DECAY OF COOKERY

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 November 1930, Page 10

DECAY OF COOKERY

ENGLISH WOMEN AND KITCHEN.

Miss Victoria Sackville-West, in a recent article on the defects and virtues of this Georgian age, mentioned the view of a friend of hers that the one outstanding defect, typical of all the rest, was the decay of cooking, writes Thomas Burke in the “Sunday News.”

♦ It is an apt illustration, since it takes us right into the home, which is still, despite outward appearances, the basis of English life.

A brief glance will show us that however many good things the home has gained by progress, it has lost a number of equally good things, and good cooking is one of them. Even in old-fashioned homes the duties that the serious housewife once took pride in are no longer observed; and in few home now can one find a wife who cooks —and cooks well. Few homes make their own preserves, "which once every home made; or their own pork pies and game pies, and brawns. Even “home-made cakes” do not live up to their name. They may be baked at home, but they were made in a factory, and come to the home as a ready-made cake mixture. The young married woman of today who cannot afford to keep.a cook will tell you that she cannot afford the time for cooking. But she does not tell you what more useful things, she does with the time she saves from cooking, nor can you perceive how this time is better spent.

You see her going to tennis, and to the pictures, and to dances, and to whatever social functions her circle offers; and perhaps serving on the committee of some foolish society for Something-or-Other; but even these strenuous and picturesque duties do not seem so generally useful as the delightful duty of cooking. The young woman living in the bachelor flat also has no time for cooking. She will tell you that she has her career to think of, and anyhow she doesn’t like cooking. So if you go to supper at her place you are fed either with ready-cooked food she has brought home with her —cooked goodness knows how long ago—or through the tin-opener.

Even those "who can afford to keep a cook are not in much happier position; for, unless you can pay a very high price indeed you can only get cooks who can’t.

A friend of mine who "was engaging a cook-general received this bland reply from an applicant in answer to a question about cooking: “No, mum, I can’t cook, but I will.”

A quarter-century back you could find a good cook in every home. Today you can visit a hundred homes before you will find one. They are so rare that when one does '"■'near we don’t notice it: we have given up all hope of expecting it. We have got so into the habit of eating what is set before us (or starving) that we are no longer able to perceive the differences between the good and the abominable. Partly the restaurant habit is responsible for this. It is so much less trouble to feed yourself or entertain your friends in a restaurant than to prepare a meal in your own home; and when Miss Sackville-West’s friend named the decay of cooking as typical of this age he was putting his finger on the main symptom of this age—the shirking of trouble. “Too much trouble” is a phrase that is often on our lips. Answering letters is too much trouble. Courtesy is too much trouble. Looking after children is too much trouble. Cooking is too much trouble.

But the few woman who still enjoy the delightful craft of cooking kaiow that the trouble of preparing a fine meal with their own hands is amply rewarded with the pleasure of their guests. Even the best restaurant cannot provide so satisfactory a meal as a good cook can provide in her own home —at one-tenth of the restaurant charges. It can provide a more elaborate meal, but never so good. First, there is the great distance between the kitchen and the table. Food is only at its best if served at the moment .when it is ready; and, even when you have ordered a dish to be specially cooked, it is often ready and lying in the kitchen lift for ten minutes while your waiter is busy; and then it has to be carried the whole length of the restaurant. As for the table d’hote and “dishes ready,” those, you may be sure, were ready an hour and a half before you arrived; whatever flavour they may have had has gone out of them, and cheap spicing deputises for the native flavour.

Yet people continue to dine indifferently in restaurants, when they might dine splendidly at home, simply because it is “too much trouble” to spend an hour in the kitchen.