Boston School Kitchen Text-Book. Lessons in Cooking, for the use of Classes in Public and Industrial Schools.
Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1887.
Octavo (19 x 13 cm.), xxvii, 237, [5], 16, [1] pages. Index. Evident FIRST EDITION. Not a cookbook per se, but rather an instruction manual "for the use of classes in public and industrial schools" based on the work being done by the Boston School Kitchen. The Boston School Kitchen was initiated and funded by Mrs. Mary Hemenway in summer of 1885, and was the introduction of cooking schools into the Boston Public School system, and the first public school kitchen in the United States. Students from various schools in the system would choose to attend as an addition to their regular studies. Mrs. Hemenway supported the school for three years, and for the first year instruction was given by Miss Amabel Hope. School Kitchen No. 2 was established in January 1886 in South Boston. Ten years later, Miss Hope issued a report on the Cooking Schools indicating that the number of schools had grown to fourteen. (Documents of the School Committee of the City of Boston, for the Year 1895. Boston: Rockwell & Churchill, City Printers, 1895, page 281 ff.). ~ Mrs. D. A. Lincoln was the first teacher at the Boston Cooking School (though she recognized her inadequacy as a culinary instructor and replaced herself with Miss Joanna Sweeney). While at the school, she wrote Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book (1884), the fore-runner to Fannie Merritt Farmer's Boston Cooking School Cook Book (1896). The Boston Cook Book included a section on operating a cooking school, titled "An Outline of Study for Teachers". With the publication of the Boston School Kitchen Text-Book, Lincoln had written the two works that became the foundation of cooking education for decades. ~ A school prize copy, with the presentation inscription of the book's dedicatee, Mrs. Mary Hemenway. The inscription reads, "May Storey, from Mrs. Mary Hemenway, June (added later in pencil) 1885/6." And following in pencil, in what appears to be the same hand, "(aged 12 years) 1st Prize for highest percentage Diploma (98) and proficiency.)" Mary Porter Tileson Hemenway (1820-1894) was a remarkable American philanthropist. Born in New York, she moved to Boston after marrying Augustus Hemenway, a successful merchant. Quick to recognize significant needs, she dedicated herself to a variety of educational causes, helping to fund the both white and black colleges (including Hampton and Tuskeegee) in the south following the Civil War; she recognized that many soldier's wives did not know how to sew, and so she provided training and materials for introduction of a sewing course within the Boston Public Schools. This led to her opening "an industrial-vocation school in Boston and two years later in 1885 she opened a kitchen in a public school, the first venture of its kind in the United States. After three years the city assumed the cost of the kitchen, and cooking, as well as sewing became part of the program of education. Meanwhile in 1887, Mrs. Hemenway had started the Boston Normal School of Cooking, which after her death [in 1894] became the Mary H. Hemenway Department of Household Arts in the State Normal School of Framingham." (HarvardSquareLibrary 09/18). Moderately edgeworn, in illustrated paper boards over brown cloth. Professional repair to hinges and to one torn leaf. With the bookplate of Carl Sontheimer, founder of Cuisinart, and culinary collector. [Cagle 479].
Price: $500.00