THE ART OF COOKING

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22340, 2 March 1938, Page 8

THE ART OF COOKING

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PBESS. Sir, —I was pleased to see a correspondent interested in “The Art of Cooking.” “X” draws a very unappetising picture of food badly cooked and presented to the hungry man and children in the average home, and it is surprising how so many persons manage to thrive on the fare that comes out qf a frying pan, and out of tins, which are the substitutes for good, cooked food with the busy housewife. Good cooking is an art that is fast dying out in this life of rush and speed, and living in flats and tenements, where the space and conveniences for cooking are not catered for. All tend to cast their reflections on the woman, who is supposed to have, among her other accomplishments, a thorough knowledge of cooking. The good cook is neyer bustled. The man or woman executing the culinary artistic dishes that so delight the taste of mortal man needs time to think and prepare, before placing the food over the Are, or into a well-regulated oven, and not be, as so many mothers are at that particular time, busy with the baby, helping the older children to get ready for school, and trying to satisfy her impatient husband that the steak she has rushed to turn, “won’t be a minute.” Between the mother’s spasmodic stirring of the porridge pot and attending to the children, the steak gets burnt and the porridge becomes lumpy, and the husband’s thoughts naturally turn —between vigorous attempts at mastication —to Communism. Even in restaurants and hotels, if one orders apple-pie, one is served with a few stewed apples and a piece of block pastry, which neither looks nor tastes anything like the original pie that “mother used to make,” and which had a distinct flavour of its own. How many of the “so-called cooks of to-day” know how to make and cook a Yorkshire pudding? Such a simple dish, but one that is either turned out like leather, or cooked to death like a dried crust, but, if made in the proper way. should be brown and crisp and juicy with the gravy that has dripped into it from the roast beef cooking on a stand in the same dish. , , It is time we had schools for cooking. where girls and perhaps boys could learn the art of preparing and cooking wholesome food such as is needed in the average home, and not the fancy dishes, cakes, and biscuits that are such a feature of the cooking classes in the schools at present. The time at the disposal of these classes is too short to be of any material benefit and the tuition too sketchy to linger in the minds of the student for any length of time. Mixed with so many other studies, the art of cooking is not given its proper place among subjects that are taught for other commercial purposes. If we could work the cooking classes in conjunction with the school, where meals could be served to the,.students at. a moderate charge, full meals could be prepared by the cooking class, under a competent cook or chef, and instead of one hour a week, which I think is the rule now. a whole day a week where three meals could be prepared should be the time allowed. We might then, under such a scheme, turn out cooks and chefs equal in ability to any other trades and later, given their opportunity, housewives who take a pride in the culinary arts.—Yours, etc.. FOND OF COOKING. February 28, 1930.