The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook

Considered the "greatest American cookbook, " Fannie Merritt Farmer's "Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, " published over a century ago, was acclaimed for a number of innovations. It was the first to use timers now considered standard in American cooking (e.g. a level cupful, teaspoonful and tablespoonful); it relied on simple directions and showed a hitherto neglected concern for nutrition. Novices as well as practiced cooks of the period were treated to a vast amount of information that left nothing to the user's imagination - from instructions for building a fire to how to bone a bird.