Fannie's Last Supper Read Online Free PDF Page A

drink made from rum, water, fruit juice of some sort, sugar, and a spice or two. We made a few minor revisions and added five drops of bitters just to add a hint of bite to the foundation of the drink. It was now perfect. In fact, it is so good that we have been drinking it ever since.
    VICTORIA PUNCH
    This recipe, with a few minor changes, is courtesy of Donald Friary and, I am told, improves with age. I suggest that you make it a day or two ahead of time. Serve chilled, although it does not need to be refrigerated for storage.
    4 tablespoons sugar
    8 tablespoons lime juice
    1 cup rum
    1 cup water
    Pinch nutmeg
    5 drops bitters
    Combine ingredients and pour over ice to serve.

Chapter 3
Oysters
    Fannie Farmer Is Born, Survives Polio, Takes Over the Boston Cooking School, and Sells Over 360,000 Copies of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book
    W ho was Fannie Merritt Farmer? Was she a cook first and a teacher second, or was she perhaps more promoter than culinary wizard? For starters, she was middle-class at best, and her view of the world, one that evidently suited her audience at the time, was parochial and narrow. To tart up a recipe, she would simply give it an ersatz French name to lend an aura of adventure and good living. Recipes such as Gâteau de Princesse Louise or Potage à la Reine fall into this category. In her worst moments, more Food Network than serious cooking school, she invented cloying recipe names such as Heart’s-Ache Pudding for Valentine’s Day. In fact, Fannie understood, much like any modern food celebrity, that food is, in large part, entertainment. The fact that Fannie herself was not well traveled or particularly sophisticated mattered not a whit, since her audience was even less urbane than she was. To truly appreciate her marketing and packaging skills, one need only look at the origins of the Boston Cooking School, in which she would turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse.
    The Women’s Education Association was a post–Civil War institution founded by reformers and philanthropists, and it was the precursor to the Boston Cooking School. “The school gave women of modest means an entry into professional work at a time when more women needed employment and few had career options.” This effort was funded by subscribers (similar to today’s public television model) and larger gifts from philanthropists. The first classes were given in March 1879 with seven pupils. The school quickly became popular, so it hired Mrs. David A. Lincoln to teach—her husband had recently suffered a financial setback so she headed off to work—and by 1882 she was handling over two thousand pupils. The school had expanded to teaching nurses the art of sickroom cookery, as well.
    Mary Lincoln was to author the Boston Cooking School Cook Book in 1884 and the Boston School Kitchen Text-book in 1887; cofound the American Kitchen Magazine ; lecture widely; write a newspaper column entitled “From Day to Day”; and author five additional cookbooks, the last in 1910. She was a vigorous endorser of products, including the White Mountain Ice Cream Freezer and Jell-O, and she was a principal in Mrs. Lincoln’s Baking Powder Company of Boston. She is also credited for laying the foundation for Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School Cook Book in 1896.
    The school quickly added accredited classes to train cooking school teachers under a Miss Maria Parloa, who was a well-known culinary figure of the period. She had authored The Appledore Cook Book (1872), Miss Parloa’s New Cook Book: A Guide to Marketing and Cooking (1880), and Practical Cookery (1884). She also wrote for the Ladies’ Home Journal , of which she was part owner. Parloa’s course included instruction in chemistry, given at the Women’s Laboratory. Students received instruction on anatomy from a Dr. Merritt. Chemistry? Anatomy? The Women’s Education Association and the Boston Cooking School were taking a very broad view of the culinary arts, and one that