The School Board of London is doing a good thing
in teaching girls to cook. One of the teachers is henceforth to give lessons in every Board School on food and its preparation, and the girls will be required to attend. And they are to be taught practice/ cooking as well. Twenty-one kitchens are to be established in different parts of London, and each is to be fitted up properly, and presided over by a practical cook, with a salary of £60 a year,—a sum which the most discriminating members of the Board think quite inadequate for the duties expected of such an instructor. And no doubt a mere skilful cook would hardly be sufficient. There should be some gift for teaching as well, and that is by no means a part of the ordinary cook's gifts. It is not as if all the girls could be made to work, as a cook will make his subordinates work. In that case, we should have a practical illustration of the maxim about too many cooks, and the effect they produce on the soup. The cook in question can only avail himself of the practical assistance of a few girls on any one day, and ought, therefore, to have a remarkable gift for teaching by example,—which is never so easy as teaching by strictly superintended work.
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