Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent

6W Fannie M. Farmer. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1915. Fourth edition. 

Notes

Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent is a pioneering work of nutritional science and therapeutic cooking by renowned American culinary educator Fannie Merritt Farmer. Moving beyond traditional household cookbooks, Farmer explores the relationship between food, digestion, nutrition, and recovery from illness, offering specialized recipes and dietary recommendations for patients, children, and individuals with particular medical needs. The book includes practical instructions for preparing easily digestible meals, nourishing broths, beverages, and other restorative foods, reflecting the growing recognition of nutrition’s importance in medical care at the turn of the twentieth century.

Farmer’s interest in the subject was deeply personal, having suffered a debilitating illness in her youth that left her struggling with mobility for years. Best remembered for her influential Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1896), which helped popularize standardized measurements in American recipes, Farmer brought the same scientific precision to the emerging field of dietetics. This work remains a fascinating historical record of early twentieth-century medical nutrition and the expanding role of scientific principles in domestic cookery. This edition includes vintage ads for food-related products including Welch’s grape juice. 

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, cookbook publishing offered women a rare opportunity to establish themselves in the literary marketplace and earn an income from their expertise. At a time when professional and publishing opportunities for women were limited, the domestic skills they were expected to master became a valuable source of authority and financial independence. By transforming generations of practical knowledge into published works, women could reach audiences beyond their own households, establish professional reputations, and sometimes achieve considerable commercial success. Authors such as Fannie Merritt Farmer helped elevate cooking from a domestic obligation to a respected field of study, demonstrating how women could turn skills acquired through societal expectations into opportunities for education, entrepreneurship, and literary achievement.

Description 

Green cloth with gilt titling and multicolored pictorial design. Cover adn spine rubbed with some fading to text and imagery. Several inscriptions to front free endpaper. Minor cooking stains in text but nothing obtrusive. Very good condition.