Asked to serve as principal at the Boston Cooking School, Parloa turned down the offer as she was involved in other endeavors and commanded a much larger salary than the school could pay her. However, she was hired to train a group of teachers prior to the school's opening, and later gave public lecture-demonstrations on weekends.42 She also wrote several cookbooks, including Miss Parloa's New Cook Book and Marketing Guide (1880), which gave advice on shopping as well as cooking, and Miss Parloa's Kitchen Companion (1887), which was the first volume in America to go into such detail regarding kitchen equipment and design.43
Instead, Mary Johnson Bailey Lincoln, a former schoolteacher and housekeeper, ended up taking the important role as the school's first principal. In 1879 her sister's friend suggested she apply to the Boston Cooking School as a teacher, but she initially declined due to her lack of formal culinary training. However, she was prompted by her husband's increasingly ill health to find lucrative employment. After taking a few lessons “in fancy dishes” from Sweeney, attending one of Parloa's lectures, and falling back on her own domestic experience, she was able to convince herself and the hiring committee that she was suited to be principal.44
At first it was not an easy road for either her or the students, as her lack of cooking experience was evident at times, but she persevered, receiving additional training from Sweeney and Parloa. She was more familiar with “plain” cooking, and especially in the beginning tended to focus on simpler preparations. However, she learned quickly, eventually becoming familiar with more elaborate cooking techniques, although she continued to tout the benefits of unfussy dishes.45
In a speech delivered at the 1893 World's Fair, she claimed, “Women would lessen the labor of cooking greatly if they would cease making mixtures of food materials which require much time and labor in their preparation, and also the expenditure of great digestive energy. Why should we take anything so simple and delicious as a properly roasted or boiled chicken, and expend time and labor in chopping it, mixing it with so many other things that we cannot detect its original flavor, then shaping, egging and crumbing it, and making it more indigestible by browning it in scorching fat?”46
So although perhaps she did not always see the virtues of gourmet cookery with its more involved procedures and flavors, she soon developed into a respected teacher, lecturer, and author, publishing her first cookbook in 1884, Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book: What to Do and What Not to Do in Cooking. A precursor to Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, this fresh and creative guidebook was chock-full of practical details, essentially giving readers a “behind the scenes” look into cooking schools. It contained not only all the information a cooking school graduate would need to know, but also the requirements for getting a cooking school started, including proper utensils, lecture topics, textbooks, test questions, and the actual Boston Cooking School curriculum.
It seems Mary Lincoln put together the exact type of manual she wished she could have consulted before taking the job at Boston Cooking School. According to one review at the time: “It is the trimmest, best arranged, best illustrated, most intelligible, manual of cookery as a high art, and as an economic art, that has appeared.”47
Lincoln continued to serve as Boston Cooking School principal for another year, when she resigned following the death of her sister. She then began teaching classes at Lasell Seminary while also compiling her second book, the Boston School Kitchen Text-Book (1887), to be used in public schools, as educators began to add home economics to elementary- and secondary-level curricula. This book, as well as her earlier one, soon became source manuals for course-work taught in private and public schools throughout the United States, Canada, and England.48
By this time her expertise was in high demand, and like Sarah Rorer, she hit the lecture circuit, speaking at cooking schools, colleges, women's clubs, and even department stores. She also co-founded the New England Kitchen magazine, later renamed American Kitchen magazine, and continued to write articles and books as well as several promotional pamphlets for food and cooking equipment companies. She was so well-known and revered in the field that she was quite sought after for endorsements, and even gave her support to Mrs. Lincoln's Baking Powder Company, which flourished in Boston at the turn of the century.49
Although ultimately successful, Boston Cooking School did suffer through some fits and starts, experiencing many changes in both curriculum and faculty along the way. Most important, when the school became incorporated in 1884, it broke away from the Women's Education Association, losing the funding and support of its benefactors. As a result, the admirable concepts of giving free cooking lessons to the poor and teaching women to become professional cooks created a great financial strain.50
As Mrs. Goodfellow had perceptively realized long before, it was the fancy cooking techniques that really brought in the students. After all, plain cooking was not as exciting or interesting, and besides, many women probably knew at least a bit about the kitchen already. While it was fine to offer basic cooking methodology, especially for beginners, providing the ability to impress one's peers with culinary knowledge and skill was a marketing tool the school's leaders realized they needed to use. So they developed the popular concept of “ladies' practice classes,” a three-tiered approach that included course work in “plain cooking,” “richer cooking,” and “fancy cooking.”51 These classes were limited to eight students and were held once a week from 9 A.M. to 12:30 P.M.; afterward students could sample the food that had been prepared. The cost of the lessons ranged from twelve to eighteen dollars, with a materials fee of three dollars.52
In 1885, the Boston Cooking School lost the popular Mary Lincoln. At this point, Ida Maynard (a recent graduate of the program) took over as principal, but Lincoln was difficult to replace. As a result, the unknown Miss Maynard was not very well received and failed to bring in many students, which added to the school's economic woes. The crisis was averted, however, by several wealthy Boston-area supporters who helped bring the school out of debt. Then Maynard was replaced by another alumna, Carrie Dearborn. Like Lincoln, Dearborn quickly became well-respected in the field and began giving cooking demonstrations in addition to her duties as principal. This change in leadership, combined with a new advertising campaign launched by the school, began to renew the public's interest.53
Mrs. Dearborn was much admired during her tenure as principal, but she voluntarily resigned in 1893 due to health problems. At this time, the Boston Cooking School was still getting its finances back in order, so finding a strong leader to replace her was critical. Luckily there was another former student who had shown a great deal of promise—Fannie Farmer. Well aware of the culinary preferences of her Boston contemporaries, Farmer had already been assisting Dearborn. The board of trustees promptly elected her to the position.54 Farmer ended up being the most famous of the culinary greats associated with the Boston Cooking School, and she greatly boosted the program with her dynamism and modern ideas.
Born in 1857, Fannie Merritt Farmer either contracted polio or suffered a mild stroke when she was just a teenager. This left her at first paralyzed in her left leg; she eventually regained use of the leg but walked with a limp from then on, preventing her from finishing high school and dashing her hopes for a college education. She found work as a mother's helper, but her inquisitive and ambitious nature made it clear that she could handle a more challenging position. Through her sister, she found out about the Boston Cooking School and signed up for a two-year course in 1887 at the age of thirty.55
Working as assistant to Dearborn after she graduated enabled Farmer to expand her culinary knowledge even further. The position also surely helped develop the keen marketing and management skills she so famously employed after becoming principal in 1893. Under Farmer's direction, the Boston Cooking School reached the height of its popularity and success. In spite of her physical handicap, she ran the school with seemingly boundless energy and proficiency. She was a perfectionist who viewed fo
od on a scientific, experimental level, constantly guiding her students to tweak and test recipes. After putting a dish through a series of tests, she would frequently ask them if it could be made even better, often to the point of their frustration.56
At this time, the students attending the Boston Cooking School were a mix of young single women preparing for marriage, housewives, and cooks working in private homes. The school had four kitchens and ten instructors on staff. Beginners' classes started out with easy-to-follow recipes generally geared toward feeding a family of six who employed one servant. Such interesting options as “how to shop” courses that included off-site excursions to Faneuil Hall were also offered, as well as a “crash course” featuring a month's worth of daily lessons.57
It was during this time as principal that Farmer began her crusade to develop the clear, concise recipe instructions with level measurements by volume we are so familiar with today. Although she has been referred to as the “mother of level measurements” due to her persistent quest for accuracy, this is a title often disputed among historians. A movement toward recipe clarity and consistency had already been developing throughout the nineteenth century. For example, Eliza Leslie listed ingredients at the beginning of a recipe and stressed the importance of accurate proportions—no doubt a lesson learned from Mrs. Goodfellow—including a guide to both liquid and dry weights and measures in her cookbooks. However, many recipes were still written in paragraph form, often using such arbitrary quantities as heaped teaspoons, pinches of seasoning, “wineglasses” of liquid, and “butter the size of an egg.” In addition, the cookware industry didn't offer standard measuring equipment until the late nineteenth century, so it was often difficult for home cooks to correctly duplicate ingredient quantities.58
As previously mentioned, it was Mary Lincoln (Farmer's Boston Cooking School predecessor) who took things to a whole new level with her cookbook, Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book: What To Do and What Not To Do in Cooking. Her detailed explanations emphasized the science of cookery, including focus on proper measurements and specific ingredient descriptions. Even though this cookbook was hailed as revolutionary and became extremely popular both at cooking schools and with the general public, Farmer still found fault with it. She felt the directions were insufficient and the number of recipes lacking. Just as with her relentless recipe testing, she thought it could be better.
Farmer's obsession with precision led her to revise and elaborate on Lincoln's version, with the objective of ensuring easy recipe directions and standardizing measurements once and for all. The result of her hard work was The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, a massive 831-page cooking reference manual published in 1896. Fannie's chosen publishing house (Little, Brown) was initially doubtful that the book would sell. However, they eventually agreed to serve as her agent and distributor, giving Farmer the responsibility for publication costs. This arrangement eventually worked to Farmer's advantage as she ended up owning the copyright on one of the most popular cookbooks ever published in the United States. And because she was the author (not the Boston Cooking School), the name of the book was soon changed to The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. This is how it is known today, having gone through numerous reprints and revisions in the hundred-plus years since its initial publication.59
Farmer went on to write several more cookery books before her death in 1915, although none of them was as successful as her original. She continued working at the Boston Cooking School until 1902, when she resigned in order to open her own school, Miss Farmer's School of Cookery. Soon after, the Boston Cooking School closed its doors as a separate institution and became part of Simmons College.60
Now in charge of her own school, Farmer remained vital and focused on her teaching, giving popular biweekly demonstration lectures for a student base of mostly housewives and society ladies that often numbered two hundred. She also taught evening lessons geared for professional chefs.61 Still her energy level did not wane; she moved around the lecture hall's kitchen platform at a swift pace, her bright blue eyes and red hair matching her vibrant personality. Although she always had help from an assistant (even in her early years) in order to save her strength, this was as much due to the fact that she was often an impatient cook and had difficulty remaining in one place. Even when her health was failing toward the end of her life, she continued to lecture from her wheelchair.62
Probably as a result of her own health challenges, she also worked on creating special diets for those recovering from illness, publishing Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent in 1904, a book she considered her most important. She even gave training to nurses and dietitians on this topic, providing demonstrations in hospital wards. And she wrote a regular magazine column with her sister for Woman's Home Companion from 1905 to 1915.63
However, even with all these impressive accomplishments, Farmer's legacy is not without controversy. She has been faulted for her lack of originality, including revising Mary Lincoln's earlier work without giving her predecessor any credit, although as Laura Shapiro notes in her book Perfection Salad, Farmer did change the style significantly, swapping Lincoln's chatty, more personable approach for her own methodical, more concise instructions.64 As a result, this crisp reference manual format has been criticized for the lack of detail in its directions and explanations. However, Farmer wanted to design it as a cooking school textbook, not a novel to be read cover to cover. She wanted cooks to learn by observing and doing, not reading.65
In addition, Farmer's technical approach to cooking was sometimes deemed too bland and tasteless, as if mealtime was simply a requirement to be fulfilled, not an experience to be savored. She also had a tendency to use copious amounts of flour and butter to thicken sauces, which would have resulted in a thick, pasty texture. (When trying to duplicate Farmer's recipes for his book Fannie's Last Supper, Christopher Kimball found her typical formula was to combine one quarter cup of butter and a sizable half cup of flour with only six cups of stock.)66
But this type of food was characteristic of the time, so perhaps Farmer didn't have much of an idea how else “good food” could be prepared, even though she was so constantly striving to make recipe improvements. The recipes studied in the first cooking schools were not necessarily innovative, at least in the beginning. Fannie and the other early cooking-school leaders are often criticized for their reliance on the simple and hearty New England-style fare that they knew best. Lincoln especially focused more on the American basics, avoiding rich foods and complicated sauces. Farmer did however, try branching out into what she considered more daring territory; for example, adding oysters and canned tomatoes to augment a classic French bouillon.67
But no matter how you look at her, Fannie Farmer had a significant impact on modern cooking. Her condensed “formula” recipe made it easier for busy women to put meals on the table more quickly and efficiently, preparing them for the changes the twentieth century would bring. Indeed, in an overview of Western culinary history written by Anne Willan (founder of the French cooking school La Varenne), Farmer is the only American mentioned on the list of fourteen “most influential chefs since the fourteenth century.”68 And although some food historians may not consider her to have been the most skillful cook, most acknowledge that her enthusiastic style and business sense made up for her lack of cooking ability. In fact, she often thought of herself as primarily a businesswoman.69 Like Goodfellow, she knew her market and used this knowledge to her advantage.
A common thread among early cooking school innovators is that they were all essentially marketing their talent and services, hoping the public would be interested in what they were selling. Each had a specific agenda—from Eliza Goodfellow and her insistence on wholesome, fresh ingredients to Fannie Farmer and her passion for precision. It helped that they were energetic, convincing speakers—like actors on a stage, holding the rapt attention of their audience.
But their target market was primarily housewives and domestic servants; restaurant training still us
ed the apprenticeship model, with hands-on instruction the norm. As the century progressed, support for vocational schools began to increase and the idea of teaching cooking as a professional trade slowly gained acceptance.70
Becoming a restaurant chef is such a widely recognized career path today that it is almost unbelievable to realize that schools offering this type of culinary training have only been around since World War II, when veterans began to take advantage of the G.I. Bill for education assistance. Seeking to provide professional training and viable employment for returning veterans, the New Haven Restaurant Institute (now known as the Culinary Institute of America) opened its doors in 1946. It was the first school in America to award degrees focusing on culinary arts. Now students can choose from hundreds of institutions that provide a range of offerings—from hospitality industry certification through advanced academic degrees in gastronomy and nutrition.71
Another trend that exploded during the second half of the twentieth century was the idea of cooking as a leisure activity. As technological innovations made food preparation less time-consuming, women began to view cooking as an enjoyable pastime rather than a necessary chore or a way to impress one's social circle. Better and more efficient transportation led to increased cultural awareness and the mingling of different culinary flavors and techniques. Likewise, food that previously wouldn't have been available in one region could suddenly be flown by plane across the globe, allowing cooks to experiment with exotic ingredients and dishes. Cookbooks that featured international cuisines became popular. Television also became an important avenue for cooking instructors, allowing them to showcase their skills to a much wider market than the ladies from the home economics movement were able to achieve with their popular traveling cooking demonstrations. As a result, savvy marketers began to develop a whole new culinary model—recreational cooking classes.
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