The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook by Fannie Merritt Farmer, from the first edition of 1896. A perennial bestseller first published in 1896. A pioneering work in the culinary field, it was the first cookbook to provide level measurements and easy-to-follow directions. Fannie Farmer, the author of this book, is perhaps the best known of the great American culinary authorities of the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries. And this book is arguably the best known and most influential of all American cookbooks. By 1990 when Ms. Cunningham updated and revised her edition of what was now called The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, as the thirteenth edition, nearly 4,000,000 copies had been sold, making this one of the greatest selling cookbooks of all times. Why so popular? Perhaps, because Fannie wrote as if she were teaching. She explained the whys and wherefores; there is no romance, there are no flights of fancy. Simply, if you would like to make the food of Fannie Farmer, just read and follow her recipes