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Fannie Farmer went to Medford High School

Fannie Farmer was born in Boston , Massachusetts in 1857 to Mary Watson Merritt and John Franklin Farmer, a printer, and was the eldest of four daughters. The four daughters were raised in a Unitarian family that believed strongly in education, so the girls were expected to attend college. However, at age sixteen, while still a student at Medford High School, Fannie suffered paralysis in her left leg, most likely the result of polio. For several years, she was an invalid and cared for at home. When she finally regained her ability to walk, she had developed a permanent limp. Her illness prevented her from finishing high school, or attending college, so she spent years helping in her family's home.

The eventually family moved back to Boston and Farmer, at the age of thirty, was hired as a mother's helper by a family friend, the prominent Mrs. Charles Shaw. Mrs. Shaw encouraged Fannie to enroll in the Boston Cooking School and train as a cooking teacher. Farmer completed the two-year program in 1889 and was one of the best students She stayed on as Assistant Principal and became Principal in 1891.

Farmer's first cookbook, The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, was first published in 1896. The book was thought of as modern becasue the directions were concise and simple, most notably, it mixed food science so thoroughly into a collection of useful, appealing recipes as to form a new kind of cookbook authority. It formed a new view of cooking—incorporating scientific explanations of cooking processes, the value of level measurements, food composition, calorie calculations and the body's need for nutrients. This influenced cooking instruction for decades to come. In her Preface, Farmer sums up her aim and her eventual achievement:

"It is my wish that [the cookbook] may not only be looked upon as a compilation of tried and tested recipes, but that it may awaken an interest through its condensed scientific knowledge which will lead to deeper thought and broader study of what to eat."

One of the most popular American cookbooks of all time, selling over four million copies, The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook made her a wealthy woman. The publisher, Little, Brown and Company, did not want to take on another cookbook and insisted that Farmer pay the initial printing costs. The cookbook, revised more than 20 times was renamed The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

In 1902, Farmer opened Miss Farmer's School of Cookery . She focused on the subject of healthy diets for the sick and diseased, training hospital dietitians and nurses, and giving lectures at the Harvard Medical School. Farmer was known to have influenced Dr. Elliot P. Joslin, the medical pioneer in diabetes research.

In 1904, Farmer published what she considered her most important work, and hoped that her reputation would rest: Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent. It included children's diets, use of alcohol, how to prepare a large variety of common foods, and diets for specific diseases, including an outstanding chapter on diabetes. She drew from her own sickness and suffering to write about preparing and serving foods to the ill and infirmed.

For the remainder of her life, Farmer stayed at her cooking school. She held well attended weekly lectures, and lectured at women's clubs throughout the country. She wrote many cookbooks and pamphlets, and in the last ten years of her life, wrote and edited a cookery page for Woman's Home Companion with the help of her sister, Cora Dexter (Farmer) Perkins. In her last years, she suffered two strokes, which forced her to use a wheelchair. However, she continued to lecture up until ten days before her death. She died in Boston in 1915, and her ashes were buried in Cambridge's Mount Auburn Cemetery . Her school continued, led by Alice Bradley, until it closed in 1944.

Sources:

• Original 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cookbook with a New Introduction by Janice Bluestein Longone. Mineola , New York: Dover Publications, 1997.
• Levenstein, Harvey. American National Biography. Vol. 7. Eds. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. New York: Oxford , 1999.
• The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Vol. 22, 206-07. New York: James T. White & Co., 1932.
• Schlesinger, Elizabeth Bancroft. Notable American Women 1607 - 1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Eds. Edward James, Janet James, Paul Boyer. Cambridge , Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971.
• Shapiro, Laura. Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986.