Fannie's Last Supper: Re-creating One Amazing Meal from Fannie Farmer's 1896 Cookbook by Chris Kimball Format: Hardcover with Dust JacketPublished by Hyperion, 2010 Before The Joy of Cooking, there was The Boston Cooking School Cookbook. Written by Fannie Farmer, principal of the school, and published in 1896, it was the bestselling cookbook of its age. 400,000 copies were sold by Farmer's death in 1915 ? and more than 4 million were sold by the 1960s. It perfectly encapsulates the late Victorian era, but it's also surprisingly modern; in short, it's ripe for reevaluation. And who better to conduct such an experiment than Chris Kimball, founder of Cook's Illustrated and host of PBS's America's Test Kitchen? Fannie's Last Supper is the result. In it, Kimball assembles an extravagant 12-course Christmas dinner from Farmer's cookbook and serves it in an 1859 Boston townhouse, complete with an authentic Victorian home kitchen, uniformed maids, and a distinguished guest list. The menu includes Roast Goose with Potato Stuffing, Canton Punch, Three Moulded Victorian Jellies, and Mandarin Cake. But Kimball includes more than just the dinner party's dishes ? Fannie's Last Supper is a working cookbook with tested, rewritten, updated recipes drawn from Farmer's opus. It's a culinary thriller of sorts, travelling back in time to reexamine something most of us take for granted: the North American table. The New York Times - Dawn Drzal Each chapter is a story in itself, the recipes prefaced with tours of Farmer's Boston, ruminations on how technology revolutionized the Victorian kitchen, historical investigations of ingredients and amusing accounts of Kimball's defeat by Farmer's recipes, his search for new ones, both Victorian and modern, and his struggles to perfect them as the fateful day approached.
