Fannie's Last Supper: Re-creating One Amazing Meal from Fannie Farmer's… (vuoden 2010 painos)

I should have listened to the other reviewers before buying this. Bottom line is, in the end he DOES NOT recreate a Fanny Farmer menu.

Kimball doesn't like 19th century food, so he makes 21st century variations on it. He seems amazed any time her recipes are good. Having roasted a fair number of geese in my time, I agree that it takes more effort than Fanny says -- but not nearly the amount of fiddling that he does. AND I have a lovely whole bird to be carved at table.

He gets a lot of things wrong. For example: on p.147 I don't know where he got the molasses apple pie from (not Fanny), and it may call for cassia, but that is a kind of cinnamon, not a thickener from which tapioca is made.

His remarks about England show a lack of understanding about languages - No, the British don't get English 'wrong', they just use a different version with different words for some meanings and different meanings for some words. Speaking of which, can late 19th century Boston really be said to be Victorian?

And then he doesn't even bother to print most of the recipes. No, I am not going to bother going to his website. ( )

Mark Bittman called this book, "Part history and part contemporary journalism," and I would add to that, part food memoir and part cookbook. There's a lot going on here. Fannie's Last Supper by Chris Kimball is made up of interweaving stories about Victorian-era Boston, modern-day Boston, and Kimball's spectacular and somewhat baffling attempt to recreate a high-society Victorian-style meal (complete with many equally baffling recipes). Think Downton Abbey with more historical context and set in Boston in 2009.

I love the Victorian era: I love reading about it, watching movies and shows about it, listening to podcasts about it. Really. Love. So, take a book about Victorian history and add in food – recreating Victorian dishes, restoring an authentic Victorian kitchen, etc. – and I should be in heaven, right? Well, in the case of this book, the answer is…sorta.

More here: http://booklovercook.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/booklovercook-reviews-fannies-last... ( )

In the mid-1990s, Chris Kimball moved into an 1859 Victorian townhouse on the South End of Boston and, as he became accustomed to the quirks and peculiarities of the house and neighborhood, he began to wonder what it was like to live and cook in that era. In particular, he became fascinated with Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Published in 1896, it was the best-selling cookbook of its age--full of odd, long-forgotten ingredients, fascinating details about how the recipes were concocted, and some truly amazing dishes (as well as some awful ones).

In Fannie's Last Supper, Kimball describes the experience of re-creating one of Fannie Farmer's amazing menus: a twelve-course Christmas dinner that she served at the end of the century. Kimball immersed himself in composing twenty different recipes--including rissoles, Lobster l'Amricaine, Roast Goose with Chestnut Stuffing and Jus, and Mandarin Cake--with all the inherent difficulties of sourcing unusual animal parts and mastering many now-forgotten techniques, including regulating the heat on a coal cookstove and boiling a calf's head without its turning to mush, all sans food processor or oven thermometer. Kimball's research leads to many hilarious scenes, bizarre tastings, and an incredible armchair experience for any reader interested in food and the Victorian era. ( )

Contrary to what you may think, this was an interesting read; particularly for those who strive for perfection in what they do. Chris Kimball is that type of person, and you are that type person if you read Cooks Illustrated and follow his PBS shows that test recipes, products and processes to strive for that perfect bite.

To produce a meal from Fannie Farmer's 1896 Cookbook, a 12-course "Last Supper," I had no idea Kimball's interest in duplication would go back far enough to begin with purchasing a Boston house similar to one she would have cooked it in (nothing like having the money and production company at your disposal) and purchasing identical equipment (from cookstove/oven to pans and cookware), researching the ingredients and cooking processes available at that time, and committing to using only those available at that time in order to duplicate the dream.

Yes, it made the reading a long and tedious journey, and along the way many readers would be lost in the details learned. But, for me, I found it absorbing and interesting enough to send me searching for the elusive PBS DVD that documents the dinner. I would have like to attend. The table conversation, I have heard, was as tantalizing as the food served that evening.

If you've ever strove to produce a multi-course dinner to 6 or more guests, this book will be of interest to you. In spite of everything, you will feel tempted to copy one or more of the final recipes provided. After all, he did so much to provide them for us. ( )

I expected to enjoy this book because I like some of the author's other writing, but although I diligently tried to finish it, I really can't get interested. It deals with Victorian cookery in excruciating detail- and I really can't bring myself to care about the specifics of Boston neighborhood history, woodstove mechancs and acquiring esoteric ingredients. Mr. Kimball is a better writer of short columns for his magazine that of this book lenght tretise. It migth have fared better as a long magazine article.