The Mother of Level Measurements
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 20 September 2021
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
September 24, 1902. A new cooking school is set to open at Boston’s 30 Huntington Avenue. The rooms will soon be filled with trainee cooks, who will watch in awe as the school’s namesake and principal, Fannie Farmer, lectures on everything from boning meats to baking the perfect reception rolls. Farmer is an innovative cook, and a pioneer in a thriving women's culinary movement known as "domestic science." But her school stands at a crossroads of that very movement and begs the question, what is the purpose of food? Who was Fannie Farmer, “the mother of level measurements”? And how did she shape the way we cook and eat today?
Special thanks to our guests, Laura Shapiro, author of Perfection Salad; Danielle Dreilinger, author of The Secret History of Home Economics; and Anne Willan, author of Women in the Kitchen.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:06.0 | History this week, September 24, 1902. |
| 0:11.0 | I'm Sally Helm. |
| 0:13.0 | No kitchen stays perfectly clean for long. |
| 0:17.0 | Not if it's being used. |
| 0:19.0 | You'll get a grease stain on the dish towel, |
| 0:21.0 | a sauce splatter on the countertop, |
| 0:23.0 | something blackened on the stove |
| 0:25.0 | that can't be identified and can't be removed. |
| 0:29.0 | But this morning, for a moment at least, |
| 0:32.0 | the kitchens at Boston's 30 Huntington Avenue are pristine. |
| 0:38.0 | A new cooking school is set to start up there today. |
| 0:41.0 | One journalist got a tour before it was officially open |
| 0:44.0 | and reported that the rooms are light, sunny. |
| 0:48.0 | The perfect blend of, quote, the ideal and the practical. |
| 0:52.0 | They have a gas range, a coal range, |
| 0:55.0 | a new ice chest made of white tile and nickel |
| 0:58.0 | with clear glass lining the inside. |
| 1:01.0 | The journalist writes, optimistically, |
| 1:03.0 | absolute cleanliness is perfectly possible with this cooler. |
| 1:08.0 | Absolute cleanliness might be just a dream. |
| 1:12.0 | After all, these rooms are about to be flooded |
... |
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