“Wasteful, Unpalatable, Unhealthful, and Monotonous Cookery”: Culinary Education and Enterprise in US Industrial Society, 1870-1909
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Date
2019-09-18
Authors
Frick, Jamie
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Culinary education was an instrument for social reform and commercial enterprise in US industrial society during the Gilded Age. This thesis traces the urban cooking school movement, beginning in the 1870s, and its relationship to the rise of the home economics movement at the turn of the century. Initially established to reform the diet of the working-class, urban cooking schools increasingly focused on providing leisurely entertainment for a growing population of middle-class women who were navigating the use of contemporary household technology, and who wanted to prepare sophisticated dishes to signify their social status. As the home economics movement grew in the 1890s, it focused on educational reform, professionalization, and scientific cooking methods, distancing itself from lessons in “feminine arts.” After the academic shift of culinary education and home economics, cooking school leaders continued to provide a distinct service to middle-class consumers into the first quarter of the twentieth century.
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Keywords
cooking school, Gilded Age, home economics, industrialization, technology, World's Fair