Cooking school

“ The early age at which girls go to work in factories increases the evil; and, till lately, nothing which was taught at school helped to remedy it. Here, too, however, the change has begun, and now, in the Board Schools of London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, and other large towns, the practical teaching of cookery holds almost as important a place in the education of girls as the teaching of sewing. But the question remains for the managers of voluntary schools: Is cooking worth teaching? ”

“ After the pupils have acquired a knowledge of the "why and wherefore" of the different processes required in cooking, they will have little difficulty in following the more elaborate recipes given in the numberless cook-books provided for household use. Once the art—and it is a fine art—of cookery is mastered, it becomes not only a pleasant occupation but provides excellent mental exercise, thereby preventing the reaction which frequently follows school life. ”

“ So it was decided that some of the sisters should go to a cooking school which was being conducted by a woman by the name of Miss Porter, in the Exposition Building, Nineteenth and Washington Streets. I happened to be one of the chosen number, and we took a series of twelve lessons, principally on preparing dainty dishes such as could be used for the sick.
After I had completed this course, I was appointed to [68] teach cooking to the nurses in the training school and the young sisters in addition to my other duties. ”

“ Mitchell, with the amiable intention of instructing servants in the different branches of the culinary art, and of saving the British stomach from being experimented on by their ’prentice hands. The School of Cookery is not a place of mere theoretical study, but a real working establishment, with a scientifically fitted-up kitchen, presided over by a chef de cuisine, a master of his art. The cooking is by no means illusory ”

“ But, notwithstanding all that has been done by South Kensington lectures in London and Miss Corson's Cooking School in New York to popularize the culinary art, one may go into a dozen houses, and find the ladies of the family with sticky fingers, scissors, and gum pot, busily porcelainizing clay jars, and not find one where they are as zealously trying to work out the problems of the "Official Handbook of Cookery." ”

“ If a pupil has learned to prepare Creamed Potatoes she should be able to apply the principle to the cooking of Potato Soup. In making chocolate beverage, the pupil learns to blend chocolate with other ingredients. The knowledge gained in making chocolate beverage should be applied to the flavoring of a cake or of a dessert with chocolate. In all the thousands of recipes appearing in cook books, only a few principles of cooking are involved. The pupil who appreciates this fact becomes a much more resourceful worker and acquires skill in a much shorter time. ”

“ APPLYING SCHOOL ACTIVITIES TO HOME WORK.—There is no more effective way of gaining skill in cooking and housekeeping than by applying the methods learned at school in your home. It is not enough for you to make cookies or cook potatoes once in the school kitchen. If you would become an expert in these processes, repeat them many times in your home. Your efforts will be more than repaid by your own growth and by the satisfaction your achievements will bring to the entire household.
Discuss your school work in food study with your mother. ”

“ It is just there that benefit is derived from European culinary skill; the judicious use of a few inexpensive sweet herbs, and savory sauces, will raise a side dish, made from the cheapest cut of meat, in gustatory excellence far [Pg 4] above a badly cooked porterhouse steak, or a large but poorly flavored roast. Because the art of utilizing every part of food is eminently French, the New York Cooking School plan has been to adapt foreign thrift to home kitchen use. To provide enough at each meal; to cook and serve it so as to invite appetite ”

“ Urge the pupils to think for themselves, and not to rely upon the text-book. Where pupils are backward, or have not had previous practice in kitchen work, give special attention to their manner of holding a knife or spoon in preparing articles for use, and in beating or stirring mixtures. Encourage deftness and light handling of kitchen ware. Insist upon promptness and keeping within the time limit, both in preparing the food and in the cooking. ”

“ The difficulty in linking cooking-schools on to the common schools is, that the practice of cookery is not regarded as education, and this is but a part of the old notion that nothing practical or manipulatory is properly education. ”

“ The good ladies of Lynmere set up an “Ecole managère”—a school of domestic management, we suppose we may call it—where the village girls were to learn cooking and other good works. Now a school of cookery, admirable as it is in theory—the amount of ignorance on that subject throughout every county in England being blacker than ever was figured in educational maps—presents considerable difficulties in actual working. To learn to cook, it is necessary to have food upon which to practise. Final success, in that art as in others, can only be the result of a series of experimental failures. ”

“ Educational and industrial unions, where the products of the culinary skill of women are offered for sale; diet-kitchens, in which wholesome dishes are sold at small price; cooking schools like those in the city of Boston, in which the girls in the public schools are taught methods of cooking; private schools, such as the Boston Cooking School and the New York Cooking School, to which one may go and take one or many lessons in invalid, family, or fancy cooking, and where demonstration lessons are given throughout the year ”

“ There have been borrowed by our people from the French, English, and Germans the best cooking methods of each, and, combining these with American ideas, methods, and agencies, we have developed a school of cookery purely American, which is the perfection of culinary art, at once the delight of epicures and the hope of physicians. ”

“ With this inauguration of regular cooking it seemed especially desirable to take the opportunity of training at least some of the students in the selection, care, and preparation of food. The majority of these girls will be the mothers of the next generation, and yet they know nothing of food values or food preparation. This is evident from the daily lunches they bring and from their discussions in the class on hygiene. ”

“ Even in high schools and grammar schools this work is making its way. To-day a study of cooking is required of every girl in the Boston common schools, as well as in other schools in Massachusetts. In the Providence Manual Training High School, Miss Abbie L. Marlatt, a graduate of the Kansas Agricultural College, conducts a most admirable course in domestic science, covering a period of four years. ”

“ We must not let it be supposed that the instruction given below-stairs is purchased at the expense of the company, in the dining-room, as the cook is responsible for the proper serving of the dinner; but the actual working of a dinner, with its twelve or fourteen courses, gives a reality to the instruction which could not in any other way be obtained. Only those servants who have some knowledge of plain cooking are allowed to receive instruction in this school, as it is rather a finishing establishment than a seminary for simple instruction. ”

“ If a pupil buys his luncheon at school, hot, wholesome, nourishing foods such as cream-soup vegetables, eggs, cereal puddings, cocoa, and milk should be purchased. It is unfortunate if pastry and sweets are chosen to the exclusion of the foods just mentioned.
In case the plainer foods are selected, it is a mistake for the pupil to narrow his purchase to a very few foods such as meat, potatoes, and pastry. Too often pupils get in the habit of choosing foods which furnish too little variety in composition. Learning to like many different foods is a characteristic one should strive to develop. ”

“ She would make a sad failure who would prepare just enough rice to serve four persons when six were to be seated at the table. She might be able to cook the cereal well and to tell many interesting facts concerning its growth, composition, and preparation, yet for the lack of a little homely knowledge the meal would be disappointing. A thrifty housekeeper would not buy enough lettuce or spinach for ten people when there were only six to be served. In the school kitchen always note the quantity of the materials used, and then observe the quantity of the finished product. ”

“ The relation of one recipe to another is shown in this text and should be constantly emphasized. The pupils should be made to understand that there are a few basic recipes from which many may be developed.
Much attention should be given to the cost of foods. At frequent intervals, pupils should be required to compute the cost of particular dishes or of entire meals. The buying of foods by the pupils is most valuable. In table service lessons, it is advisable to have the pupils not only plan and cook foods but, when possible, buy them. ”

“ After the teacher has found out what meats are used in the homes or what the school can afford to use, she should determine upon a method of cooking that will make the meat palatable, digestible, and attractive. If it can be prepared as a stew, she should use a recipe in which vegetables are also used and, if possible, have dumplings prepared to serve with the meat, as a review of the lesson on batters. ”

“ We are admonished by many innovations that times have changed. The fact that graduates from Colleges of Home Economics are taught to see the subject in "its broad relations, both to science and to practice," and that every graduate is expected "to have a fair working knowledge of the household-arts" 95 and be able to cook a meal or make a dress, has given the practice of the so-called homely arts an impetus that will do much for the betterment of the race. Cooking and sewing have had a renaissance. ”

“ Finally, simple and elementary cooking comes well within the scope of the education of elder girls at school. But it must be taught seriously to make it worth while, and as in the teaching of needlework, the foundations must be plain. To begin by fancy-work in one case and bonbons in the other turns the whole instruction into a farce. In this subject especially, the satisfaction of producing good work, well done, without help, is a result which justifies all the trouble that may be spent upon it. ”

“ In a large class this may occupy the entire time in the school-year. Let the most important operations be thoroughly learned, even if there is little variety. To make and bake all forms of bread, to broil a steak, boil a potato, and make good tea and coffee, may not seem sufficient result for a year's work; but the girl who can do this has mastered the principles of cooking, and is abundantly able to go on alone.
The fire should be made and cared for by each in turn, and the best modes of washing dishes, and keeping the room and stores in the best order, be part of each lesson. ”

“ She may prefer to lead the pupils to develop a recipe. The latter method is valuable in training pupils to know the proper quantity of food materials to combine for practical recipe making, and to know how to substitute one food material for another. ”

“ We have fifty kindergartens to-day where five years ago we had one, and their method has invaded the whole system of teaching. Cooking, the only kind of temperance preaching that counts for anything in a school course, is taught in the girls' classes. ”

“ All out of breath they reach the school room, ready for the five hours' work with books, which is the same as any average school in the North. This work being accomplished, they are off to the farm, shops, the sewing room and the cooking class. Here they learn to prepare all substantial food which would be necessary for any table, and become initiated into the intricacies of bread, pie and cake-making. ”

“ There surely was much prose in cooking for a family, in pots and kettles hung on its hooks and trammels, over the burning coals and smoke. Long-handled frying pans, spiders, skillets, turnspits, bake kettles, and Dutch ovens would be unknown quantities to graduates from modern cooking schools ”

“ You have not a whole cooking range or a kitchen full of cooking pots, and so you have to learn to cook your food in the simplest way with the means at your hand, such as a simple cooking pot or a roasting stick or an oven made with your own hands out of an old tin box or something of that kind.
NATURE STUDY
It is only while in camp that one can really learn to study Nature in the proper way and not as you merely do it inside the school ”

“ The pupils who are to prepare the hot dish may make the necessary preparations before school or at recess, and 188they must so time the cooking that the dish will be ready when required. They should be allowed to leave their desks during school hours to give it attention if necessary. In schools where this method is adopted, it has been found that the privilege has never been abused, nor have the other pupils been less attentive on account of it. ”

“ Cooking class at Benson Polytechnic School for Girls, Portland, Oregon. In spite of the statement that foods will be prepared in the public utility plants, the trained, accurate worker may find a ready sale for home-cooked foods
Not all girls, on the other hand, who have taken the domestic science course are fitted to take up this work, even if a market could be found for their work. ”