Back to Cooking School!

It’s September! And that means I’m back to finish out the year with some amazing food history topics! I’m really excited to be back and sharing again! I enjoyed my break, but I also enjoy writing, researching and sharing about food history here 🙂

September also means back to school and so I thought the best topic to cover would be the history of cooking schools! Everyone has to learn how to cook. Most of the time, daughters learned at their mother’s side how to cook and keep a house. Almost everything was done at home from cheesemaking to bread baking to making your own beer and wine. If you happened to want to go into the baking or cooking trade, you would start not at a school, but as an apprentice observing the baker or cook and learning directly from them.

Cooking schools began to arise in America in the late 1800s with the Boston Cooking School opening its doors. There women could go to better learn the domestic arts. The school became very famous and I’m planning to write a special post all about it next 🙂 

The dawning of the 20th century found Americans excited to learn how to cook just as they were as excited about all the new inventions arriving at their door steps. The 1940s through the 1960s saw an explosion in cooking schools, cooking shows and cookbooks as housewives learned with Julia Child, James Beard and Betty Crocker. The Culinary Institute of America was founded during these years and has been going strong ever since.

Cooking schools have played a major role in standardizing cooking techniques, measurements, recipes and expectations. And if you like being creative with food, there is no better place to learn!