COOKING CLASS AT THE WADLEIGH HIGH SCHOOL
BOYS AND SOLDIERS AS COOKS.
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.