August 21, 2024 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, cooking in the late 1800s was unpredictable, tiresome, and difficult. Recipes were passed down in families, but often contained vague—if any—actual measurements. Fannie Farmer changed all that in 1896. We are joined by Ken Albala, professor of history and food studies at University of the Pacific in California.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
And we continue with our American stories. This is the
story about Fanny Farmer, the mother of level measurements. Take
it away, Franky.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Cooking in the late eighteen hundreds was unpredictable, tiresome, and difficult.
Recipes were passed down in families, but often contained vague,
if any, actual measurements. If the ingredients were named, home
cooks might have been directed to add a pinch or
a dash, or to make a pie crust. On January seventh,
(00:42):
eighteen ninety six, a young woman from Boston changed everything
when she published her first cookbook, Looking.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Want to make some food?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Now that's a thing that you do. Now, then you're
ready to big Fanny Merritt Farmer's self published Home, the
eighteen ninety six Boston Cooking School Cookbook, was six hundred
pages and contained almost fifteen hundred recipes and sold for
(01:18):
two dollars. I asked can Albala, professor of History and
food Studies at University of Pacific in California, if what
history says about Fanny Farmer is accurate.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Fanny Farmer is usually credited with having introduced measurements to
cooking and a list of ingredients and basically the modern
recipe format. That's not quite true. There were measurements before,
and in fact some authors use precise measurements five centuries before.
What she does introduce is the level measuring cups. So
(01:52):
if you take a cup of flour or sugar or something,
she says to use the flat end of a knife
and scrape it off to get a level measure. And
the assumption was that cooking is not an art, it's
a science, and that if you get your measurements exact,
you're going to have the same results every time, which
of course is not true because ovens are erratic and
(02:13):
ingredients change depending on the weather. Flour especially, really most
of the world measure measures it by weight. For some
reason in the US, and my instinct says, and I
can't really prove this, but is that we had people
selling measuring cups. And that's why I caught all in
the US, is that we assumed, you know, every time
(02:33):
you scoop a cup of flour, as long as you
give it a level measure, somehow it's going to come
out to be the same thing all the time. And
you know that's just a pretense, and it matters in
baking perhaps, but certainly no other type of cooking doesn't
really matter how much you throw in of everything, So
our reputation in that respect is a little skewed. I
(02:53):
would say, I think what is fascinating about her is
Coursetion was a business woman, you know, and she didn't
found the Boston Cooking School. She inherited it from Missus Lincoln,
who actually even had a cookbook preceding hers, but for
some reason, hers is the one that called on. The
publishers didn't think it would In fact, they made her
pay for the first print run, which is sort of
(03:15):
sort of not a nice thing to do for an author.
It says, we don't really trust you, but you know,
maybe if you make the money, well we'll publish it.
But you have to take the risk. And the irony
of it is, of course, it sold millions of copies,
and she got all the She held the copyright, so
she got all the profits, and that not the publisher.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Fanny Farmer's cookbook sold over four million copies during her lifetime.
Fanny planned on going to college, but a stroke at
the age of sixteen left her paralyzed and forced her
to stay at home. Eventually, she would walk again, though
she would always maintain a limp. Here's professor Albala, and.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
I think it's probably why after doing the cookbook, which
is very well known, she did a book of convalescent cookery,
what you should say sick people, And of course the
idea I've actually this is something I've actually written about.
So the only thing I can speak of, you know,
with direct authority about Fanny Farmer is that I think
her own personal experience gave her some insights into what
(04:13):
to feed people when they're sick or convalescing. And what
struck me as being very fascinating is the idea of
what you feed people who are recover recuperating is that
doesn't change over centuries and centuries. So it's basically, you know,
very soft, white, mushy food that was presumed to be
easy to digest, something comparable to baby food, if you
(04:36):
want to think of it that way. So a lot
of mush a lot of milk, toast puddings and things
that we might not today think were you know, necessarily
so good for you or nutritious. Some concentrated broths things
like that that were thought to be easy to digest.
But she did a whole cookbook based on convalescent cookery.
I think just after the turn of the century, it's
maybe nineteen oh four or five, somewhere in there. And
(04:58):
we still don't really really know what foods are best
for people who are convalescing. You know, we know they
need vitamins, you know, they don't need things that are
very difficult to digest. But they had this idea that
you couldn't give sick people spices, or you couldn't give them,
you know, stimulants of any kind, so no coffee and
things like that. And we don't know that there's no
scientific basis really for that. You know, spices aren't necessarily
(05:20):
bad for you or hard to digest.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
So how does Professor Alballa feel about exact measurements and cooking?
Speaker 3 (05:27):
If you look at older cookbooks, quite often they won't
give you exact measurements. They'll say, you know, definitely a
pinch of this, And I think that's actually perfectly fine
way to cook. I cook that way and I write
cookbooks that way. Also. Some people find it infuriating, but
I think, you know, if you're going to really cook,
you should learn what you like. You know, if you
like a lot of salt in your food. Then you
(05:49):
will understand how much to add. You know, why should
you why should anyone trust my tastes. The thing that
I've found amazing is, you know, they'll the rest people say,
bake this for fifteen minutes, and someone looks in the
oven and it says and they look at the dish
it's clearly not cooked yet, and they take it out anyway,
and they say, well, the recipe says fifteen minutes. Because
it's like, well, no, trust your senses, you know, trust
(06:10):
which you can learn through experimentation, and eventually you'll find
out what you like. So I think an exact recipe
of which Fanny Farmer is not the inventor, but certainly
contributed to our sense that cooking should be a science.
I think what that does is comparable to what a
GPS device does. You know, it gives you the directions.
(06:31):
You come to depend on it. You never really learn
where you are, you never really learn how to navigate,
or you even if you didn't know how to navigate.
You come to trust the GPS device rather than your
your own instinct, and it unskills you. It really I
think people who follow recipes also come to trust them,
so explicitly and think, oh, if I fear one inch
(06:53):
from this, the whole dish is going to be ruined,
which ninety nine percent of the time that's not the case.
Maybe if you're doing cakes or very delicate pie crusts,
you know, a little bit too much of anything might
ruin it, but it's still going to be edible, so
it's still going to be fine. And I think for
most recipes, you know, anything you cook, it's not really
gonna matter.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Fanny Farmer revolutionized the domestic cooking world, but Professor Albella
leaves us with this cookbook caution.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
So I think in a sense, I would I would
almost blame Fanny Farmer for the use of for the
impression that exact recipes are the only way to cook,
and the cookbook authors must give you an exact measurement,
an exact cooking time, a temperature in the oven or stovetop,
and that that sort of thing really isn't under anyone's control,
(07:42):
and we have the impression that it is, and I
think it's made us deskilled. I think in the long run,
she's actually contributed to our are not knowing how to
cook so much because we depend on exact recipes, pseudo
scientific recipes. And I can understand why modern cookbook office
follow in her footsteps. It's because they want to copyright
(08:02):
their exact wording and their measurements and all this stuff,
and they want to give the impression to the reader
that this is going to work. All you have to
do is trust me and follow it, when what they're
doing is preventing the cook from trusting themselves and trusting
their own instinct and feeling the pan, feeling the spices
and throwing them in and tasting it and seeing if
it needs more. You know, that sort of thing is
(08:25):
I think essential to cooking, and especially cooking. So you
like what you make, you know, is not trusting them. Taste.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I'm so.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
You feel the same way to smell so good, Just
have some.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Cooking.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
In nineteen oh two, Fanny Farmer left the Boston Cooking
School to open Miss Farmer's School of Cookery, aim not
at professional cooks but at training housewise. Though she suffered
another paralytic stroke later in life, she continued lecturing. In fact,
ten days before her death in nineteen fifteen, she delivered
(09:10):
a lecture from her wheelchair, a revised version of her book,
now known as Fanny Farmer's Cookbook, is still in print today,
over one hundred years after its first printing. I'm Greg
Hengler and this is our American stories.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
We us and thanks for that as always Greg. And
by the way, my grandfather Leo taught me measurements, measurements.
He was here's the tomatoes, learn how to taste it
and make it different every night. And you want to
throw in the sausage and the meatball, throw it in there.
You want to put it some extra colic, go for it.
And so it was always intuitive, but Fanny taught a
(09:48):
lot of people how to cook, and especially housewives. Great story,
Fanny Farmer's story. Here on our American story. Cookae save
in the room, Cookaine horroom.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
It's just a.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Little flavor.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
And a free room filling on my side.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, Cookain Weeken, Cookaine
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Cookain
And we continue with our American stories. This is the
story about Fanny Farmer, the mother of level measurements. Take
it away, Franky.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Cooking in the late eighteen hundreds was unpredictable, tiresome, and difficult.
Recipes were passed down in families, but often contained vague,
if any, actual measurements. If the ingredients were named, home
cooks might have been directed to add a pinch or
a dash, or to make a pie crust. On January seventh,
(00:42):
eighteen ninety six, a young woman from Boston changed everything
when she published her first cookbook, Looking.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Want to make some food?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Now that's a thing that you do. Now, then you're
ready to big Fanny Merritt Farmer's self published Home, the
eighteen ninety six Boston Cooking School Cookbook, was six hundred
pages and contained almost fifteen hundred recipes and sold for
(01:18):
two dollars. I asked can Albala, professor of History and
food Studies at University of Pacific in California, if what
history says about Fanny Farmer is accurate.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Fanny Farmer is usually credited with having introduced measurements to
cooking and a list of ingredients and basically the modern
recipe format. That's not quite true. There were measurements before,
and in fact some authors use precise measurements five centuries before.
What she does introduce is the level measuring cups. So
(01:52):
if you take a cup of flour or sugar or something,
she says to use the flat end of a knife
and scrape it off to get a level measure. And
the assumption was that cooking is not an art, it's
a science, and that if you get your measurements exact,
you're going to have the same results every time, which
of course is not true because ovens are erratic and
(02:13):
ingredients change depending on the weather. Flour especially, really most
of the world measure measures it by weight. For some
reason in the US, and my instinct says, and I
can't really prove this, but is that we had people
selling measuring cups. And that's why I caught all in
the US, is that we assumed, you know, every time
(02:33):
you scoop a cup of flour, as long as you
give it a level measure, somehow it's going to come
out to be the same thing all the time. And
you know that's just a pretense, and it matters in
baking perhaps, but certainly no other type of cooking doesn't
really matter how much you throw in of everything, So
our reputation in that respect is a little skewed. I
(02:53):
would say, I think what is fascinating about her is
Coursetion was a business woman, you know, and she didn't
found the Boston Cooking School. She inherited it from Missus Lincoln,
who actually even had a cookbook preceding hers, but for
some reason, hers is the one that called on. The
publishers didn't think it would In fact, they made her
pay for the first print run, which is sort of
(03:15):
sort of not a nice thing to do for an author.
It says, we don't really trust you, but you know,
maybe if you make the money, well we'll publish it.
But you have to take the risk. And the irony
of it is, of course, it sold millions of copies,
and she got all the She held the copyright, so
she got all the profits, and that not the publisher.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Fanny Farmer's cookbook sold over four million copies during her lifetime.
Fanny planned on going to college, but a stroke at
the age of sixteen left her paralyzed and forced her
to stay at home. Eventually, she would walk again, though
she would always maintain a limp. Here's professor Albala, and.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
I think it's probably why after doing the cookbook, which
is very well known, she did a book of convalescent cookery,
what you should say sick people, And of course the
idea I've actually this is something I've actually written about.
So the only thing I can speak of, you know,
with direct authority about Fanny Farmer is that I think
her own personal experience gave her some insights into what
(04:13):
to feed people when they're sick or convalescing. And what
struck me as being very fascinating is the idea of
what you feed people who are recover recuperating is that
doesn't change over centuries and centuries. So it's basically, you know,
very soft, white, mushy food that was presumed to be
easy to digest, something comparable to baby food, if you
(04:36):
want to think of it that way. So a lot
of mush a lot of milk, toast puddings and things
that we might not today think were you know, necessarily
so good for you or nutritious. Some concentrated broths things
like that that were thought to be easy to digest.
But she did a whole cookbook based on convalescent cookery.
I think just after the turn of the century, it's
maybe nineteen oh four or five, somewhere in there. And
(04:58):
we still don't really really know what foods are best
for people who are convalescing. You know, we know they
need vitamins, you know, they don't need things that are
very difficult to digest. But they had this idea that
you couldn't give sick people spices, or you couldn't give them,
you know, stimulants of any kind, so no coffee and
things like that. And we don't know that there's no
scientific basis really for that. You know, spices aren't necessarily
(05:20):
bad for you or hard to digest.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
So how does Professor Alballa feel about exact measurements and cooking?
Speaker 3 (05:27):
If you look at older cookbooks, quite often they won't
give you exact measurements. They'll say, you know, definitely a
pinch of this, And I think that's actually perfectly fine
way to cook. I cook that way and I write
cookbooks that way. Also. Some people find it infuriating, but
I think, you know, if you're going to really cook,
you should learn what you like. You know, if you
like a lot of salt in your food. Then you
(05:49):
will understand how much to add. You know, why should
you why should anyone trust my tastes. The thing that
I've found amazing is, you know, they'll the rest people say,
bake this for fifteen minutes, and someone looks in the
oven and it says and they look at the dish
it's clearly not cooked yet, and they take it out anyway,
and they say, well, the recipe says fifteen minutes. Because
it's like, well, no, trust your senses, you know, trust
(06:10):
which you can learn through experimentation, and eventually you'll find
out what you like. So I think an exact recipe
of which Fanny Farmer is not the inventor, but certainly
contributed to our sense that cooking should be a science.
I think what that does is comparable to what a
GPS device does. You know, it gives you the directions.
(06:31):
You come to depend on it. You never really learn
where you are, you never really learn how to navigate,
or you even if you didn't know how to navigate.
You come to trust the GPS device rather than your
your own instinct, and it unskills you. It really I
think people who follow recipes also come to trust them,
so explicitly and think, oh, if I fear one inch
(06:53):
from this, the whole dish is going to be ruined,
which ninety nine percent of the time that's not the case.
Maybe if you're doing cakes or very delicate pie crusts,
you know, a little bit too much of anything might
ruin it, but it's still going to be edible, so
it's still going to be fine. And I think for
most recipes, you know, anything you cook, it's not really
gonna matter.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Fanny Farmer revolutionized the domestic cooking world, but Professor Albella
leaves us with this cookbook caution.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
So I think in a sense, I would I would
almost blame Fanny Farmer for the use of for the
impression that exact recipes are the only way to cook,
and the cookbook authors must give you an exact measurement,
an exact cooking time, a temperature in the oven or stovetop,
and that that sort of thing really isn't under anyone's control,
(07:42):
and we have the impression that it is, and I
think it's made us deskilled. I think in the long run,
she's actually contributed to our are not knowing how to
cook so much because we depend on exact recipes, pseudo
scientific recipes. And I can understand why modern cookbook office
follow in her footsteps. It's because they want to copyright
(08:02):
their exact wording and their measurements and all this stuff,
and they want to give the impression to the reader
that this is going to work. All you have to
do is trust me and follow it, when what they're
doing is preventing the cook from trusting themselves and trusting
their own instinct and feeling the pan, feeling the spices
and throwing them in and tasting it and seeing if
it needs more. You know, that sort of thing is
(08:25):
I think essential to cooking, and especially cooking. So you
like what you make, you know, is not trusting them. Taste.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I'm so.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
You feel the same way to smell so good, Just
have some.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Cooking.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
In nineteen oh two, Fanny Farmer left the Boston Cooking
School to open Miss Farmer's School of Cookery, aim not
at professional cooks but at training housewise. Though she suffered
another paralytic stroke later in life, she continued lecturing. In fact,
ten days before her death in nineteen fifteen, she delivered
(09:10):
a lecture from her wheelchair, a revised version of her book,
now known as Fanny Farmer's Cookbook, is still in print today,
over one hundred years after its first printing. I'm Greg
Hengler and this is our American stories.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
We us and thanks for that as always Greg. And
by the way, my grandfather Leo taught me measurements, measurements.
He was here's the tomatoes, learn how to taste it
and make it different every night. And you want to
throw in the sausage and the meatball, throw it in there.
You want to put it some extra colic, go for it.
And so it was always intuitive, but Fanny taught a
(09:48):
lot of people how to cook, and especially housewives. Great story,
Fanny Farmer's story. Here on our American story. Cookae save
in the room, Cookaine horroom.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
It's just a.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Little flavor.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
And a free room filling on my side.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, Cookain Weeken, Cookaine
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Cookain
Host
Lee Habeeb
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