Fannie's Last Supper Read Online Free PDF Page B

cooking. At the age of thirty-one, Fannie enrolled at the Boston Cooking School and graduated a year later, in 1889. She was offered the position of assistant to the principal, a woman named Carrie Dearborn, and became principal in 1893, when Dearborn left school to pursue the lecture circuit. Under her tutelage, the Boston Cooking School became considerably more popular and successful. (It has been noted, however, that the Boston Cooking School always had difficulty meeting its expenses because Fannie was so insistent on using the best possible ingredients.) In 1902 Fannie went out on her own, founding Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery at 40 Hereford Street. The Boston Cooking School closed its doors within a year and donated its equipment to Simmons College.
    Was Fannie regarded as a good cook in her own time? According to one source, “She was too apt to let the pots burn as she ran enthusiastically from one recipe to another.” It was said that her sister Mary was a better cook, and that Maggie Murphy, the woman who ran the Farmer household starting in 1874, “outdid them all with delicate pastries and chowders.” (Murphy was also known to anonymously enter cooking contests judged by Fannie. Frequently, she won.) And looking at many of her recipes, one does find thick, floury sauces, an addiction to sugar, even in salad dressings and baked fish, and a mixed bag of recipes. Her niece, Wilma Lord Perkins, referred to her as “a great executive, food detective, and gourmet, rather than a great cook herself.” H. L. Mencken reviewed a 1930 edition of her cookbook; he commented that it represented “middle-class British notions of cookery” and deplored Fannie’s recipe for soft-shell crabs as “an obscenity almost beyond belief.” But let’s not blame Fannie for an edition of the cookbook published well after her time.
    What she may have lacked as a talented cook she made up for with a keen sense of showmanship, marketing, and giving the public what it wanted. In fact, she often referred to herself first and foremost as a businesswoman. Here is a description of Fannie by Elizabeth Schlesinger, wife of Arthur Schlesinger: “Her bright blue eyes, red hair, and vivacious personality made people overlook her rather plain face and the pince-nez she always wore. She was plump and had no interest in dress, but a maid who accompanied her on lecture trips saw that she always looked well.” Zulma Steele, a biographer and magazine writer, described Fannie’s costume as follows, “Her piqué skirt hung full to the floor, protected by yards of gathered apron. Her gossamer shirtwaist had the daintiest of organdy fichus, and tiny hand-hemmed ruffles embellished her collars and cuffs.” Marjorie Mills, longtime food editor of the Boston Herald, described Miss Farmer as “limping briskly about her platform kitchen, teaching some 200 students. She was a prim girl with vibrant enthusiasm who arrived early at school laden with market supplies and was the last to leave at night.” Of course, she was always attended by an assistant and a maid or two, so much of the actual cooking was not done by Fannie. One later biographer commented, “Fannie Farmer refused to sully her own white fingertips in kneading up a flaky piecrust.” Likable, energetic, intelligent, and a wonderful show woman—this was the Fannie Farmer who energized the public and the fortunes of the Boston Cooking School.
    Since I had started this process reading Mrs. Lincoln’s Boston Cook Book, and since Mary Lincoln seemed to be a thorough professional, the obvious question surfaced over and over again: Did Fannie simply steal Mary Lincoln’s work and make it her own through force of personality and strong marketing skills? Was Fannie more of a promoter and organizer than a creative culinary force? Did she simply take a body of work created by others at the Boston Cooking School and run off to the bank with it?
    For starters, Fannie’s Original 1896 Boston