Considered the "greatest American cookbook," Fannie Merritt Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, published over a century ago, was acclaimed for a number of innovations. It was the first to use terms now considered standard in American cooking (e.g., a level cupful, teaspoonful, and tablespoonful); it relied on simple directions and showed an until now neglected concern for nutrition. Novices, as well as practiced cooks of the period, were treated to a vast amount of information that left nothing to the user's imagination -- from instructions for building a fire to how to bone a bird. A fascinating record of how people cooked in the late nineteenth century.