Young Marcia Shaw enjoys helping her mother with household tasks and looks forward to more responsibility after the new baby is born. So Marcia is initially disappointed when her parents hire Fannie Farmer to assist with the cooking. Fannie proves to be a skillful cook and an excellent teacher, and she quickly wins Marcia over by sharing her knowledge of cookery, something the young girl thinks of as magic. “Preparing food well isn’t magic. It’s an art and a science that anyone can learn,” Fannie assures her. But when Marcia has trouble keeping everything in her head, Fannie begins to write it down for her, leading to the invention of the modern recipe. Hopkinson’s spirited story is based on real events in Fannie Farmer’s life before she took a position at the Boston Cooking School, as an author’s note reveals. Hopkinson cleverly breaks the story into sections named after a seven-course meal. The details she chooses to illustrate Farmer’s culinary savvy are likely to interest children — how to know when to flip a pancake, for example — and three ways to tell if an egg is fresh. Nancy Carpenter’s whimsical illustrations are an excellent match for the author’s tone, as they successfully blend detailed Victorian line art for background objects such as stoves and oil lamps (and even Marcia’s parents), with light-hearted cartoon-style renditions of Fannie and Marcia. (Ages 7–10)

Marcia was trying to help her mama. So maybe balancing on top of a tower of chairs to dip candles wasn't such a good idea. And perhaps her biscuits worked better as doorstops than dessert. Still, does her mama really need to hire a mother's helper?
Then Fannie Farmer steps into their kitchen, and all of a sudden the biscuits are dainty and the griddle cakes aren't quite so...al dente. As Fannie teaches Marcia all about cooking, from how to flip a griddle cake at precisely the right moment to how to determine the freshness of eggs, Marcia makes a wonderful new friend.
Here's the story "from soup to nuts" -- delightfully embellished by Deborah Hopkinson -- of how Fannie Farmer invented the modern recipe and created one of the first and best-loved American cookbooks. Nancy Carpenter seamlessly incorporates vintage engravings into her pen, ink, and watercolor illustrations, deliciously evoking the feeling of a time gone by.