GLADSTONE — The latest exhibit at the Atkins-Johnson Farm and Museum is open through Nov. 2. The museum is located at 4109 NE Pleasant Valley Road in Gladstone.
Museum Manager Marye Newman created the exhibit called “Boston Cooking School Cookbook: The Exhibit” for several reasons.
“The impact of Fannie Farmer’s work was huge,” Newman said. “It sold 3 million copies, which was pretty much unheard of in that era and standardized so many things for modern cooking we all take for granted like measurements in cooking; consideration of basic science like caloric intake and more specific cooking temperatures, which would only get more fine-tuned with the introduction of gas ranges; and how important the relationship is between our health and food.”
Fannie Merritt Farmer published “The Boston Cooking School Cookbook” in 1896. Referred to as “the mother of modern measurements,” is said to have produced the nation’s first truly mass-produced cookbook and started several movements in the culinary world including measurements, health considerations in one’s diet and cooking instructions along with recipes in a cookbook.
Newman said she loves to cook and bake, often cooking from scratch, which Farmer’s cookbook is like an American blueprint for.
“So much of what we now consider standard American cuisines and traditional styling was popularized or formed by her or by chefs who were inspired by her work,” Newman said.
As an exhibit creator, Newman said there is a goal for a balanced view.
“So that it’s what you’re showing is the history, not too much of yourself speaking through an exhibit. You want to lead people through a piece of history and let them form their own conclusions, but at the same time there is always going to piece of some things that are so important you have to include them, pieces that have to be excluded due to space constraints, some of your own subconscious biases that come through, too,” she said. “In this specific exhibit, I was really trying to show people who love food and may or may not have grown up with or known Fannie Farmer through her recipes the life of the woman behind the work as well as just why her recipes and her cookbook itself were so hugely successful.”
