Are You Being Served?

Cooks

For every delightful meal laid out in a menu, a cook – or several – labored away in the background. Many Boston cooks benefitted from an education at the Boston Cooking School, where the celebrated cook Fannie Farmer got her start. Boston public school students also received instruction in cooking at the Boston School Kitchens, which they could use in their private lives or parlay into paid work. For those without formal training, cookbooks like Mrs. Putnam’s Receipt Book, and Young Housekeeper’s Assistant (1858) included suggestions as to appropriate menus for large dinner parties. While admiring these delightful menus, remember the cooks who wrote and tested recipes, pulled together the bills of fare, and prepared the food: they’re the unsung hero(ine)s of the exhibit!

Spine

Putnam. Mrs. Putnam’s Receipt Book, and Young Housekeeper’s Assistant. New York: Phinney, Blakeman & Mason, 1860.

Fanny Farmer

Fannie Farmer was born in Boston in 1857. After a bout of polio in young adulthood, she entered the Boston Cooking School in 1888, and did so well that she was given the post of assistant to the principal. In 1893, she became principal, and in 1896 published The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, a revision of the school’s textbook. In order to persuade the respectable but nervous publishers Little, Brown, to distribute it, Farmer covered the production costs herself. Her gamble paid off: the book was a great success, with over 360,000 copies sold by the time of Farmer’s death in 1915. Her emphasis on exact measurements took the guesswork out of cooking, while her flair for novelty kept her readers interested and emphasized her conviction that cooking should be enjoyable. She published five more books: Chafing Dish Possibilities (1898); Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent (1904); What to Have for Dinner (1905); Catering for Special Occasions (1911); and A New Book of Cookery (1912). As a one time invalid herself, she considered Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent her best work. Her most famous work, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, became more well-known as The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and is still in print.

Cover

Farmer. Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent. Boston: Little, Brown, and company, 1904.

Cover

Farmer. Chafing Dish Possibilities. Boston: Little, Brown, and company, 1914.

The Boston Cooking School

The Boston Cooking School was established by the Women’s Education Association of Boston in 1879 and incorporated in 1882. The School brought a scientific approach to cookery and sought to serve a wide audience, from professional cooks to housewives, nurses, teachers, housekeepers, and matrons of institutions. Mary Johnson Bailey Lincoln served as the first principal of the school, followed by Ida Maynard and Carrie Dearborn. The School’s fourth principal, Fannie Farmer, brought the School its greatest fame with her popular lectures series and a cookbook, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1896). After Farmer left in 1902 to start her own school, the Boston Cooking School merged with Simmons College. Many local cooks trained at either the Boston Cooking School or Miss Farmer’s School, and many of the meals in Boston menus seen here were very likely prepared by their graduates.

Cover

Farmer. The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Boston: Little, Brown, and company, 1921.

Boston School Kitchens

The Boston School Kitchens taught cooking in the Boston Public Schools beginning in 1885, “to humanize and refine” students and prepare them for work caring for invalids or as housekeepers. Their text book was written by Mary Johnson Bailey Lincoln, the first principal of the Boston Cooking School. The earliest school kitchens were started by wealthy individuals who donated the costs to the city. The Boston Public Schools assumed the administration of the kitchens in 1888, and by 1892 there were nearly a dozen of them scattered throughout the city. Boston School Kitchen No. 3 was at the Bowditch School in Jamaica Plain. Aside from her cooking skills, little else is known about Madolene Stanley Broadbent, the student whose photograph and certificate are seen here.

Boston School Kitchen No. 3 Certificate of Cookery presented to Madolene Stanley Broadbent, circa 1880s

Box 1, folder 1, Greater Boston area materials, (MS2003-020).

St. Ignatius Church Cooking School program, May 14, 1937

Philomatheia Club records.

Bird food: Eagles at Home and Away
Clubs & Associations