It should have been a match made in heaven.
She liked to cook; he liked to cook. She liked to measure; he really liked to measure! (As well as apply the scientific method to the ancient and inexact art of making tasty things to eat.) Her goal was (culinary) world domination; his goal was (culinary) world domination. They even lived in the same neighborhood for Chrissake!
But after the initial infatuation wore off, he began to find her annoying. She smothered everything in sauce—white, velouté, béchamel—thinking it Frenchified her dishes. He preferred that each ingredient express its true essence. She was content with mere kitchen competence in her legions of country bumpkin, desperate immigrant and insecure housewife students. He preached perfection, issuing recipes to his followers only when he’d discovered a dish’s Platonic ideal (“The Best Beef Stew!” “The Best Chewy Brownies!”).
Ever the romantic, he wouldn’t admit their basic incompatibility. They would make a feast together! It would redeem their union! It would impress his friends! He installed a wood-fired iron stove to replicate period cooking conditions. He tracked down fresh calves’ brains, heads and feet—now in disrepute except among hot-dog makers; ripped agonized live lobsters in half lengthwise and deliberated over the perfect substitute for Canton ginger (galangal). He even bought a spendidly overdone repoussé punch bowl. But to no avail.
He could no longer overlook her shortcomings. “Sure, Fannie was on solid ground when dealing with simple roasts, chops, puddings, and the like, but once she tried to tart up a dish or had to cook more delicate items such as vegetables or fish—well, the modern cook would find the food more compost than compelling.”
Disillusioned, he turned to tearing down her most ambitious 12-course menu, the very dinner they were preparing together. The filling for her rissoles was “bland.” The lobster á l’Américaine was “a bit ham-handed.” The venison was accompanied by “lackluster” potatoes lyonnaise. Her salmon was “pedestrian;” the deep-fried artichokes, “heavy and pedestrian;” the goose stuffing “soft and boring.” Even her grand finale of cakes, “uninspired.” (This to the lady who may have singlehandedly turned us into a nation of sugar junkies!) With each course, Kimball elbowed his way further into the kitchen, until at last he evicted poor Fannie altogether, finishing the feast with recipes from The Epicurean (penned in 1894 by the French chef of Delmonico’s) and the illustrious author himself.
Fannie’s Last Supper is a supremely entertaining read. The portrait of Victorian Boston—from its prominence as a rail and shipping hub, its vast and varied markets and vibrant food culture (who wouldn’t want to time-travel to the 1896 Boston Food Fair with its Mermaid’s Dinner and 3000 pounds of freshly churned butter?), which comprises half of the book material, is well-researched and fascinating. And while another cookbook, like the aforementioned The Epicurean, might have been better suited to Kimball’s exacting taste—”The Victorian dinner that we were recreating would have been as alien to the average resident of New England in 1896 as it is to us today…. We were taking a thin slice of the culinary pie here…”—his slow-mo evisceration of Fannie’s culinary style is haughtily delicious.
But still… I wish the grande dame of middle-class American cookery were around to defend herself. She might scold Kimball for being a tad unkind, reminding him that she’d always “put heart and soul into the work.” And that her mantra—like his—was, “Couldn’t it be better?”*
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Did I get it wrong? Right? Miss something important along the way? Readers, please send me your own review of Fannie’s Last Supper and we’ll post them on the Slow Food Boston website. Then, on Sunday, March 6, we’ll run some small Victorian-themed potlucks where people who want to can discuss the book and Gilded Age cuisine in general. But no worries! We’re keeping this loose. Only a few dishes need come from the era (fun ones to consider: forcemeats, jellies, pickles and confections) and conversation will be, as always, far-ranging—no need at all to have read the book! Interested in attending or hosting? Email me!
*Quotes from Perfection Salad by Laura Shapiro.
Anastacia Marx de Salcedo posts monthly on PRK for Slow Food Boston.
Anastasia, You are absolutely on target here. What do you learn about the past when you start messing with recipes to suit your own taste? Absolutely nothing. Complete and utter waste of energy, using Gordon Ramsay’s lobster recipe?! What’s the point? I chucked the book across the room upon reading that.
Remember, Chris Kimball’s magazine once conducted a taste test that concluded that Skippy was a superior peanut butter to peanut butter made with just peanuts and salt -i.e., actual peanut butter. Kimball’s “platonic ideal” of food eclipses the food itself. Trust his judgement at your peril.
I found this book incredibly frustrating as it had great potential but I just became more and more irritated with each page. One of the quotes was Laura Shapiro’s observation that “Frannie Farmer did help herself, generously and without acknowledgement, to Mrs. Lincoln’s work; but she stamped the material with her own personality, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that she drained it carefully of Mrs. Lincoln’s”. Ironically I felt that is exactly what he did to his Fannie’s Last Supper. He removed all the parts he did not like and I am not really sure how much of what they ate resembled any part of Fannie’s vision.