Schoolboys also should, and will, be taught. They can help their
mothers at home--why not?--especially in daughterless families; and
there are many occasions in life--when the wife is ill, or when men are
serving in the army or camping--when such knowledge will prove useful.
Apart from practical considerations, it has an educational value, too,
training, as it does, the memory, the power of observation, the senses
of taste and smell, and the inventive faculty, besides inculcating
neatness and cleanliness.
There are times when men who can cook receive better pay than most
others, though their work be both easier and pleasanter. For instance,
in an article entitled "In Canada's Wilderness," which appeared in the
New York "Evening Post" of September 1, 1910, the writer described the
trip of a prospecting party through a section of the Northwest which
was tapped by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad. Speaking of the cooks,
he said that they were "good cooks, and a good cook in that country is
almost worth his weight in fine rubies. They are paid from $75 to $80
a month, and receive housing and bedding. This is more money than any
of the other men about an engineering camp receive, except the engineer
himself."
One of these cooks had been manager and part owner of a great tea
plantation in Ceylon; another had been an officer in a British regiment
and had served in the South African War. He had just sold $12,000 worth
of property in Edmonton.
The London "Daily Mail" of June 20, 1912, gives an account of an Oxford
cooking school which has a special class for men who wish to learn to
cook. It is well attended and the men, so the teacher says, "are very
keen about the work, and much keener than the women would be as to
details. Nothing escapes their attention."
The men work in pairs with the simplest of utensils, and each lesson
extends over an hour. Special stress is laid upon frying and stewing,
and upon the different meals that can be prepared in a pot or pan over
a camp fire. They are taught the various ways of cooking vegetables, of
making meat pies, and how to produce such delicacies as pancakes and
scrambled or poached eggs. Each lesson affords time for cooking three
dishes, and at the conclusion a number of recipes are given, and these
are duly recorded for future reference.
The London County Council began to encourage boys in the autumn of
1910 when a school for teaching them how to cook was started. There
were fifteen pupils. Two years later there were forty. It is only a
small beginning, but from such an avalanche may grow. The aim of the
school was stated to be to equip boys between fourteen and sixteen with
a knowledge of practical cookery to enable them to fill positions as
cooks in first-class hotels, clubs, and restaurants. The course lasts
three years and positions are guaranteed at the end.
According to official statistics, 106 boys in England attended cookery
classes during 1910-11.
Soldiers in all countries have to do a good deal of camp cooking,
and they seem to enjoy it. Circular 11 of the United States Bureau
of Animal Industry is concerned with army cooking. The 1912 report
of Brig.-Gen. Henry G. Shaw, Commissary General, shows that great
advantage has resulted from the schools for bakers and cooks that have
been established at Fort Riley, Kansas City, as well as at the Barracks
in Washington and at the Presidio in San Francisco. During the year 253
cooks, 131 bakers and 52 mess sergeants have been turned out by the
schools as experts.
An English translation has been published (London: Forster Ground
Co.) of the French Manual of Field Cookery entitled _Livre de Cuisine
Militaire aux Manœuvres et en Campagne_. It is a pamphlet of 35
pages, including specifications and pictures of necessary utensils,
with simple recipes, and a preface by the French War Minister, who
remarks, among other things, that it is no longer enough to appoint
certain men to the duties of cooks, but it is "necessary that every
man ... should be able to prepare his own food and that of any of his
comrades, who may not be in a position to do so, by means of the simple
apparatus available."
In continental countries there are many cooking schools for men. In
Copenhagen, for instance, as we read in the "Lancet," "there is an old
frigate moored in a canal close to the most fashionable center of the
town. Here there is a school for ship's cooks. On board a ship with the
limited space such as prevails at sea young cooks try their 'prentice
hands at making dishes such as are served to passengers on sea voyages.
There is an awning on the deck, tables are laid out, and numerous
inhabitants of Copenhagen take their meals there, for they are both
varied and inexpensive. Thus fully qualified cooks are being prepared
for the sea, and it is not necessary to point out that, whether at sea
or on shore, efficient cooking not only adds to the joys of life but is
a very necessary aid to digestion."