The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-07-23
SCHOOL GIRLS SHOULD
 LEARN TO COOK
How to Make Good Coffee as Impsrtant as Arithmetic or Grammar-MOth. CTS Kitchen the Best Cooking SchOOl-In Making Bread, Mind the Rules-Chem.
 istry In Cooking
 Will Help You.


 girls would like to know how to cook. A few years ago I would have been sure that all girls desired to know everything they could about this use- full and necessary art of wonlan's work. But I found in connection with classes in social settlements that girls who had been working hard all day in shops and factories did not take much inter est in the evening in a chafing dish or a stove or anything connected with the kitchen. They told me that they were too tired to enjoy this sort of work, and that it was a greater rest and re- freshment to them to take up studies connected with books, or to do some thing which would help them in mak- ing their clothes.
 Today I am writing for school girls, and feel quite sure that they some- times enjoy dropping their books ana taking hold of one of the most practi- cal employments in life. When you think of 1t, nothing is more practical than the proper preparation of daily food. What to eat, how to cook 1t ana how to serve it are departments which no woman can afford to neglect.
 Il-cooked and ill-chosen food cause indigestion, ill-temper and ill-health. A great deal of food in this dear country of ours is ruined in the cooking. With the finest markets in the world, with plenty or eNeTytHiHS pIouSHt to ouh doors, we waste and destroy and throw away food which in other countries where people are more economical is used to the best advantage, and then we wonder why we continue poor. We might as we'll wonder why we are often plain when we might be beautiful and cross when we might be amiable and out of spirits when we should be calm and tranquil. Our foolish extravagance and inexcusable ignorance are at the bottom of most of the mischief
 Of course every girl wants to be att tractive in appearance. to have bright eyes, a smooth skin, and look of VI tality. No girl will be beautiful or have anything else than a sallow skin, ugly pimples and dull eyes. if she habitually eats poorly cooked food. There is, for instance, widespread prejudice against hot biscuits and coffee. Soggy biscuits and muddy coffee arc enough to poison whoever touches them, but when biscuits are light as puffs, and coffee is clear as amber, both are in- nocuous to people in health. Every girl should learn how to make light biscuits and clear coffee, and this part of her education is just as important as her arithmetic, her grammar, her French, her German, her geometry or any other branches in science which now occupy the attention of girls.
 
 The best cooking school any girl can have is her mothers kitchen, provided her mother knows how to cook. Noth- ing else equals the oportunity one has just there. Three meals a day are set upon the table in most houses. The father comes home tired after a days work, the growing boys are always hungry, and the children may be de- pended upon to eat their share. It . great deal of skill to make an appetiz- ing plate of toast and a really good cup of tea for mother when she has a headache, yet l know any number Of girls whose toast is a scorched, messy looking affair, and whose tea is not fit to drink.
 A girl at home should take pains about these simple everyday things. She should learn how to broil steak and chops, how to cook potatoes in many delicious ways, how to prepare salads in variety which is legion. Little by little, if a girl is interested, she may acquire the art of cooking well at home. and especially she should learn how to make a good loaf of bread.
 Dear girls, believe me that until you have really tried to do this you do not know what an accomplishment 1t Is. and how much care and trouble must be taken before you can know the right quantity of flour and the right quantity of yeast and the length of time to be spent in kneading the bread and in let- ting 1t rise, nor have you the least idea about the temperature of the oven. In the South, where bread Is made in per lection, I have known the cook to go downstairs in the middle of the night that she might see how her bread was coming on. This Is not necessary, and yet bread will not brook neglect. It ha fu1 step of the process must receive intel- ligent care. Good cooking demands as much thought as any other good thing in the universe.
 An artist cannot paint picture. nor, for that matter, can house painter decorate a house without taking pains. As much thought and skill and deXter- ity go into a loaf of bread as into the molding of a statue or the weaving of tapestry or the writing of poetry. Whatever else may be slighted, bread requires conformity to rule. You have heard old-fashioned housekcepers de- clare that they were independent of rules, that they made things by using their judgment and truly to look at them as they work one would think this so; pinch of one thing, a sprinkle of another, a handful of third, a few ingredients airily tossed together a few magical passes, and out comes the souffle or the pudding or the dumpling light as foam Drowned to perfection, with the delicate flavor that a chef might envy. But these good cooks. al- though they do not own 1t, probably au tomatically adheres to rules. There Is some rule that they observe, and fol- lowing this they act with precision which does not need weighing and measuring Most of us get on better If we keep to the rule
 
 tions, absolutely followed, is a friend worth having in the house.
 The advantage of cooking schools for girls Is largely found in the fact that the girls there learn a good deal of the chemistry of cooking. They are told the why and the wherefore They not only acquire deftness of touch, but they learn which dishes may be served together and how to make the most of small portions. The success of a meal depends on good catering. on serving the right things, in the right order. at the right time. Good housekeeping niSans a wise and discreet selection of provisions. Each young girl should learn how to market, how to cater and how to cook and then when she grows up she will be her mothers capable helper and should she marry she will make a good wife. either for poor man or a rich man, just as it happens.
 There Is fun in studying cooking in a class A half-dozen girls get more pleasure out of the work than a single girl can when studying by herself, Ad- 6;tIonal pleanure comes from eating ,1nat has been cooked, at the close or the lesson. There is a great deal Of too in issIIinP invitations to