Free Fannie's Last Supper by Christopher Kimball Page A

Moulin in Paris. After a stint in the army, he returned to Le Petit Moulin, and then was asked by César Ritz to become chef at the Grand Hotel in Monte Carlo, a partnership that was to become instrumental in the development of his career. They took over the Savoy Hotel in London in 1889, opened a hotel in the Place Vendôme in Paris in 1896, and then the Carlton Hotel in London in 1896. There was simply no comparison between the culinary worlds of the United States and France in the 1890s. Fannie Farmer could not have held a candle to Auguste Escoffier.
    But the news is not all bad; some of her culinary advice, information, and recipes seem more than reasonable. Fannie stated that a modest 68 degrees Fahrenheit was the proper temperature for bread fermentation. Bone marrow was often used for browning meat, especially when making soups. Beef was supposed to be best when it was from a steer that was four or five years old. (Today’s beef is from animals no more than two years old.) The Victorians let it ripen for two to three weeks in the winter for best flavor. Onion juice was a common flavoring ingredient, one that we often use today. Poultry was roasted with a flour coating, which created a nice crust and helped to keep in the juices. (We tested this recipe, and it actually worked; see page 141.) Several vegetables in a salad ought to be marinated before serving. (This is something that we thought we had discovered in our test kitchen—demonstrating, once again, that there is little that is new in the culinary world.) There were five different types of batters used for frying—Fannie mistakenly thought fried foods were healthy. (Frying was popular, since it could be done on a stovetop without worrying about managing the heat of an oven.) Dissolved gelatin was added to mayonnaise to make it set up when it was used for decorative purposes. All in all, she was a pretty smart cook when it came to the basics, although prone to tarting up the fancier dishes without a deep understanding of the underlying subtlety and technique of the original.
    The one claim that is repeated endlessly in books about Fannie Farmer is that she was the “mother of level measurements,” a label that was earned through her devotion to precision. This is the typical one-note tagline that historians love to bandy about. Here is a typical quote: “Her particular innovation was the refinement known as level measurements, which she promoted forcefully with every recipe she published. Previously even the strictest use of measuring implements retained the old notions of a ‘rounded’ spoonful and a ‘heaping’ cupful. . . . To Fannie Farmer, it seemed simpler and more rational to dispense with the imagery entirely and call a tablespoonful a level tablespoon, using a knife to level the surface after the spoon had been filled.”
    Reportedly, the great turning point in Fannie’s cooking career, akin to Newton watching a falling apple, was when she was asked by Maggie Murphy, her cook, to define “butter the size of an egg” as well as “a pinch of salt,” leading to the revelation that precise measurement was the key to culinary perfection. Perhaps if we started with Mary Lincoln’s cookbook, first published in 1883, and then referred to Fannie’s work of 1896, we might finally get to the bottom of this claim.
    We need to keep in mind that in Mary Lincoln’s time, the cookware industry was just starting to provide standardized measuring spoons and cups for general home use, the silver teaspoons and tablespoons sold at retail being the accepted units of measure. By 1896, when her cookbook was published, Fannie refers to “tin measuring-cups, divided in quarters or thirds, holding one half-pint, and table spoons of regulation sizes—which may be bought at any store where kitchen furnishings are sold.” So, Fannie had the benefit of a cookware industry that had adopted and advertised more precise, standardized measuring cups and spoons. In a