14 Facts About Fannie Farmer

Fannie Merritt Farmer was an American culinary expert whose Boston Cooking-School Cook Book became a widely used culinary text.

Fannie Farmer was born on 23 March 1857 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, to Mary Watson Merritt and John Franklin Farmer, an editor and printer.

Fannie Farmer studied there during the height of the domestic science movement, learning its most critical elements, including nutrition and diet for the well, convalescent cookery, techniques of cleaning and sanitation, chemical analysis of food, techniques of cooking and baking, and household management.

Fannie Farmer was considered one of the school's top students, graduating in 1889 and staying on as assistant to the director.

Fannie Farmer published her best-known work, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, in 1896.

Fannie Farmer included essays on housekeeping, cleaning, canning and drying fruits and vegetables, and nutritional information.

Fannie Farmer provided scientific explanations of the chemical processes that occur in food during cooking, and helped to standardize the system of measurements used in cooking in the USA.

Fannie Farmer left the School in 1902 and created Miss Fannie Farmer's School of Cookery.

Fannie Farmer began by teaching gentlewomen and housewives the rudiments of plain and fancy cooking, but her interests eventually led her to develop a complete work of diet and nutrition for the ill, titled Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent, which contained thirty pages on diabetes.

Fannie Farmer was invited to lecture at Harvard Medical School and began teaching convalescent diet and nutrition to doctors and nurses.

Fannie Farmer felt so strongly about the significance of proper food for the sick that she believed she would be remembered chiefly by her work in that field, as opposed to her work in household and fancy cookery.

Fannie Farmer understood perhaps better than anyone else at the time the value of appearance, taste, and presentation of sickroom food to ill and wasted people with poor appetites; she ranked these qualities over cost and nutritional value in importance.

Fannie Farmer lectured to nurses and dietitians, and taught a course on dietary preparation at Harvard Medical School.

Fannie Farmer died in 1915 at age 57 of complications due to a stroke, and was interred in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.