Characteristics of Cuisine: Fannie Farmer

 

My kitchen does not carry many cookbooks. The ones I do have are for specific dietary needs to get ideas. However, this cookbook belonged to my mother, the famous Fannie Farmer Cookbook Twelfth Edition, revised by Marion Cunningham based on the original Boston Cooking-School Cook Book written in 1896 by Fannie Merritt Farmer. This was the essential need-to-own cookbook in everyone’s kitchen back in the day. Aside from my mother, this was my go-to when I was cooking on my own in my twenties. 

When you first open the book, it gives pointers from how many bread slices to make breadcrumbs to “basic pastry formula” or “how to correct curdled or broken hollandaise sauce” (Cunningham 1980). The introduction, written by James Beard, discusses the book’s premise and how it came to be. “Fannie Farmer was a household word” (Beard) and an iconic name of its time. 

Her recipes derived from many influences worldwide that settled here in colonialized ‘basic American recipes.’ This book had the founding principles and simple recipes every young woman needed to feel equipped and competent in the kitchen.

Today’s cookbooks seem glamorized. So I composed a basic search on Amazon to see what would come up first. Beyond the sponsored listings, the book The Unofficial Disney Parks Cookbook, written on November 10, 2020, by Ashley Craft, grabbed my attention. 

Some recipes contained the classic mouse ear-shaped macaroons and copycat recipes of Disney’s famous baked macaroni and cheese with pulled pork from Discovery Island in Animal Kingdom. This cookbook is the exact opposite of the philosophy of Fannie Farmer. From searching through some recipes, it is pretty noticeable that most were glamorized junk of stolen recipes. 

I found it interesting that in the title was ‘unofficial.’ This book was written without Disney’s consent and used a loophole stating that it is a registered trademark.

Evaluating these two books helped me recognize the difference between what is written out of passion and one written to prosper off the Disney name. The Fannie Farmer Cookbook was written as a self-help book to learn additional methods that every home cook should know. 

This book is very detailed in kitchen staples. Even how to cook for family, friends, and dinner parties. I even browsed through the basic recipe of Griddlecakes that I used to make every Sunday. This part of the book was very much used and still has batter on it. So it was pretty refreshing to go through this book again. 

Even though I do not refer to it anymore, I keep it for nostalgia. Farmer had a cooking school where she was passionate about food and knew that recipes evolved into American staple recipes shared among women at luncheons (Beard). 

These Disney recipes are a prime example of cultural food colonialism where consent was not given to sell and probably did not originally belong to Disney. Considering that, I find it a little bothersome that someone can put out a recipe book that was not theirs to exploit but get away with it using the word ‘unofficial.’





Works Cited


Craft, Ashley. The Unofficial Disney Parks Cookbook: from Delicious Dole Whip to Tasty Mickey Pretzels, 100 Magical Disney-Inspired Recipes. Adams Media, 2020.


Cunningham, Marion, and Jeri Laber. The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. 12th ed., Alfred A. Knopf, 1980.