In the late 1800s, most recipes were closer to suggestions than instructions. A cook might be told to add a dash of salt or a teacup of flour and hope the result turned out. Success relied on instinct, and failure was part of the routine.
Fannie Merritt Farmer believed it didn’t have to be that way. In 1896 she published The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, a six-hundred–page collection that introduced something kitchens had never seen before: exact measurements. A level cup of flour, a measured teaspoon of sugar, a recipe that worked the same way every time. What seems ordinary now was groundbreaking then, and it changed the way Americans approached food.
The book sold in the millions and placed Farmer among the most famous female cookbook authors of her generation, but its real impact was quieter. Families relied on it not for novelty but for consistency. Bread, cakes, and pies could be made the same way again and again, and that reliability reshaped how people thought about food. More than a century later, her name still appears on kitchen shelves. Fannie Farmer’s Cookbook remains in print, and her methods continue to shape the way people cook. Every time flour is scraped flat with a knife or a recipe is followed word for word, it carries a trace of her legacy.
We are joined by Ken Albala, professor of history and food studies at University of the Pacific in California.