THE Cookbook Among Many

            I had the very best intentions when I started blogging but we know what road those pave. After a couple of years and dozens of intentions I believe I'll give it another try. What started this was this morning, Isabel, the spice of my life, wanted pancakes for breakfast. I always aim to please but it had been a while since I had made some so I pulled out the Fannie Farmer cook book to check some proportions. That reminded me of the recent death of the person who had, in my mind, become Fannie Farmer. Marion Cunningham (no, not Ritchie's mother, silly!) who had an amazing career in food was, of course, the editor of the twelfth edition of Fannie Farmer and, really, the writer/creator of the thirteenth. Even so, I always thought of "checking with Fannie" not "checking with Marion."

             My realization that I should do something to commemorate her passing struck when I commented to Isabel that of all my cookbooks, somewhere around 400 I would think, Fannie Farmer was the least interesting and the most useful of them all. The least interesting because I tend to look for those books that include historical or regional information, family stories, or connect to people real or fictional that I am interested in. For instance, I have a cookbook based on the meals described in the Nero Wolfe novels of Rex Stout. At any rate, if I have a question about a recipe, about a technique, or about an ingredient it's straight to Fannie Farmer I go.

            Having read more about her since her death I believe I will try to begin to think or speak of consulting Marion instead of Fannie. Either would be a good resource for anyone wanting the basics of cooking. Yes, there are techniques that have been refined beyond what either would recognize but my statement stands. If you can have only one book, one teacher, they were the ones to go to.

            Fannie was partially paralyzed by a stroke at age 16, missed several years of formal education but learned to cook in that time in her mother's kitchen. She later opened the family home as a boarding house which became famous for the meals served. In 1887, at 30, she entered the Boston Cooking School and remained there as an assistant until she was chosen as the principal in 1891. In spite of a limp left from the stroke and continuing ill health she was a tireless teacher, lecturer, and advocate for good cooking and good eating. Her book was not called Fannie Farmer, it was the Boston Cooking-School Cookbook. It's basics still exist in the form given it by her successor.

            Marion Cunningham was an agoraphobic. She was mostly a mother and homemaker until age 50 when she took a cooking class with the great James Beard. Then she became his assistant and for many years toured the country teaching both on her own and with Beard. Beard recommended her to rewrite Fannie Farmer for modern audiences (there had been a few changes in language, foods available and technique since 1918) and she did that. Her revisions were published first in 1976 then in 1990.

            Even though the modern Fannie Farmer Cookbook is a straightforward recipe and method book with very little personal in it, the passion for good, healthy food still comes through if you listen hard enough as you read.