we use it as a
source often, I didn't know about this.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't know about this humans background,
so so heck yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yes, which I guess brings us to our questions. I
suppose it does. Fanny Farmer, what or who is it?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well? Fanny Merritt Farmer was a recipe writer, lecturer, and
all around educator in cooking and nutrition around the turn
of the twentieth century. She placed an emphasis on the
developing fields of dietary science and domestic science, with the
idea that it's not like difficult to cook or to
(02:09):
run a household for both health and happiness. It just
takes comprehension and like a little bit of work. Yeah,
it's actually really close. I feel like her point of
view in essence to one of my favorite descriptions of
what we do here at this weird workplace of ours
from colleague Ben Bolan, the world is understandable and worth understanding.
(02:32):
Oh yeah yeah. And Farmer pioneered the inclusion of standard
measurements in recipes, where previously cookbooks might have called for
like a pinch or a walnut sized lump, or a
handful or a tea cupful of something. She wrote about
tea spoons and tablespoons and actual measuring cups, not just
(02:55):
like whatever you've got in your cupboard and how to
measure out different ingredients. She is sometimes called the mother
of level measurements. So she did a lot of work
in making cooking and nutrition and the pleasure of food
practical and accessible. She's like, Okay, think of your favorite cookbook,
(03:18):
maybe one that's been in your family. Maybe certain pages
are stained from when you had butter on your fingers
and you needed to flip the page because you know
that you can get the dish right if you just
follow these blissfully clear instructions.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah. Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
She is the grandmother of that book.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I do appreciate that book, and I do love what
we're going to talk about throughout this of kind of
the because I've expressed my frustration sometimes when you're trying
to get a recipe and it's like a pinch of
this or a dash of this, and you're like, what
does that mean.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
She's like, the person who came in was like, let's
hold on, hold on, we can standardize this. We live,
we live in the incredible future. Let's make it happen. Yeah. Yeah,
the incredible future of the you know, eighteen nineties. But right, okay,
So the work that she is best known for is
(04:15):
called the Boston Cooking School Cookbook. It was first published
in eighteen ninety six and is still in print today,
though some editions are called the Fanny Farmer Cookbook instead.
And reading through it, it's it's really remarkable, Like A,
what a departure it was from prior cookbooks, and b
how close it is to the way that we start
(04:37):
every episode of Savor. Very like okay, just in case
you just got to Earth and you don't know what
a cheese is, let alone how to make one. Let's
explain it.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
It's yes, like okay.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
The opening of the book like like chapter one, line
one is food is anything which nourishes the body. From
fifteen to twenty elements enter into the composition of the body,
of which the following thirteen are considered Oxygen sixty two
and a half percent carbon, twenty one and a half
percent hydrogen, ten percent nitrogen, three percent calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, chlorine, sodium, magnesium, iron,
(05:18):
and fluorine. The remaining three percent food is necessary for growth,
repair and energy. Therefore, the elements composing the body must
be found in the food. The thirteen elements named are
formed into chemical compounds by the vegetable and animal kingdoms
to support the highest order of being man. All food
must undergo chemical change after being taken into the body
before it can be utilized by the body. This is
(05:40):
the office of the digestive system.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
The office of the digestive system.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
So a charming language here, b what an interesting introduction
to a cookbook.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yes, absolutely, yes, very intense. I will say a lot
of percentages.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but right, like I mean, you know,
and then it goes on to have like five different
recipes for ways of making egg salad. But but you know,
like like it, it does focus on the science here
and I and I find it so fascinating. I mean,
like in that opening chapter, it goes on to explain
how our bodies use uh what she what she called proteids, carbohydrates,
(06:30):
fats and oils, mineral matter and water like it gives
she gives the chemical formulas for different types of sugars.
Some of what she's saying, I mean, this was written
over a century ago. Some of what she says is
is very on point for what we know today.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Some of it is.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Extremely not so so that's interesting. It's interesting as well
as like a window into where science was about biology
and nutrition at the time. All that being said, according
to her niece and other sources, she actually like wasn't
a very good cook. She was more of like a
(07:12):
food detective and a force of nature.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Ooh, food detective. Okay, okay, well what about the nutrition.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Don't don't eat people, don't eat dead people, don't don't
don't do that. Well, I mean, I guess it's better
than eating living people. I'm gonna look, man, I'm gonna
leave this up to all y'all. You make your own judgments.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Back way, yeah, yeah, okay, Well, moving on, we do
have some numbers for.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
You, yes there, okay. There were something like one and
fifty recipes in her original Boston Cooking School.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Cookbook, Yes, yes, And that cookbook has sold over seven
million copies today and still remains in print.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
The original version of it went through eleven editions before
it got kind of morphed into something a little bit
more modern. We'll talk about that later. It's also been
translated into French, Spanish, Japanese, and Braille.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
And this book had a massive influence and revolutionized the
cookbook space. Julia Child once said it was the quote
primary reference in her mom's kitchen and that she learned
a lot from cooking recipes that it contained for things
like fudge and pancakes. So it was one of those
things where it had that ripple effects when it came out.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Oh yeah, oh absolutely. And we do have a lot
to talk about in our history section.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
We do, and we're going to get into that after
quick break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. So. Fanny Farmer was
born in Boston on March twenty third, eighteen fifty seven,
(09:20):
the first of four daughters in her family. She was
raised not far from there in Medford, and her parents
were struggling, but they were managing. Her father was a
printer and editor. Yes, and a great niece of theirs,
I don't know if it was the same niece, but
a great niece of theirs allegedly described them as Unitarian
and bookish, and yeah, Fanny Farmer certainly seemed to be
(09:46):
on that path. In the early days, she intended to
go to college to study to become a teacher, in
part because it was one of the few positions permitted
to women at the time. However, her plans changed when
she experienced some lower body paralysis at the age of sixteen,
the culprit most likely polio. She was advised to stay
(10:08):
home and rest, like, don't even study. This was the
medical advice someone in her position would probably receive at
the time.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yes. Eventually, Farmer did secure work as a sort of
governess in her twenties for a well off friend of
the family, and that friend is often said to have
encouraged Farmer to hone in on her culinary education. True
or not, because the evidence is sort of I don't know,
hard to pin down. Sure, Farmer enrolled in the Boston
(10:39):
School of Cooking a few years later, at the time
she was thirty one years old. This school's mission was
to give an option to middle class women so that
they could learn the skills needed to work in a
variety of paying spaces like private homes or institutions. And
in the school's own words to quote lift, this great
social incubus of bad cooking and its incident evils incident
(11:06):
evils from the households of the country at large. Wow,
it's very intense.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
We don't right like that anymore. The great social incubus
of bad cooking and its incident evils.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Wow, it's so good.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Heck all right, yeah, okay. So the school had opened
in eighteen seventy nine, having been proposed by a member
of the local women's Educational Association after she had attended
classes at a similar school in London. They offered inexpensive
and even free classes with periodic forays into everything from
(11:45):
like cooking for fancy dinners to anatomy and digestion.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
And farmers seem to have liked it because after she graduated,
she joined the school staff in eighteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
And was successful. She was hired on as the assistant
principle and took over within two years. Meanwhile, the school's
first principle, one Mary Lincoln, had published a cookbook of
her own back in eighteen eighty three as something of
like a textbook for her students. It was called Missus
Lincoln's Boston Cookbook, What to Do and What Not to
Do in Cooking. It included a lot of basics of
(12:23):
kitchen setup and prep and technique, and there was an
emphasis on the science of what was happening during cooking
in that book. In eighteen ninety four, an article in
The Boston Globe described the school dustly. The mission is
not only to show the poor how to comfort their
families with wholesome and economical food, but to begin a
(12:43):
moral reform. Believing that there is more potent preaching in
the thought of the aroma of a cup of good coffee, juicy,
nourishing meats, and light homemade bread, that you'll call the
laborer home to share the delights of a neat, attractive
table with his family, then can reach him in any
other manner.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Well. Also, if you remember in our other episodes on
women writing cookbooks and the history of cookbooks in general,
I guess we talked about Betty Crocker, also appropriate here
here in the US. This was when cookbooks were starting
to hammer out concepts like home economics and domestic science,
(13:25):
and these cookbooks at the time were often not just
about the recipes, but also about advice or usually women
on running a household.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Right right and like, as that above quote from the
Boston Globe sort of reveals it was really attached to
like like, So there were a lot of kind of
socioeconomic and life changes happening due to industrialization around the
US and other places at the time. You know, like,
young people were moving to cities and were kind of
disconnected from from food ways and hands on learning methods.
(14:03):
And also there was a little bit of this like
moral panic of like what are we going to do
with this new type of of of of of human
of human lifestyle, Like like, how are we going to
make it not just intolerable and and uh, you know,
maybe hopefully nice, but also I guess like through doing
(14:27):
those things like prevent the country from descending into the
social incubus of bad cooking, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
And yeah, a part of that was the science of
these recipes, and Farmer really was a proponent of that
and she championed it. She believed that the move away
from the terms like a pinch of this to more
standardized terms demystified cooking and made it more accessible for people.
(15:09):
And through her work and her stances, she garnered more
and more respect for her opinions, like people were seeking
her out to get her opinion on things yea in
this arena, And through that she did get more and
more media attention, and she did lecture circuits that were published.
She was one of the first women to give a
lecture at Harvard Medical School, where she spoke about foods, diet,
(15:32):
and the ill That was a big thing that she
liked to talk about. By all accounts, she was charismatic
and engaging and soon had a following of women of
the upper class, middle upper class, and as such expanded
her offerings to include recipes for fancy dinners and luncheons. Yeah,
those all those sort of events that when we were
(15:54):
expected to cook for provide for.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, yeah, maybe, and like maybe if the lady of
the house was and attending, then she would send her
personal cook out to these kind of things to learn.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Yes, the Boston Cooking School Cookbook was published under her
name in eighteen ninety six, which, yes, we've mentioned many
times in the show. It contained over one thousand tested,
fully measured recipes. I actually saw a lot of numbers
around that one thousand, a lot of them way higher.
And I wonder if I asked to do with the tested,
(16:26):
fully measured part.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Oh, but sure, a thousand plus, yeah, a thousand plus.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Some of them were lifted from Mary Lincoln's earlier book,
but many were farmers own. She was apparently particularly fond
of and good at, like working backward from a finished
dish at a restaurant and figuring out a recipe for it.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Oh, I love that. I love that. However, at the time,
the publishers were afraid of losing money on this book,
so they pushed Fanny Farmer to pay for the three
thousand book run herself. She kept the copyright smart because again,
(17:07):
it went on to sell millions of copies.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, like eight thousand in the first year alone. I
have read also varying numbers on how many copies it's
sold during her lifetime, like one hundred thousand, three hundred
and sixty thousand, three million. There's a large difference between
those numbers. I'm not entirely sure, but at any rate,
(17:32):
the book did include about twenty pages of advertisements at
the end to help offset costs.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Oh okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Yeah, and okay, so I read from chapter one earlier,
but to give more of a vibe of what she
intended the book to be. This was from the books
like introduction prior to chapter one. Okay, certainly feel that
the time is not far distant when a knowledge of
(18:03):
principles of the diet will be an essential part of
one's education. Then mankind will eat to live, will be
able to do better mental and physical work, and disease
will be less frequent. It is my wish that the
book not only be looked upon as a compilation of
tried and tested recipes, but that it may awaken an
interest through its condensed scientific knowledge, which will lead to
(18:23):
deeper thought and broader study of what to eat. That's
like a really long version of our of our podcasts. Really,
who knew?
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Who knew?
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Here?
Speaker 1 (18:42):
We are you? Thanks?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Thanks Farmer?
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah well, and spurred on and funded by the success
all of the success. In nineteen oh two, Farmer opened
Miss Farmer's School of Cookery and this was also successful.
It'll her to buy some land, build a house, and
even support several members of her family, and it ran
(19:06):
until the nineteen forties.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah. It closed in forty four during World War Two
and did not reopen afterwards. She did write a number
of other cookbooks for home cooks. One of my favorite
titles Chafing Dish Possibilities from eighteen ninety eight, What to
Have for Dinner from nineteen oh five, Catering for Special
(19:28):
Occasions with Menus and Recipes from nineteen eleven, and a
new Book of Cookery from nineteen twelve. If You're unfamiliar
with what a chafing dish is. It's what we think
of Today's a buffet pan, like like a big portable
pan that can be set up over some kind of
small independent heat source with like a cover to keep
the contents warm. Yeah. Anyway, chafing dish possibilities.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Love it, Love it.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
And one more bit of text because I kind of
love her writing. Okay, so this is from the intro
to catering for special occasions. She wrote, Americans of today
are accused somewhat unjustly, it seems to me of being inhospitable,
because we do, not, in the manner of a generation
or two ago, lay aside all of our duties at
the visit of friends and welcome them ungrudgingly to our
(20:15):
ordinary meal. We expose ourselves to this charge. But in truth,
it is a higher conception of hospitality that has brought
about this change. In these days of rapid transit by
sea as well as by land, the markets of the
world are brought almost to our very doors, and we
have a hundred combinations to our grandmother's one. We therefore
(20:36):
receive our guests more formally. We make preparations for their coming,
and take pleasure in giving them a meal which shall
vary from the humdrum order of culinary production.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
That's such a good quote because it feels like it's
touching on like the industrialization of things, yes, the the
idea that we are more able to get things or
her but us from the future, yeah, as well, but
(21:09):
also still wanting to make something that is personable specific
not just a roach dish.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah yeah, yeah, wanting to do something nice for company
and uh and having this kind of newfound capacity to
do so in different ways.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Uh. I.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I love that that that line in these days of
rapid transit by sea as well as by land, just
because I'm like, I'm like, what what a time to
be alive, right, like like like what a what an amazing,
shining new century it must have seemed, and not I
mean not that it wasn't, I mean, you know, but
like it just I I love I love little peaks
(21:55):
into history like that that, you know, like every every
generation things that they're like inventing everything anew and that
everything is wild. I mean, but it was during this
time as well.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah yeah, yeah, And she was she was all about it.
She was all about exploring that and her influence did
not stop. These cookbooks we talked about are the school.
She also worked for the Women's Home Companion as the
food editor and continued to really sing the praises of
(22:29):
precise measurements. That was her whole. She loved it, but
as many people wrote in their accounts of her, she
also made it fun and for some she helped shift
food into something to take pleasure in.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah, she did write one additional book, which she said
to have considered her most important work. I was called
Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent, published in
nineteen oh four. It really like intensified her prior themes
of the importance of making food not just nutritious but palatable,
(23:05):
especially for for people who need that nutrition the most.
It really emphasized like like good cheer, like serving things
on nice dishes, making you know, like if if someone
is sick, you know, and you want them to eat
bread and butter, like like make a little bread and
butter sandwich in a heart shape instead of just serving
them a slice of bread and a pat of butter.
(23:26):
And it's easy to imagine, you know, her own history
influenced her writing here of of you know, having having
grown up being told like, nope, you're just in bed
like you you're that's that's where you live now, so,
you know, wanting to make that nice for other people
who are experiencing that kind of situation. It also does
(23:47):
remind me some of what we talked about in our
Laura Ingles Wilder episode about making things pretty, you know,
to help make the best of things.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Yeah. Yeah. She did have an of strokes in her fifties,
but continued lecturing, using a wheelchair to get around. Her
last revision of the Boston Cooking School Cookbook, published in
nineteen fourteen, although I think that she was like working
on the next edition when she passed.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Okay, and she died in January nineteen fifteen at the
age of fifty seven due to complications stemming from stroke.
Her legacy by no means ended there, though her cookbook
continued to undergo several revisions, perhaps most famously the one
overseen by Marion Cunningham in nineteen seventy nine, often credited
(24:40):
with modernizing Farmer's work. I feel like we talked about
this with Joy of Cooking as well. Yeah. Yeah, As
discussed in previous episodes, these revisions they reflect changing taste
and concerns of the American people.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Oh yeah, and also technologies, because you know, like there
was a fancy new chapter on how to use fancy
new kitchen appliances like refrigerators and pressure cookers that showed
up in the nineteen thirties, along with details about cocktail
party entertaining and the use of wine and cooking. By
the sixties, there were more uses of prepackaged foods like
(25:19):
canned goods and recipes. That was also the era when
they changed the title to The Fanny Farmer Cookbook. Some recipes, though,
have sustained throughout even if they have changed over the years,
like the one for Boston baked beans very popular, I guess, yeah, okay, yes. Meanwhile,
(25:40):
Fanny Farmer Candy with a Y in the word Fanny,
started up in nineteen nineteen after Fanny Farmer, the person's death,
kind of capitalizing on Farmer's name while escaping copyright dispute.
Yeah yeah, I don't know. I don't know exactly how
I feel about that. The family trust wound up selling
(26:03):
this candy company the copyright to Farmer's name in nineteen
sixty five. Yeah. Wow, Yeah, that's a Northeastern like chocolate
kind of based candy company. If if anyone is not
familiar with it and you're not from the northeast of
the United States, that's why there you go. In slightly
(26:25):
nicer news, Christopher Kimball of America's Test Kitchen got pretty
into farmer's life and legacy in the early twenty ants.
He published a book called Fanny's Last Supper in two
thousand and nine. It was about her and about his
experience of like recreating her twelve course Christmas dinner menu
using contemporary Victorian cooking technologies and techniques and ingredients. He
(26:50):
also helped open a modern iteration of Farmers cooking school
called the New Boston Cooking School in twenty fifteen, which
I don't think lasted very long, but heck, what a
nice idea.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah, and there's a lot written about this, a lot
you can see about this, so definitely it was cool.
Check it out.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And I really, oh, I
really want to read that book because that sounds like
exactly the kind of foolhardy adventure that I want to
bark upon. Like he boiled the whole calf set in
order to get like the good stock going like you know,
like so exciting anyway, Okay, also not a sponsor or anything,
(27:34):
but there is a like like early grade illustrated book
about Fanny Farmer that's set to publish in January of
twenty twenty four. It's to be called The Fabulous Fanny Farmer,
Kitchen Scientist and America's Cook.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
I love it. I want to know about it, listeners.
I feel like last time we wrote about wrote about
when we talked about joy of cooking, a lot of
you wrote in with your own memories and your own
editions that you have.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah, yeah, this one. Yeah, oh goodness. Absolutely if this
is something that you grew up with or that like
you remember a grandparent maybe telling you about or using
in their own kitchen, oh, we totally want to hear
about it.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Absolutely, Oh my gosh. But that is what we have
to say for now. It is.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
We do have some listener mail already prepared for you, though,
and we are going to get into that as soon
as we get back from one more quick break for
a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
And we're back.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back with Oh.
I was just telling Lauren the Tragedy of Darth Annie.
(29:06):
This book that was given to me that had Fanny
and the title that I was told was about me,
and now I believe it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
But it involved a circus and a child that was
very good at the circus. I'm going to investigate this.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Okay, yeah, yeah, and I'll look into it absolutely, I'm
going to. I mean, were you very good at the
circus as a child.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
No, but I did do a whole circus act when
I was in kindergarten where I had a tiger outfit. Yeah,
but I was also I was like, the whole circus,
Yeah you were. Who knows what I was thinking, But
then that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Awesome one man's circus.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I will say before we kick off this first listener
mail minor spoiler alerts for this year's Thirteen Days of
Halloween podcast.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yes, I'm excited to talk about this. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I want to hear your process and my process.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah yeah, let's do it. Okay, okay, all right.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
So Albert wrote Spooky Halloween Annie and Lauren completely off
topic from Saber, but it's Thirteen Days of Halloween time
this season. I wasn't sold on the first or even
the second episode. Also, thanks in part to D and D,
I kind of figured out the twist. All the mistakes
in her profile, especially the right versus left mistakes, led
(30:33):
me to the conclusion that there was a Dappelganger in
her world, in her timeline or from a different world
or timeline. I wasn't sure, so I stuck with it,
and the third episode was hitting the mark. I just
finished episode six that he wrote, loved it, and I
was right. So I'm seeing a trend in Annie's writing.
(30:54):
Yet another creepy woman and her disturbing story. Season one,
season three. You know, sorry, I don't remember which episode
you wrote in season two. I know Lauren is editing
the stories and also doing some voice acting, but I
have so far failed to identify her in the episodes,
(31:14):
so good job if you have acted in episodes one
through six. That is, the first two episodes appear to
be written by a team instead of a singular writer.
I would love to hear how the editing process worked. Anyway,
I've got to prepare for my game tonight. I'm running
a few sessions of Mothership, a sci fi horror RPG
for my gaming group. I hope your gaming is going well.
(31:39):
Oh it is?
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Heck yeah yeah, oh goodness, thank you so much for
listening to Thirteen Days.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Oh yes, yes. If you haven't listened to it, and
you're in any way interested in this kind of stuff,
then I recommend it. It was really fun. I do
find it interesting because this was written I would presume.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
At episode six, sure, sure you know, like right, like.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Of it hattn't played out? Yeah? So interesting?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Yeah yeah yeah, so uh so, I guess the So
this is an anthology horror series that we hear at
iHeart podcasts do every Halloween in the thirteen days leading
up to Halloween. Thirteen episodes, and we have a different
person right like kind of like the primary voice storyline
(32:43):
kind of bit for each episode, and then we have
like a wrap around of varying complexity, increasing complexity every year.
And so so yes, the like the like main team
wrote the first couple episodes and then the last episode,
(33:04):
and then the kind of interstitial wrap around bits for
all of the others as well. And Annie wrote the
main part for episode six. I guess if you said it,
I believe it totally.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
That's great. Yeah, I believe that's.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Right, yes, sure, yeah, yeah. We had a little bit
of confusion and production about exactly like how many episodes
there were going to be because we were going to
publish them over the course of thirteen days. But was
it going to be two episodes? I don't know, it
was a whole thing. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. What was?
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Uh? What was?
Speaker 2 (33:37):
What was your experience? Annie?
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Uh? Well? First off, I will say, Albert, you're totally right.
I did not write anything for season two. Okay, I
was too shy. Oh, I have to be asked directly,
and please don't tell the showrunners there, but otherwise I
probably won't volunteer. Asked me directly. Will I have a
(34:01):
million ideas? But I will say as someone who started
from like season one to this, season one was much
more write a story, and now it's like, write a
story and you don't know where it's going to fit
into this whole storyline. Both are great. I'm not saying
what is better than another, but so it's kind of
a guessing of what will work the best with what
(34:23):
the overarching plot. And I knew the basic plot line,
and I think I sent four ideas and one was
this doppelganger idea and I explained why Doppelgangers freaked me
out because they freaked me out. But I said in there,
I was like, for all I know, this is literally
(34:46):
the how it ends. So like tell me this is
no good and they're like, no, this one is the
one write this. And it was actually I'm really glad
because it was a ch It was a it was
hard to write just because I was trying to keep
(35:07):
in mind all the details and yeah, I don't know,
like make a story. A lot of times I feel
like when you're writing something you feel like you're either
being too overhanded or too underhanded. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, So
it was it was a challenge and I really struggled
with it, but I feel like it paid off. And
when I heard it, I was like, oh, yes, this
(35:29):
is the sound effects was amazing and you and the
editing team sent back amazing. No, it's like it's a
really cool collaborative process, but it is kind of like
a mystery. It's like, oh am I doing a t
all a good thing.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Yeah, there's there's a lot of moving pieces on these
things and so and you're also like, like, as the
right because I did story editing on this season and
so like, so I was trying trying to kind of
simultaneously wrangle what the showrunners were creating for the wrap
around along with these these anthology pieces in the middle
(36:09):
and make it all kind of make some kind of
sense and have some kind of flow while we were
all simultaneously creating it together. And I were just like, oh, okay,
oh yeah, and just building the boat in the middle
of the river here we are. Yeah yeah, but yeah, no,
I loved I loved your story and it made me
(36:30):
so happy. I mean, first of all, it has a
heavy food element, so of course I was like, yeah,
I really they they were doing for the major roles,
they they did entirely sag after union members, particularly because
(36:51):
we were we were recording during the strike, and so
we wanted to give that opportunity to people who were
out of work and to make sure that they had
a chance to earn some heck and money, you know,
heck yeah, And so so the voice work I wound
up doing was like very small, very small little bits,
(37:12):
like I think I chant a couple of times in
a couple of places for different creepy gods that are
coming up out of the underworld, and there's one time. Gosh,
is it in an episode one or two or three?
I don't. I don't again, I don't know what the
numbers are anymore. It's in like the lunch room and
(37:33):
Shaky Pete, who is Ben Bolan's new favorite character, of course,
is telling his story, and uh, there's there's a nice
lady kind of in the background who's who's like, oh,
thank you, thank you so much for saving our village,
and like that's basically what I did. So that's if
you if you were like, what's that goofy voice actor doing?
(37:55):
That was me and I didn't know. I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
It is really fun to hear how it comes together.
It is.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
It is, Oh goodness, And our sound designers do such
a such an amazing job.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Yeah, yeah, they do. I at the beginning of the pandemic,
when we were all like, oh, what are we going
to do? I tried to make a playlist of of
our voice acting, our phrase and voice act in a
bunch of shows. And then I did make it. But
(38:38):
then I just never did anything with it. It exists.
I just never did anything.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Yeah, no, share share that out, let me send it
to me. At the very least, I'm curious.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
We've done a bunch of little voice a voice things.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Oh goodness, it's.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
True, especially around horrors.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
We're all we're all a little bit spooky over here,
So it is true.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
It is true. But I had a good time. It
was fun working with you, and I guess we'll see
you next year. Yeah it happens.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah goodness, Yeah you too, ye, and thank you again
for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the rest of
the season. It's still still up if anyone wants to
listen to it thirteen Days of Halloween wherever you get
your podcasts. But yeah, in the meanwhile, Eric wrote, first off, yes,
we absolutely love your little quirks part of what makes
the show fun. There is a reason I enjoy your
(39:35):
show as well as others where the hosts have fun
little things that make the show more enjoyable. The ridiculous
crime history and romance shows, tech stuff, large nedron stuff
they don't want you to know. And a wine is
such an interesting topic. I love hearing how he Jeff
came into it. I enjoy wine and always used to
worry about trying to pick stuff out. When I finally
(39:56):
came to the conclusion, why not just try something and
if it worked great. I don't try to think about pairings.
I don't really go looking into tasting notes around bottles.
The only thing I really look for is lighter or heavier,
sweeter or drier. We have an awesome place here, engine
House twenty five, built into an old firehouse. The wines
are absolutely amazing. They're a little on the priceier side
(40:17):
to some, but to me, getting a couple of bottles
from here is a treat. If you tell them what
you like and dislike and stuff, they'll get you set up.
They also run a Clement museum and you can do
a tour and tasting. Also absolutely love Lauren breaking out
yeast poop in that interview with Jeff. I was hoping
we would hear it, and I was not disappointed. Keep on,
(40:38):
keeping on, be yourselves, enjoy the wine and champagne. I
still need to remember to try pairing it with fried chicken.
I'm really wondering how pairing it with chicken and waffles
would be.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
Like, oh delicious, oh yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Yeah. I mean, as a person who is like kind
of now from Atlanta, I'm morally obligated to like chicken
and waffles. But but yeah, yeah, yeah, anything with chicken
and waffles. Heck, y'all do it.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
I have to say, I I bet a lot of
people can relate to this. But when you get to,
like after Halloween, the rest of the year is just oh,
I have to get through the holidays, which which involves
some joy but involves a lot of stress.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
But New Year's I've started to reclaim for myself. Yeah,
and I'm like, leave me beee at least for one day,
Like I'm doing a New Year's thing now. Hours have champagne.
And after we did this interview with Jeff, I'm like,
I French fries and champagne might have to happen.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
I think they should.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
I mean, I haven't had I've had the fried chicken
combination and it's amazing. But French fries, yeah, and a
specific type of French fry. I can just I feel
like that would be amazing way to start the new year.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
I think it would be. I fully encourage you to
do this. Yes, absolutely, yeah, champagne. The opportunities are endless.
Oh they are they are. Yeah, and again right, just yeah,
just enjoy it. Just have a nice time.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
Come on, that's what that whole interview was about. And
it was a great He was great because I feel
like a lot of times when you talk to it
can be this way when you talk to Somalia's and
they're like, oly, this with this, but he was like, no, no,
what makes you happy. That's what we're about here. Yes, yes, exactly,
(42:45):
oh heck yeah yes, and thank you for the recommendations.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Are oh yeah, yeah yeah. I also completely second all
of the ridiculous shows crime History and Romance all really
aces human people, so yeah, totally yes, yes, yes, as
opposed to tex stuff and stuff. They don't want you
to know they are dead.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
No they're not. No, no, no, no, no, oh jeez, oh wow.
Thanks to both of these listeners for writing in. If
you would like to write in, you can our emails
hello at savorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
We are also on social media. You can find us
on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at savor pod and we
do hope to hear from you. Savor is production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Thanks, as always to our super producers
Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
(43:49):
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie Reeve.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I'm moarn vocal Bum and today we have an
episode for you about Fanny Farmer.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yes, who is someone we've talked about a few times.
We've mentioned a few times, I should.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Say, certainly in talking about her cookbook, The Boston Cooking
School Cookbook.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Yes, that does come up a lot. And it has
been a while since we've done what shul we call
a profile and deliciousness.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Ah, yes, yeah, yes, yeah. So you can see our
previous entries in this loosely connected mini series. We've talked
about Julia Child and other people.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Isabella Beaten, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Oh uh huh uh huh, yep, yeah, Edna Lewis, we
talked about joy of Cooking, Irma Ron Bauer.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yes, we have talked about cookbooks and kind of the
nature of cookbooks and stuff through various episodes, so lots
of stuff to explore. But this episode was really really
interesting to me because I didn't know this. I didn't
know this at all, And despite the fact that we
(01:30):
talk about it often or we use it as a
source often, I didn't know about this.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't know about this humans background,
so so heck yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yes, which I guess brings us to our questions. I
suppose it does. Fanny Farmer, what or who is it?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well? Fanny Merritt Farmer was a recipe writer, lecturer, and
all around educator in cooking and nutrition around the turn
of the twentieth century. She placed an emphasis on the
developing fields of dietary science and domestic science, with the
idea that it's not like difficult to cook or to
(02:09):
run a household for both health and happiness. It just
takes comprehension and like a little bit of work. Yeah,
it's actually really close. I feel like her point of
view in essence to one of my favorite descriptions of
what we do here at this weird workplace of ours
from colleague Ben Bolan, the world is understandable and worth understanding.
(02:32):
Oh yeah yeah. And Farmer pioneered the inclusion of standard
measurements in recipes, where previously cookbooks might have called for
like a pinch or a walnut sized lump, or a
handful or a tea cupful of something. She wrote about
tea spoons and tablespoons and actual measuring cups, not just
(02:55):
like whatever you've got in your cupboard and how to
measure out different ingredients. She is sometimes called the mother
of level measurements. So she did a lot of work
in making cooking and nutrition and the pleasure of food
practical and accessible. She's like, Okay, think of your favorite cookbook,
(03:18):
maybe one that's been in your family. Maybe certain pages
are stained from when you had butter on your fingers
and you needed to flip the page because you know
that you can get the dish right if you just
follow these blissfully clear instructions.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah. Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
She is the grandmother of that book.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I do appreciate that book, and I do love what
we're going to talk about throughout this of kind of
the because I've expressed my frustration sometimes when you're trying
to get a recipe and it's like a pinch of
this or a dash of this, and you're like, what
does that mean.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
She's like, the person who came in was like, let's
hold on, hold on, we can standardize this. We live,
we live in the incredible future. Let's make it happen. Yeah. Yeah,
the incredible future of the you know, eighteen nineties. But right, okay,
So the work that she is best known for is
(04:15):
called the Boston Cooking School Cookbook. It was first published
in eighteen ninety six and is still in print today,
though some editions are called the Fanny Farmer Cookbook instead.
And reading through it, it's it's really remarkable, Like A,
what a departure it was from prior cookbooks, and b
how close it is to the way that we start
(04:37):
every episode of Savor. Very like okay, just in case
you just got to Earth and you don't know what
a cheese is, let alone how to make one. Let's
explain it.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
It's yes, like okay.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
The opening of the book like like chapter one, line
one is food is anything which nourishes the body. From
fifteen to twenty elements enter into the composition of the body,
of which the following thirteen are considered Oxygen sixty two
and a half percent carbon, twenty one and a half
percent hydrogen, ten percent nitrogen, three percent calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, chlorine, sodium, magnesium, iron,
(05:18):
and fluorine. The remaining three percent food is necessary for growth,
repair and energy. Therefore, the elements composing the body must
be found in the food. The thirteen elements named are
formed into chemical compounds by the vegetable and animal kingdoms
to support the highest order of being man. All food
must undergo chemical change after being taken into the body
before it can be utilized by the body. This is
(05:40):
the office of the digestive system.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
The office of the digestive system.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
So a charming language here, b what an interesting introduction
to a cookbook.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yes, absolutely, yes, very intense. I will say a lot
of percentages.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but right, like I mean, you know,
and then it goes on to have like five different
recipes for ways of making egg salad. But but you know,
like like it, it does focus on the science here
and I and I find it so fascinating. I mean,
like in that opening chapter, it goes on to explain
how our bodies use uh what she what she called proteids, carbohydrates,
(06:30):
fats and oils, mineral matter and water like it gives
she gives the chemical formulas for different types of sugars.
Some of what she's saying, I mean, this was written
over a century ago. Some of what she says is
is very on point for what we know today.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Some of it is.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Extremely not so so that's interesting. It's interesting as well
as like a window into where science was about biology
and nutrition at the time. All that being said, according
to her niece and other sources, she actually like wasn't
a very good cook. She was more of like a
(07:12):
food detective and a force of nature.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Ooh, food detective. Okay, okay, well what about the nutrition.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Don't don't eat people, don't eat dead people, don't don't
don't do that. Well, I mean, I guess it's better
than eating living people. I'm gonna look, man, I'm gonna
leave this up to all y'all. You make your own judgments.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Back way, yeah, yeah, okay, Well, moving on, we do
have some numbers for.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
You, yes there, okay. There were something like one and
fifty recipes in her original Boston Cooking School.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Cookbook, Yes, yes, And that cookbook has sold over seven
million copies today and still remains in print.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
The original version of it went through eleven editions before
it got kind of morphed into something a little bit
more modern. We'll talk about that later. It's also been
translated into French, Spanish, Japanese, and Braille.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
And this book had a massive influence and revolutionized the
cookbook space. Julia Child once said it was the quote
primary reference in her mom's kitchen and that she learned
a lot from cooking recipes that it contained for things
like fudge and pancakes. So it was one of those
things where it had that ripple effects when it came out.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Oh yeah, oh absolutely. And we do have a lot
to talk about in our history section.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
We do, and we're going to get into that after
quick break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. So. Fanny Farmer was
born in Boston on March twenty third, eighteen fifty seven,
(09:20):
the first of four daughters in her family. She was
raised not far from there in Medford, and her parents
were struggling, but they were managing. Her father was a
printer and editor. Yes, and a great niece of theirs,
I don't know if it was the same niece, but
a great niece of theirs allegedly described them as Unitarian
and bookish, and yeah, Fanny Farmer certainly seemed to be
(09:46):
on that path. In the early days, she intended to
go to college to study to become a teacher, in
part because it was one of the few positions permitted
to women at the time. However, her plans changed when
she experienced some lower body paralysis at the age of sixteen,
the culprit most likely polio. She was advised to stay
(10:08):
home and rest, like, don't even study. This was the
medical advice someone in her position would probably receive at
the time.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yes. Eventually, Farmer did secure work as a sort of
governess in her twenties for a well off friend of
the family, and that friend is often said to have
encouraged Farmer to hone in on her culinary education. True
or not, because the evidence is sort of I don't know,
hard to pin down. Sure, Farmer enrolled in the Boston
(10:39):
School of Cooking a few years later, at the time
she was thirty one years old. This school's mission was
to give an option to middle class women so that
they could learn the skills needed to work in a
variety of paying spaces like private homes or institutions. And
in the school's own words to quote lift, this great
social incubus of bad cooking and its incident evils incident
(11:06):
evils from the households of the country at large. Wow,
it's very intense.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
We don't right like that anymore. The great social incubus
of bad cooking and its incident evils.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Wow, it's so good.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Heck all right, yeah, okay. So the school had opened
in eighteen seventy nine, having been proposed by a member
of the local women's Educational Association after she had attended
classes at a similar school in London. They offered inexpensive
and even free classes with periodic forays into everything from
(11:45):
like cooking for fancy dinners to anatomy and digestion.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
And farmers seem to have liked it because after she graduated,
she joined the school staff in eighteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
And was successful. She was hired on as the assistant
principle and took over within two years. Meanwhile, the school's
first principle, one Mary Lincoln, had published a cookbook of
her own back in eighteen eighty three as something of
like a textbook for her students. It was called Missus
Lincoln's Boston Cookbook, What to Do and What Not to
Do in Cooking. It included a lot of basics of
(12:23):
kitchen setup and prep and technique, and there was an
emphasis on the science of what was happening during cooking
in that book. In eighteen ninety four, an article in
The Boston Globe described the school dustly. The mission is
not only to show the poor how to comfort their
families with wholesome and economical food, but to begin a
(12:43):
moral reform. Believing that there is more potent preaching in
the thought of the aroma of a cup of good coffee, juicy,
nourishing meats, and light homemade bread, that you'll call the
laborer home to share the delights of a neat, attractive
table with his family, then can reach him in any
other manner.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Well. Also, if you remember in our other episodes on
women writing cookbooks and the history of cookbooks in general,
I guess we talked about Betty Crocker, also appropriate here
here in the US. This was when cookbooks were starting
to hammer out concepts like home economics and domestic science,
(13:25):
and these cookbooks at the time were often not just
about the recipes, but also about advice or usually women
on running a household.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Right right and like, as that above quote from the
Boston Globe sort of reveals it was really attached to
like like, So there were a lot of kind of
socioeconomic and life changes happening due to industrialization around the
US and other places at the time. You know, like,
young people were moving to cities and were kind of
disconnected from from food ways and hands on learning methods.
(14:03):
And also there was a little bit of this like
moral panic of like what are we going to do
with this new type of of of of of human
of human lifestyle, Like like, how are we going to
make it not just intolerable and and uh, you know,
maybe hopefully nice, but also I guess like through doing
(14:27):
those things like prevent the country from descending into the
social incubus of bad cooking, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
And yeah, a part of that was the science of
these recipes, and Farmer really was a proponent of that
and she championed it. She believed that the move away
from the terms like a pinch of this to more
standardized terms demystified cooking and made it more accessible for people.
(15:09):
And through her work and her stances, she garnered more
and more respect for her opinions, like people were seeking
her out to get her opinion on things yea in
this arena, And through that she did get more and
more media attention, and she did lecture circuits that were published.
She was one of the first women to give a
lecture at Harvard Medical School, where she spoke about foods, diet,
(15:32):
and the ill That was a big thing that she
liked to talk about. By all accounts, she was charismatic
and engaging and soon had a following of women of
the upper class, middle upper class, and as such expanded
her offerings to include recipes for fancy dinners and luncheons. Yeah,
those all those sort of events that when we were
(15:54):
expected to cook for provide for.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, yeah, maybe, and like maybe if the lady of
the house was and attending, then she would send her
personal cook out to these kind of things to learn.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Yes, the Boston Cooking School Cookbook was published under her
name in eighteen ninety six, which, yes, we've mentioned many
times in the show. It contained over one thousand tested,
fully measured recipes. I actually saw a lot of numbers
around that one thousand, a lot of them way higher.
And I wonder if I asked to do with the tested,
(16:26):
fully measured part.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Oh, but sure, a thousand plus, yeah, a thousand plus.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Some of them were lifted from Mary Lincoln's earlier book,
but many were farmers own. She was apparently particularly fond
of and good at, like working backward from a finished
dish at a restaurant and figuring out a recipe for it.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Oh, I love that. I love that. However, at the time,
the publishers were afraid of losing money on this book,
so they pushed Fanny Farmer to pay for the three
thousand book run herself. She kept the copyright smart because again,
(17:07):
it went on to sell millions of copies.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, like eight thousand in the first year alone. I
have read also varying numbers on how many copies it's
sold during her lifetime, like one hundred thousand, three hundred
and sixty thousand, three million. There's a large difference between
those numbers. I'm not entirely sure, but at any rate,
(17:32):
the book did include about twenty pages of advertisements at
the end to help offset costs.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Oh okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Yeah, and okay, so I read from chapter one earlier,
but to give more of a vibe of what she
intended the book to be. This was from the books
like introduction prior to chapter one. Okay, certainly feel that
the time is not far distant when a knowledge of
(18:03):
principles of the diet will be an essential part of
one's education. Then mankind will eat to live, will be
able to do better mental and physical work, and disease
will be less frequent. It is my wish that the
book not only be looked upon as a compilation of
tried and tested recipes, but that it may awaken an
interest through its condensed scientific knowledge, which will lead to
(18:23):
deeper thought and broader study of what to eat. That's
like a really long version of our of our podcasts. Really,
who knew?
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Who knew?
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Here?
Speaker 1 (18:42):
We are you? Thanks?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Thanks Farmer?
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah well, and spurred on and funded by the success
all of the success. In nineteen oh two, Farmer opened
Miss Farmer's School of Cookery and this was also successful.
It'll her to buy some land, build a house, and
even support several members of her family, and it ran
(19:06):
until the nineteen forties.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah. It closed in forty four during World War Two
and did not reopen afterwards. She did write a number
of other cookbooks for home cooks. One of my favorite
titles Chafing Dish Possibilities from eighteen ninety eight, What to
Have for Dinner from nineteen oh five, Catering for Special
(19:28):
Occasions with Menus and Recipes from nineteen eleven, and a
new Book of Cookery from nineteen twelve. If You're unfamiliar
with what a chafing dish is. It's what we think
of Today's a buffet pan, like like a big portable
pan that can be set up over some kind of
small independent heat source with like a cover to keep
the contents warm. Yeah. Anyway, chafing dish possibilities.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Love it, Love it.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
And one more bit of text because I kind of
love her writing. Okay, so this is from the intro
to catering for special occasions. She wrote, Americans of today
are accused somewhat unjustly, it seems to me of being inhospitable,
because we do, not, in the manner of a generation
or two ago, lay aside all of our duties at
the visit of friends and welcome them ungrudgingly to our
(20:15):
ordinary meal. We expose ourselves to this charge. But in truth,
it is a higher conception of hospitality that has brought
about this change. In these days of rapid transit by
sea as well as by land, the markets of the
world are brought almost to our very doors, and we
have a hundred combinations to our grandmother's one. We therefore
(20:36):
receive our guests more formally. We make preparations for their coming,
and take pleasure in giving them a meal which shall
vary from the humdrum order of culinary production.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
That's such a good quote because it feels like it's
touching on like the industrialization of things, yes, the the
idea that we are more able to get things or
her but us from the future, yeah, as well, but
(21:09):
also still wanting to make something that is personable specific
not just a roach dish.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah yeah, yeah, wanting to do something nice for company
and uh and having this kind of newfound capacity to
do so in different ways.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Uh. I.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I love that that that line in these days of
rapid transit by sea as well as by land, just
because I'm like, I'm like, what what a time to
be alive, right, like like like what a what an amazing,
shining new century it must have seemed, and not I
mean not that it wasn't, I mean, you know, but
like it just I I love I love little peaks
(21:55):
into history like that that, you know, like every every
generation things that they're like inventing everything anew and that
everything is wild. I mean, but it was during this
time as well.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah yeah, yeah, And she was she was all about it.
She was all about exploring that and her influence did
not stop. These cookbooks we talked about are the school.
She also worked for the Women's Home Companion as the
food editor and continued to really sing the praises of
(22:29):
precise measurements. That was her whole. She loved it, but
as many people wrote in their accounts of her, she
also made it fun and for some she helped shift
food into something to take pleasure in.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah, she did write one additional book, which she said
to have considered her most important work. I was called
Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent, published in
nineteen oh four. It really like intensified her prior themes
of the importance of making food not just nutritious but palatable,
(23:05):
especially for for people who need that nutrition the most.
It really emphasized like like good cheer, like serving things
on nice dishes, making you know, like if if someone
is sick, you know, and you want them to eat
bread and butter, like like make a little bread and
butter sandwich in a heart shape instead of just serving
them a slice of bread and a pat of butter.
(23:26):
And it's easy to imagine, you know, her own history
influenced her writing here of of you know, having having
grown up being told like, nope, you're just in bed
like you you're that's that's where you live now, so,
you know, wanting to make that nice for other people
who are experiencing that kind of situation. It also does
(23:47):
remind me some of what we talked about in our
Laura Ingles Wilder episode about making things pretty, you know,
to help make the best of things.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Yeah. Yeah. She did have an of strokes in her fifties,
but continued lecturing, using a wheelchair to get around. Her
last revision of the Boston Cooking School Cookbook, published in
nineteen fourteen, although I think that she was like working
on the next edition when she passed.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Okay, and she died in January nineteen fifteen at the
age of fifty seven due to complications stemming from stroke.
Her legacy by no means ended there, though her cookbook
continued to undergo several revisions, perhaps most famously the one
overseen by Marion Cunningham in nineteen seventy nine, often credited
(24:40):
with modernizing Farmer's work. I feel like we talked about
this with Joy of Cooking as well. Yeah. Yeah, As
discussed in previous episodes, these revisions they reflect changing taste
and concerns of the American people.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Oh yeah, and also technologies, because you know, like there
was a fancy new chapter on how to use fancy
new kitchen appliances like refrigerators and pressure cookers that showed
up in the nineteen thirties, along with details about cocktail
party entertaining and the use of wine and cooking. By
the sixties, there were more uses of prepackaged foods like
(25:19):
canned goods and recipes. That was also the era when
they changed the title to The Fanny Farmer Cookbook. Some recipes, though,
have sustained throughout even if they have changed over the years,
like the one for Boston baked beans very popular, I guess, yeah, okay, yes. Meanwhile,
(25:40):
Fanny Farmer Candy with a Y in the word Fanny,
started up in nineteen nineteen after Fanny Farmer, the person's death,
kind of capitalizing on Farmer's name while escaping copyright dispute.
Yeah yeah, I don't know. I don't know exactly how
I feel about that. The family trust wound up selling
(26:03):
this candy company the copyright to Farmer's name in nineteen
sixty five. Yeah. Wow, Yeah, that's a Northeastern like chocolate
kind of based candy company. If if anyone is not
familiar with it and you're not from the northeast of
the United States, that's why there you go. In slightly
(26:25):
nicer news, Christopher Kimball of America's Test Kitchen got pretty
into farmer's life and legacy in the early twenty ants.
He published a book called Fanny's Last Supper in two
thousand and nine. It was about her and about his
experience of like recreating her twelve course Christmas dinner menu
using contemporary Victorian cooking technologies and techniques and ingredients. He
(26:50):
also helped open a modern iteration of Farmers cooking school
called the New Boston Cooking School in twenty fifteen, which
I don't think lasted very long, but heck, what a
nice idea.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah, and there's a lot written about this, a lot
you can see about this, so definitely it was cool.
Check it out.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And I really, oh, I
really want to read that book because that sounds like
exactly the kind of foolhardy adventure that I want to
bark upon. Like he boiled the whole calf set in
order to get like the good stock going like you know,
like so exciting anyway, Okay, also not a sponsor or anything,
(27:34):
but there is a like like early grade illustrated book
about Fanny Farmer that's set to publish in January of
twenty twenty four. It's to be called The Fabulous Fanny Farmer,
Kitchen Scientist and America's Cook.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
I love it. I want to know about it, listeners.
I feel like last time we wrote about wrote about
when we talked about joy of cooking, a lot of
you wrote in with your own memories and your own
editions that you have.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah, yeah, this one. Yeah, oh goodness. Absolutely if this
is something that you grew up with or that like
you remember a grandparent maybe telling you about or using
in their own kitchen, oh, we totally want to hear
about it.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Absolutely, Oh my gosh. But that is what we have
to say for now. It is.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
We do have some listener mail already prepared for you, though,
and we are going to get into that as soon
as we get back from one more quick break for
a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
And we're back.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back with Oh.
I was just telling Lauren the Tragedy of Darth Annie.
(29:06):
This book that was given to me that had Fanny
and the title that I was told was about me,
and now I believe it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
But it involved a circus and a child that was
very good at the circus. I'm going to investigate this.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Okay, yeah, yeah, and I'll look into it absolutely, I'm
going to. I mean, were you very good at the
circus as a child.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
No, but I did do a whole circus act when
I was in kindergarten where I had a tiger outfit. Yeah,
but I was also I was like, the whole circus,
Yeah you were. Who knows what I was thinking, But
then that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Awesome one man's circus.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I will say before we kick off this first listener
mail minor spoiler alerts for this year's Thirteen Days of
Halloween podcast.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yes, I'm excited to talk about this. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I want to hear your process and my process.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah yeah, let's do it. Okay, okay, all right.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
So Albert wrote Spooky Halloween Annie and Lauren completely off
topic from Saber, but it's Thirteen Days of Halloween time
this season. I wasn't sold on the first or even
the second episode. Also, thanks in part to D and D,
I kind of figured out the twist. All the mistakes
in her profile, especially the right versus left mistakes, led
(30:33):
me to the conclusion that there was a Dappelganger in
her world, in her timeline or from a different world
or timeline. I wasn't sure, so I stuck with it,
and the third episode was hitting the mark. I just
finished episode six that he wrote, loved it, and I
was right. So I'm seeing a trend in Annie's writing.
(30:54):
Yet another creepy woman and her disturbing story. Season one,
season three. You know, sorry, I don't remember which episode
you wrote in season two. I know Lauren is editing
the stories and also doing some voice acting, but I
have so far failed to identify her in the episodes,
(31:14):
so good job if you have acted in episodes one
through six. That is, the first two episodes appear to
be written by a team instead of a singular writer.
I would love to hear how the editing process worked. Anyway,
I've got to prepare for my game tonight. I'm running
a few sessions of Mothership, a sci fi horror RPG
for my gaming group. I hope your gaming is going well.
(31:39):
Oh it is?
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Heck yeah yeah, oh goodness, thank you so much for
listening to Thirteen Days.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Oh yes, yes. If you haven't listened to it, and
you're in any way interested in this kind of stuff,
then I recommend it. It was really fun. I do
find it interesting because this was written I would presume.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
At episode six, sure, sure you know, like right, like.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Of it hattn't played out? Yeah? So interesting?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Yeah yeah yeah, so uh so, I guess the So
this is an anthology horror series that we hear at
iHeart podcasts do every Halloween in the thirteen days leading
up to Halloween. Thirteen episodes, and we have a different
person right like kind of like the primary voice storyline
(32:43):
kind of bit for each episode, and then we have
like a wrap around of varying complexity, increasing complexity every year.
And so so yes, the like the like main team
wrote the first couple episodes and then the last episode,
(33:04):
and then the kind of interstitial wrap around bits for
all of the others as well. And Annie wrote the
main part for episode six. I guess if you said it,
I believe it totally.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
That's great. Yeah, I believe that's.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Right, yes, sure, yeah, yeah. We had a little bit
of confusion and production about exactly like how many episodes
there were going to be because we were going to
publish them over the course of thirteen days. But was
it going to be two episodes? I don't know, it
was a whole thing. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. What was?
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Uh? What was?
Speaker 2 (33:37):
What was your experience? Annie?
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Uh? Well? First off, I will say, Albert, you're totally right.
I did not write anything for season two. Okay, I
was too shy. Oh, I have to be asked directly,
and please don't tell the showrunners there, but otherwise I
probably won't volunteer. Asked me directly. Will I have a
(34:01):
million ideas? But I will say as someone who started
from like season one to this, season one was much
more write a story, and now it's like, write a
story and you don't know where it's going to fit
into this whole storyline. Both are great. I'm not saying
what is better than another, but so it's kind of
a guessing of what will work the best with what
(34:23):
the overarching plot. And I knew the basic plot line,
and I think I sent four ideas and one was
this doppelganger idea and I explained why Doppelgangers freaked me
out because they freaked me out. But I said in there,
I was like, for all I know, this is literally
(34:46):
the how it ends. So like tell me this is
no good and they're like, no, this one is the
one write this. And it was actually I'm really glad
because it was a ch It was a it was
hard to write just because I was trying to keep
(35:07):
in mind all the details and yeah, I don't know,
like make a story. A lot of times I feel
like when you're writing something you feel like you're either
being too overhanded or too underhanded. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, So
it was it was a challenge and I really struggled
with it, but I feel like it paid off. And
when I heard it, I was like, oh, yes, this
(35:29):
is the sound effects was amazing and you and the
editing team sent back amazing. No, it's like it's a
really cool collaborative process, but it is kind of like
a mystery. It's like, oh am I doing a t
all a good thing.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Yeah, there's there's a lot of moving pieces on these
things and so and you're also like, like, as the
right because I did story editing on this season and
so like, so I was trying trying to kind of
simultaneously wrangle what the showrunners were creating for the wrap
around along with these these anthology pieces in the middle
(36:09):
and make it all kind of make some kind of
sense and have some kind of flow while we were
all simultaneously creating it together. And I were just like, oh, okay,
oh yeah, and just building the boat in the middle
of the river here we are. Yeah yeah, but yeah, no,
I loved I loved your story and it made me
(36:30):
so happy. I mean, first of all, it has a
heavy food element, so of course I was like, yeah,
I really they they were doing for the major roles,
they they did entirely sag after union members, particularly because
(36:51):
we were we were recording during the strike, and so
we wanted to give that opportunity to people who were
out of work and to make sure that they had
a chance to earn some heck and money, you know,
heck yeah, And so so the voice work I wound
up doing was like very small, very small little bits,
(37:12):
like I think I chant a couple of times in
a couple of places for different creepy gods that are
coming up out of the underworld, and there's one time. Gosh,
is it in an episode one or two or three?
I don't. I don't again, I don't know what the
numbers are anymore. It's in like the lunch room and
(37:33):
Shaky Pete, who is Ben Bolan's new favorite character, of course,
is telling his story, and uh, there's there's a nice
lady kind of in the background who's who's like, oh,
thank you, thank you so much for saving our village,
and like that's basically what I did. So that's if
you if you were like, what's that goofy voice actor doing?
(37:55):
That was me and I didn't know. I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
It is really fun to hear how it comes together.
It is.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
It is, Oh goodness, And our sound designers do such
a such an amazing job.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Yeah, yeah, they do. I at the beginning of the pandemic,
when we were all like, oh, what are we going
to do? I tried to make a playlist of of
our voice acting, our phrase and voice act in a
bunch of shows. And then I did make it. But
(38:38):
then I just never did anything with it. It exists.
I just never did anything.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Yeah, no, share share that out, let me send it
to me. At the very least, I'm curious.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
We've done a bunch of little voice a voice things.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Oh goodness, it's.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
True, especially around horrors.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
We're all we're all a little bit spooky over here,
So it is true.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
It is true. But I had a good time. It
was fun working with you, and I guess we'll see
you next year. Yeah it happens.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah goodness, Yeah you too, ye, and thank you again
for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the rest of
the season. It's still still up if anyone wants to
listen to it thirteen Days of Halloween wherever you get
your podcasts. But yeah, in the meanwhile, Eric wrote, first off, yes,
we absolutely love your little quirks part of what makes
the show fun. There is a reason I enjoy your
(39:35):
show as well as others where the hosts have fun
little things that make the show more enjoyable. The ridiculous
crime history and romance shows, tech stuff, large nedron stuff
they don't want you to know. And a wine is
such an interesting topic. I love hearing how he Jeff
came into it. I enjoy wine and always used to
worry about trying to pick stuff out. When I finally
(39:56):
came to the conclusion, why not just try something and
if it worked great. I don't try to think about pairings.
I don't really go looking into tasting notes around bottles.
The only thing I really look for is lighter or heavier,
sweeter or drier. We have an awesome place here, engine
House twenty five, built into an old firehouse. The wines
are absolutely amazing. They're a little on the priceier side
(40:17):
to some, but to me, getting a couple of bottles
from here is a treat. If you tell them what
you like and dislike and stuff, they'll get you set up.
They also run a Clement museum and you can do
a tour and tasting. Also absolutely love Lauren breaking out
yeast poop in that interview with Jeff. I was hoping
we would hear it, and I was not disappointed. Keep on,
(40:38):
keeping on, be yourselves, enjoy the wine and champagne. I
still need to remember to try pairing it with fried chicken.
I'm really wondering how pairing it with chicken and waffles
would be.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
Like, oh delicious, oh yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Yeah. I mean, as a person who is like kind
of now from Atlanta, I'm morally obligated to like chicken
and waffles. But but yeah, yeah, yeah, anything with chicken
and waffles. Heck, y'all do it.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
I have to say, I I bet a lot of
people can relate to this. But when you get to,
like after Halloween, the rest of the year is just oh,
I have to get through the holidays, which which involves
some joy but involves a lot of stress.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
But New Year's I've started to reclaim for myself. Yeah,
and I'm like, leave me beee at least for one day,
Like I'm doing a New Year's thing now. Hours have champagne.
And after we did this interview with Jeff, I'm like,
I French fries and champagne might have to happen.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
I think they should.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
I mean, I haven't had I've had the fried chicken
combination and it's amazing. But French fries, yeah, and a
specific type of French fry. I can just I feel
like that would be amazing way to start the new year.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
I think it would be. I fully encourage you to
do this. Yes, absolutely, yeah, champagne. The opportunities are endless.
Oh they are they are. Yeah, and again right, just yeah,
just enjoy it. Just have a nice time.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
Come on, that's what that whole interview was about. And
it was a great He was great because I feel
like a lot of times when you talk to it
can be this way when you talk to Somalia's and
they're like, oly, this with this, but he was like, no, no,
what makes you happy. That's what we're about here. Yes, yes, exactly,
(42:45):
oh heck yeah yes, and thank you for the recommendations.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Are oh yeah, yeah yeah. I also completely second all
of the ridiculous shows crime History and Romance all really
aces human people, so yeah, totally yes, yes, yes, as
opposed to tex stuff and stuff. They don't want you
to know they are dead.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
No they're not. No, no, no, no, no, oh jeez, oh wow.
Thanks to both of these listeners for writing in. If
you would like to write in, you can our emails
hello at savorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
We are also on social media. You can find us
on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at savor pod and we
do hope to hear from you. Savor is production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Thanks, as always to our super producers
Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
(43:49):
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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