aem wrote:
> jmcquown wrote:
>>
>> Hate to argue with an historian, but I have a copy of the original
>> Fanny Farmer cookbook (obviously a reprint). The book states the
>> school was to teach women IMMIGRANTS to cook using ingredients which
>> were not necessarily native to their homeland. In that case, I would
>> think the students would need measurements in order to know how to
>> prepare recipes using foodstuffs foreign to them.
>>
> You make a good point, but do you remember the site someone posted
> that has electronic archives of really old American cookbooks? In
> browsing through some of them I was struck by how many recipes
> offered quite vague quantities/measurements. I think his point that
> Fannie was a major advocate for striving for "scientific"
> measurements is valid. As is his implied point that such precision
> is a false, illusory path to good cooking. There has never been a
> measurement as good as your taste buds. -aem
>
> http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/...ml/browse.html

Yep, I remember that (Leila, I think it was). And in fact I also own
reprints of some of the cookbooks mentioned in these archives. The
Settlement Cookbook and The Virginia Housewife, for example. I love to read
old "receipts" because some of them are purely funny. But I still don't
think Fannie Farmer was evil <G> simply because she thought recipes needed
measurements for newbie cooks.

Jill