Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 May 1903 — ONE GIRL WHO CAN COOK. [ARTICLE]

ONE GIRL WHO CAN COOK.

Last week the Democrat mentioned the statment of Robert Webster Jones, in the Housekeeper, regarding the divorce court and bad cooking, “An Indianapolis Girl Who Can Cook” writes a reply to Mr. Jones that is worthy of reproduction. Her reply follows: “Has it come to the point where a young man mast ask ‘Can you cook?’ before he dare ask ‘Will you wed?’ ” cries a late magazine writer hysterically. Not at all. Unless he be a young man lacking in discernment and commonhimself. It staggers one to think of cooking and slovenly housekeeping were the direct causes of 400 divorces iu Chicago last year, as stated by the bureau of charaties. But back of that is the fact that 400 men could deliberately walk into matrimony with girls who had not brains enough to learn common cookery or energy enough to keep decently clean. It is the girl who wears dirty finery, haunts the cheap theater, dotes upon trashy novels, primps in private and poses in public, who thinks if she wears a dangling locket that no one will see her frayed skirt; it is this sort of a girl that a few years later is registered at the divorce court in the poor cook list. And the man who voluntarily chooses sach a wife should not be released too quickly from his bad bargain. He deserves a few years of soggie biscuit and burnt beefsteak to bring him to his right mind —if, indeed, he has one. Nothing less heroic will do it. Let the sensible young man open his eyes a trifle wider before matrimony (and keep them half closed for a while after), and-ere he asks any questions of her let him ask himself a few like these: “Is she a girl of good common sense?” “Is she capable?” “Is she industrious?” “Is she neat personally?” “Is her home kept to all appearances as I want my home kept?” If he can answer these in the affirmative he need not worry about her actnal knowledge of cookery. Such a girl as that will learn, and so speedily that his digestive apparatus will not be impaired in the interim. Many of oar best housekeepers and cooks knew practically nothing of either previous to marriage, as their time had been spent in school or in other lines of activity; but having the ability and desire to do, the learning was merely a matter of practice. However, the too highly accomplished girl is to be regarded with a bit of suspicion. Not so much because her time has been spent upon art as because she has cultivated a distaste for the more practical. She regards all housework as drudgery and does not want to learn; so unless she solved the servant-girl problem and he the financial problem their marriage will be a doubtful proposition. But something is radically and inherently wrong with the woman who “can not learn to cook.” It is really a case of won’t instead of can’t* Why, an ordinarily gifted baboon could learn to boil potatoes if be wanted to! If his beefsteak and potatoes are palatable the man of normal appetite will not go gunning for a divorce because the lemon jelly refuses to stand alone. It is not fancy or scientifically prepared food that he demands, but the plain snbstantials. Ho hates moonshiny stu.ff In these days of free cooking schools, with explicit receipts in even the daily papers, with our markets full of fruits and vegetables that need no cooking at all, with good bakeries supplying every kind of pastry, even meats, salids, baked beans aud baked apples, with * flood of pre-cooked breakfast foods, some of which are really eatable, with every conceivable sort of stuff iu cans, how can a woman fail to have some things upon her table that are good? Laziness and slovenliness are at the root of the matter. As these are traits too prononced to be hidden even daring the coart ing days, we have no more sympathy for him than for her. Bnt is it not possible tb&t poor cooking is frequently assigned as a sort of an alias for a poor something else? It strikes the judge in a tender spot (men are usually hungry) and works upon his sympathies to start with. Besides, as onr friend, Mrs. Partington, remarked, “Every other man that gets into courtis named Alias.”