For Those Who Cook Young
The fall of "scratch" cooking, and the generations bringing it back
While on an outing to the Stone Zoo yesterday, we stopped to examine the zoo’s two oldest animals, a pair of gila monsters who were born in 1990 and 2006 respectively—positively geriatric creatures by zoo standards, we were told by the friendly zookeeper. He went on to tell us their names, “Ren and Stimpy…after an old cartoon.” I chortled and immediately said that the show was a staple of my childhood (even if I wasn’t exactly allowed to watch it). He immediately backpedaled, apologizing for calling the 1991 Nickolodeon classic “old,” though I imagine it predated him by a solid decade, and we laughed it off pretty quickly. But it also immediately brought to mind a truism that I heard over and over again while at the Smithsonian, that you visit such an institution three times: once as a child, once as a parent, and once as a grandparent. Never again would I fall into the first bucket; despite my best efforts, I was now squarely in the parent/adult phase of my life.
I had a similar reminder of this earlier this summer, when I picked up a copy of Clementine Paddleford’s 1966 Cook Young Cookbook at a used bookstore in Asheville, North Carolina. At the time of its writing, Paddleford was 68 years old—she passed away a year later—and so she wrote of the target demographic for her cookbook with a slight chortle not unlike the one I leveraged at the zookeeper, but also with an begrudging note of respect:
Young is the world. Young is everything—fashion, recreation, reading, travel—and certainly food. High-spirited, high-geared, young people are the trail blazers. They signal change. Where they adventure everyone follows, regardless of age.
Now there is a young revolt in the ways of cooking, as in the manner of clothing. Cooking is done the easy way, with convenience foods as the timesaving ingredients.
Cooking from ‘scratch’ is no longer the brag thing. Even Grandma and her league practice being instant gourmets. They admit to cooking the soft way, while once upon a time it was considered hush hush to own a can opener. Today even the regional dishes are being updated to a faster time tempo.
In the mid-1960s, before the Julia Child revolution had fully hit American homes, “scratch” cooking—or cooking from whole raw ingredients like meat, fruits, and vegetables rather than from packaged goods—may have seemed impossibly old-fashioned to much of Paddleford’s readership. The point of the mid-century American grocery store was to offer the housewife a wide array of ready-made convenience foods and pre-processed ingredients, hermetically wrapped in cellophane for her enjoyment. Such packaging allowed not only for the surplus of wartime packaging goods to find a purpose in the American consumer marketplace, but also to reassure shoppers about the quality and shelf stability of their goods, now at unbeatably low prices.
The types of goods for sale, and the appliances that they would be cooked on, all promised to expedite the work of the home cook, to allow her to spend as little time as possible in the kitchen so that she might have a fuller, more enjoyable life while still fulfilling her duties as wife and mother. Assembling recipes from “convenience foods” did more than simply deliver maximum flavor to everyday cooking; they also made efficiency the key ingredient in the best possible meal. Young cooks did not identify as what Paddleford termed “high bonnets,” preoccupied with stuffy old-fashioned preparations, but would rather “do things in a hurry, but do it in style.” Fussiness in either presentation or serving was no longer a demarcation of skill. Getting good food to the table, even if it meant serving it raw—see the ascendancy of the crudite tray in the 1960s and 1970s—was what mattered most.
Just like Paddleford, I’m impressed by the culinary impulses of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, especially because their interest in “scratch” cooking signals a resurgence in genuine experimentation and curiosity. Especially for those who came of culinary age during the pandemic, online cooking videos have been a boon to their gastronomic educations. Additionally, the continuing challenges of inflation and supply chains, along with a globally inclusive palate that exceeds those of previous generations, have all made today’s home cooks far more adventurous than those of the past. They are far more aware of the many retail resources for the enterprising home cook, including those used by professional cooks, than cooks of the past, and are more likely to seek out new ingredients in international grocery stores than many of their predecessors. Gen Alpha kids are even taking an active role in cooking in their familial homes, relieving the pressure of daily meals by turning prep work into bonding time with parents and grandparents. Not to sound like an old fogy, but it does seem like the kids are all right.
And yet much of food media still frames home cooking as a middle-aged person’s game, perhaps based on a financial rather than pedagogical calculus. Long ago, we were supposed to invest in our first important pots, pans, and cookbooks in our early twenties, and start building our palates long before then, especially if you were of a generation where getting married before you turned 25 was the norm. Nowadays, however, a person has to be somewhat settled in place, and somewhat emboldened by a stable income or living situation, to develop a home cooking aesthetic and practice. I’ve been “working in food” in some capacity since my late twenties, and it’s taken me over a decade to become fully confident of what I’m doing in my own kitchen, to improvise with a fair degree of certainty that what I’m doing will be edible on the first try. But it’s also taken me about that long to know how to spend my money wisely: to splurge for the organic strawberries, but save on the mass-produced baby carrots. If I’m “over the hill” as a consumer, in some ways I’m barely into my culinary adulthood.
My daughter, however, doesn’t need to wait until her forties to learn from generations’ past. She can go to the grocery store with me and look at packages side by side; hull strawberries and slice bananas with her kid-friendly knives; taste pasta to determine if it’s al dente. I don’t teach her these things as a form of cultural capital per se (though it undoubtedly is), but because I’d like to seed a sense of curiosity and possibility in her long before she ever comes of cooking age. Because even as I’m aging out of the cool culinary demographic, I have to believe in Paddleford’s assertion, that “youth is the predominant ingredient.”
Recommended Reading: If you read one article this week, make it Chloe Laws’ unmissable treatise at Polyester Zine on the persistence of fatphobia in so much of food social media. (Yes, paywalled, but pony up the 3 quid if you can, it’s well worth your read.) We have to ask what it means to develop a generous culture of food appreciation when so many of its evangelists still confirm to such limited beauty norms…and whether public-facing food authorities are allowed to both, in Laws’s words, “indulgence in food and love it” and “‘look’ like we do.”
The Perfect Bite: Having spent three lovely days in New York earlier this week, I had no shortage of great eats. The dish that truly blew my mine was at Olmsted, a carrot crepe with a carrot butter and sunflower sauce that hid juicy bites of littleneck clams. I love a dish that I don’t understand on paper but that comes together perfectly on the plate, and this was no exception. Absolutely tremendous, and makes me want to bring home bags of mussels and clams for more home cooking experimentation.
Cooked & Consumed: Even though tonight was a leftovers’ night, to eat up the last of grilled pizza made earlier in the week, I wanted to use up a giant head of Napa cabbage that had been lingering in the refrigerator, to add a bit of protein and vegetal goodness to balance out the meal. This vegan (but easily made vegetarian) recipe for roasted chickpea and cabbage salad, with a bright sumac-spiked dressing and some gremolata-style breadcrumbs on top, was a perfect side, and will be even better for lunch tomorrow.