this Cook Book life

I’m starting to work on the listing for a rare book that I purchased; as part of a group of food-related books, from the cookery book collection of the late Helen Evans Brown.

Although I’m off today, I worked on some auction listings; including one for the Hunter Sifter Cook Book.
The Hunter Sifter Cook Book contains advertisments for a number of Cincinnati businesses.
Several Hunter Sifter M-f-g Co. products are advertised: the Sifter, Cyclone Beater, and Safety Hollow Ware.
Naturally, I found the Hunter Sifter Co. products: Hunter Sifter, Cyclone Egg Beater and Safety Hollow Ware in various forms on the cook book’s recommended list of Kitchen Utensils. And commonplace items: kitchen table and chairs, can opener, nutmeg grater, potato slicer, waffle iron. Other items listed, puzzled me:

• candlesticks
• ash bucket
• coal hod
• hammer
• hatchet
• 3 iron kettles
• lantern
• match box
• 2 iron spoons
• meat saw
• mustard pot
• rubber window cleaner
• tin pails
• wirescreens (assorted sizes)
• sugar box
• salt box
• stepladder
• tin cake box
• wash keeler
• wooden buckets

After further consideration, the items made sense.
A meat saw cuts up a carcass. A pail or bucket carries water or milk from its source to the kitchen. But for a “sugar box,” sugar hardens into a rock in the moist environment of a kitchen, or worse, becomes home, sweet home to a family of worms. Stainless steel and plastic had not yet been invented, so wooden, iron, and steel implements held, chopped, mixed, heated, transported, and safeguarded ingredients. Mousetrap made the list.

Today, my Fannie Farmer’s Cookbook trading card arrived by post.
I’m nuts for cookbook-related ephemera like advertising, book reviews, brochures, etc.
The card, published in 1960, states that “over three million copies of Fannie Farmer’s Cookbook have been sold since its first appearance in 1896.”

Fannie Farmer’s Cookbook
A Revolution in Home Cooking (1896-?)

Over three million copies of Fannie Farmer’s Cookbook have been sold since its first appearance in 1896. In its way, this cookbook revolutionized home cooking. While it avoided difficult, exotic recipes, it boasted a unique feature: it taught cooking as a precise science. Recipes were printed with accurate, standardized measurements, so that each dish would emerge from the kitchen the same every time.
The author, Fannie Merritt Farmer, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 23, 1857. A semi-invalid, she developed an interest in cooking and was sent by her parents to the Boston Cooking School for advanced training. After graduating in 1889, she became an assistant to the director and two years later she was named director. Meanwhile she had begun collecting and compiling recipes and cooking techniques from the school’s files and her own experience. These were published for the first time in 1896 under the title The Boston Cooking School Cook Book.
The book became an instant success. In the 19 years that passed before Fannie Farmer’s death in 1915, 21 editions were published. The first edition introduced the subject of “cookery, … the art of preparing food for the nourishment of the body,” and noted that
“progress in civilization has been accommpanied by progress in cookery.” That same cookbook, which has been reprinted, revised, and updated continuously since its original publication, still emphasizes accurate measurement.
In 1902 Fannie Farmer formed her own school, called Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery. The Boston Cooking School had been established to train teachers of cookery, but Farmer wanted to teach housewives how to cook. She also taught invalid cookery and gave lectures to nurses on the subject. She even taught her course on invalid cookery one year at the venerable Harvard Medical School. Farmer wrote many other cookbooks, including Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent (1904), What to Have for Dinner (1905), and Catering for Special Occasions with Menus and Recipes (1911). Although shy and retiring, she was much in demand as a speaker. Even after being confined to a wheelchair by a stroke a few years before her death, she continued her work. She always hoped that her cookbooks, especially the still popular Boston Cooking School Cook Book, would “awaken an interest through its condensed scientific knowledge which will lead to deeper thought and broader study of what to eat.”

Illustration: Fannie Farmer and her cooking class, 1900

© 1960, Panarizon Publishing Corp. USA
Photo Mass. HistoricaI Society
Printed in Italy 030125006

the text above is printed on on the reverse of the trading card

Today, The New York Times (food section) published two letters in response to last week’s article, Marcella Remembers.

It’s ghoulicious! Vincent Price can help you make all your meals more macbre.
A cookbook titled A Treasury of Great Recipes sounds innocuous. What’s frightening about noodle casserole? Why, nothing … except when it’s cooked by Vincent Price! (Paul Collins, National Post)

Sri Owen’s new book: Indonesian Food (Pavilion, 2008) [U.S. title: The Indonesian Kitchen] released today. Read the author’s post regarding her new book. The author lists and describes her previous books as well.

Read Anastasia Edwards’ recent profile of Owen.

Read the Marcella Hazan interview titled: For Better, for Worse, for Richer, for Pasta by Kim Severson in today’s New York Times food section.

Publisher Gotham Books plans to release her new memoir/cookbook; Amarcord: Marcella Remembers , this October.

Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook (1982) has come to be known as the manifesto of a food revolution. In addition to offering recipes from her renowned restaurant, Alice Waters explains her approach to food, and the philosophy behind her approach as it manifested itself there at her restaurant during the restaurant’s first decade of operation. Especially of interest is an introductory piece titled, What I believe about cooking.
Waters’ ideas are thought to have provided the impetus for the movement back towards eating seasonal locally grown organic produce.
Collaborators included: Patricia Curtan (long-time Chez Panisse citizen– bartender, occasional cook, artist), Jean-Pierre Moulle (Chez Panisse chef), Carolyn Dille (recipe editor), Linda Guenzel (customer turned transcriber), Fritz Stieff (Chez Panisse cook then waiter … host … ghostwriter). David Lance Goines (radical, pre-Chez Panisse fiance of Alice Waters’, Berkeley artist, etc. etc.) designed the book; most notably the dust-jacket which aptly captured the variegated exterior of the restaurant.

More about Chez Panisse.

Read about the newest “Chez Panisse Cookbook” in the New York Times.

The Chez Panisse Cookbooks:

1. Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook (1982)
2. Chez Panisse Pizza, Pasta & Calzone (1984)
3. Chez Panisse Desserts (1986)
4. Chez Panisse Cooking (1988)
5. Fanny at Chez Panisse: A Child’s Restaurant Adventure with 46 Recipes (1992)
6. Chez Panisse Vegetables (1996)
7. Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook (1999)
8. Chez Panisse Fruit (2002)
9. The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution (2007)

Chez Panisse Restaurant.

Read about:

The Complete Practical Confectioner
J.Thompson Gill, Manager Confectioner and Baker Publishing Co.: Chicago, 1882).