79 replies to this topic

[IowaDee]

Bryson's from Iowa. I think it may be in the state constitution that we are not allowed to be brash or to brag at all. Honestly, if Bill heard that tape, he would be the one laughing loudest and longest. He is a genius in a teddy bear suit.

[Norm Matthews]

I don't think the refrigerator killed cooking. It promoted it. It kept bacon, eggs, milk and beef and chicken fresher longer for city folk. Early refrigerator freezers were just about big enough to keep a couple of ice cube trays. Frozen food, meat lockers and super markets, and urbanization, plus bigger refrigerator freezers made it possible to manufacture and sell pre made meals, then came mixes. People no longer grew 'victory gardens' or put up their own food in jars nor had fruit cellars.

And this is why I think refrigeration led to the downfall of cooking skills. The lack of a garden (victory or otherwise) distanced the US consumer from the food they ate. People no longer think about where their food comes from. It comes from a plastic-wrapped styrofoam package, of course!

And while lobster could now be sold in Kansas City, refrigeration also contributed greatly to the industrialization of agriculture.

Not that I'm saying refrigeration is a bad thing, mind you. I'm not about to give up my refrigerators and freezers. But if you want one invention that was the beginning of the end, I'd say that's the one. Everything else hinges on the ability to store food for long periods of time.

IMHO Canned goods pre dated refrigeration. Refrigerators were around since the 1920/s Industrialization is what distanced people from farms and back yard gardens. Refrigeration brought farm foods albeit industrial farm foods to the cities. I still think large freezing capacity is more of the culprit. That was in the late 40's, early 50's. By the early 60's people like James Beard and Julia Child had started re awakening people to good and properly cooked home made food by passing up the frozen TV dinners and using fresh super market food because that was what most people had available by then.

Edited by Norm Matthews, 29 January 2012 - 07:45 AM.

[David A. Goldfarb]

I don't particularly care for canned soups, but I suspect they did more to bring new things into the home kitchen as ingredients in other recipes than replace something that people previously made on their own at home. My own grandmothers didn't particularly make stock unless it was chicken stock to be used in chicken soup for a special occasion or a holiday. They made homemade soups, but they usually left the marrow bones in the soup and served it with the bones to someone who wanted the marrow. They made pan gravy or more likely served the meat juices as a sauce (bearing in mind that they kept kosher, so no cream sauces for meat or roux with butter). They weren't making foundation sauces and subsidiary sauces from those or making glazes from stock.

But take a can of tomato soup and a can of beef stock, and you've practically got an espagnole, and if there was canned veal stock (which I doubt has ever been as common as beef or chicken stock or tomato soup or cream of mushroom soup), you would be halfway to demi glace. Ranhofer always mentions ingredients like "mushroom essence," which is an infusion made from mushroom stems, but you have to be using a lot of mushrooms to accumulate enough stems to make an appreciable quantity of mushroom essence. Stocks generally make more sense in restaurant kitchens, where there are meat scraps, bones, and vegetable trimmings to be used, and when there are pots of stock on the back burners, it's easy to be creative about sauces.

Lacking a suitable method of preserving stock, I doubt my grandmothers' mothers and grandmothers made much in the way of stocks and sauces at home either.

TV dinners and cake mix, though--that's another story.

[Alcuin]

When people think about the past, they tend to idealize it. Everybody talks about Julia, Beard, Elizabeth David, Hazan reawakening us to good food. They didn't reawaken, they awakened. Because they had the luxury of time, ingredients, equipment, etc., they were able to codify and promote things like "Italian food" which was and still is an idea that was born of the moment in time (notice this is all post WWII) that enabled them to do this.

I think the fact is that food was not that great, for the most part, in many places of the world around say 1900 unless we're talking restaurants for the spectacularly rich. I would not want to go back there because as jrshaul says it's really easy to cook now. It wouldn't have been so easy then. As a cook you wouldn't only be constrained by your garden, you'd be constrained by everything including your knowledge of foodways outside of your experience. While places like Italy had and still do have amazing repertoire's of skills and knowledge, access to ingredients would have been limited and people would have been making do. I'm sure there were amazing cooks back then, especially in a place like Italy with such a strong and rich food culture, but back in the day as now many people (more people actually) would have been making do. The "peasant" food we love today would have actually been peasant food, and just as today not everybody would be enthusiastic about spending hours cooking. This is not to say there was no good cooking; obviously that's not true. But it wasn't a golden age either. The golden age is now, for those of us who cook avidly.

[jrshaul]

And this is why I think refrigeration led to the downfall of cooking skills. The lack of a garden (victory or otherwise) distanced the US consumer from the food they ate. People no longer think about where their food comes from. It comes from a plastic-wrapped styrofoam package, of course!

I'm not so sure. The US has had a strong urban population for over a hundred years, and I've seen variants on "Milk comes from COWS?" jokes dating back to at least WW1. People have been separated from farms for a while now.

On the other hand, it's worth considering the implications of industrial transport and storage. The average Wal-Mart tomato is more durable and stays fresh longer than the tomatoes of yesteryear. On the other hand, the year-round tomato comes at a price - it tastes like soggy cardboard.

The significance of preserved food has also changed over time. Canned food today is generally considered a second-rate good inferior to fresh or frozen counterparts, but 70 years ago it was the only option for much of the year. There's an old tradition in upstate Wisconsin of drinking home-canned tomato juice during the winter - not because it's particularly tasty, but because it prevents scurvy.

If you'd been drinking straight tomato juice for five months of the year, you'd be pretty keen on canned fruit too.

[Alchemist]

My vote is the Supermarket. This isn’t one product, but the gathering of all products under one roof. Unlike shopping at a butcher, baker and vegetable stand, the Supermarket is chock full of faceless/mass produced products. Quantity of choice trumped quality.

Toby

[Alex]

I like how this discussion has evolved from a question about a commercial food product to embrace a wider sociological perspective: refrigeration, TV (especially advertising), supermarkets, technology, post-WWII, etc. I suspect that all of those play a part. I also think that the rise of the supermarket, as Toby said above, correlates with the rise of the suburbs, especially post-WWII.

[Norm Matthews]

Some people think of olden times and think of dull and dreary food, to the dust bowl, bread lines, depression, Van Gogh's Potato Eaters and the Irish famine but early Americans had more variety of food that some imagine. Sure it was regional and seasonal but even in pre Civil War times people knew how to preserve fruits, nuts and vegetables, to cure and dry meats. Books like American Cookery show that food and cooking was not as one dimensional as some might think. There were pigs, deer, rabbits, squirrels and numerous other varmints not to mention a lot of fresh water fish, turtles, frogs and crawdads and chicken, duck, geese, pheasant, dove and quail. I am sure there were women who wished they didn't have to work so hard and saw cooking as just another responsibility just as there were men who day dreamed that they didn't have to toil from morning to night to provide for the family and there were people who took pride in what they did and wanted to do it well.

Of course they were constrained by their "lack knowledge of foodways outside of their experience". What use would they have for knowledge of which they would never come in contact? The people who did the food preparation knew what they needed to know , just as others know in other cultures such as China, Japan, Greece, Italy, Russia.

[bonkboo]

My original post blew up. but my synopsis is that kids' activities along with a food industry that wants everything to appear as hard, complicate, impossible are the most responsible. Who wants to get home after 19 practices, obligations and have to WORK at getting dinner? But there are few outlets that say: take the time of a sitcom to plan some meals; watch another sitcom and prep; when you get home from work/school/obligations do what you need to round out things. My wife and I both work and like to cook. We virtually every night have something prepare. Yes, sometimes we have a kids' choice meal and always an option. But we are trying to cook stuff we like while exposing our kids. Our oldest daughter, 11, loves to bake. Too many people view Mcdonald's as a viable option. I would be very encouraged by seeing more peers willing to do boneless breast of chicken with cream of whatever. I wouldn't want that for this house, but we do more. But I also think that someone who is willing to do that is willing to be taught to do more.

[ermintrude]

[quote name='bonkboo' timestamp='1327887352' post='1860542']
"Who wants to get home after 19 practices, obligations and have to WORK at getting dinner?"
To right but, rather than supermarket ready meals make your own.
Today just made a mass of Ragu - ingredient cost £25 (Two bottles of wine in there did that so could be a lot less) for at least 18 portions that will be frozen.
Also made sous vide confit duck legs (8) I got in a 1/2 price sale and after them sous vide veg (sprouts & Bacon (2), potatoes butter and mint (2) and cabbage (2) but not sure) again now frozen. All this in one weekend with prob 2 hours cooking at most the rest stirring, checking while I did other stuff.

So for an outlay of say 35 pounds have at least 26 very high quality (and large portioned) meals that when I'm busy, a quick reheat (if not in a rush in the water bath) otherwise in pan or nuke in the microwave and perhaps boil some pasta - compare that with the price of a rubbish ready meal or fast food then cheaper, better, tastier just takes a decision to do it.

It's shocking where all the skills have gone, my mum who cooked the most amazing roast dinners as a child dinners, now has issues making gravy - why because she never does it as her BF only eats un-skinned chicken breast, not that she can't make it but the confidence is not there as it's rare for her to do and confidence plays a huge role in cooking.

Anyway with the age of austerity in the UK here's hoping people get back to home cooking (i.e gum stabilised salad dressings - yup make them at home)

[ChrisTaylor]

I don't know if home cooking has died. Not really. I know, I know, I know. Takeaway is big business. And TV diners, too. Frozen, near-instant meals. But a lot of the things being mentioned here--especially the fridge and the freezer--empowered people who cared about and enjoyed cooking at home. It became possible to improve the quality of your meals a whole lot by, say, making and storing large quantities of stock (or sauce or charcuterie or a lot of other things). It meant that a home cook willing to try new things could access meat, seafood, fruits, vegetables and groceries from all over the country, if not the entire planet, and have them arrive in good condition (and not, say, salted or dried into a totally different product). The rise of factory farming--and supermarket chains, too, with their massive buying power--for all the Bad Things that came with it, meant chicken and pork and beef became more accessible to the everycook. There are all kinds of instant foodstuffs 'enhanced' with all sorts of additives--textural enhancers, umami boosters and such--but these advances, too, have crept into home (and, obviously, restaurant) cooking.

The people who never wanted to cook now have a very easy time of not cooking, although partly the improved financial situation for most people in the world has helped this along a fair bit--if you never wanted to cook and were rich you pretty much always had the option of restaurants/takeaway/et al (maybe not as much of a selection, but still)--but made it possible to live a lifestyle that involves little if any homecooking relatively inexpensively. Being able to cook a very wide variety of foodstuffs in a variety of interesting ways--and the share those experiences with lots of other people from around the world--has become just as accessible as a diet of food that takes <5 minutes to prepare. The reality is that as much as life has become 'better' for people who have more important things to do than cook, such as watch television or get drunk or work really long hours, it's also become much better for people like us.

And, you know what? The freezer and the supermarket and everything else, they've made my culinary life so damn good I'm not really concerned about people who never wanted to cook in the first place. They can keep their canned soup sauce.

[dcarch]

MSG!!

People pretend that they are a good cook by using MSG.

dcarch

[ChrisTaylor]

How is boosting umami any different/better/worse than jacking the sweetness, saltiness, et al?

[Porthos]

My take is that home cooking is not dead - just not nearly as prevalent we would like to see. Both my wife and I cook real meals and both of our adult daughters cook real meals. Instead of looking for a culprit, let us celebrate what we do have here at eGullet. Just my 2 cents ...

[ChrisZ]

I like how this discussion has evolved from a question about a commercial food product to embrace a wider sociological perspective: refrigeration, TV (especially advertising), supermarkets, technology, post-WWII, etc.

Well, that was the point I was trying to make, but (to use a food metaphor) the whole topic is a can of worms. Even if we agree that home cooking has suffered a demise (a debatable topic in itself) there will even be huge differences between countries. But I was trying to suggest that the manufacture of a single product did not play a role in the overall history of food and home cooking, although the attitudes towards a given product would be a product of the time.

While I may be ridiculed for such a crass reference to popular culture, even 'Downton Abby' illustrates that less than 100 years ago the aristocracy had loads of servants to cook everything for them, and that WW1 changed the idea of 'home cooking' more than a can of soup!

I think the thread has evolved to an overall discussion of food history, and one entertaining but also informative TV show that might have escaped notice in the USA is the English production 'supersizers go'. They made specific episodes on the 50's, 70's and 80's and it's interesting to see how food culture has changed in England in only half a century. It's a great, funny show - worth seeking out for anyone interested in food history but doesn't take it too seriously.

[ChrisTaylor]

Also, judging by our lunch and dinner threads alone, an eGulleteers' (double 'e' intended, think Dumas or, if you're of a certain generation, the lackeys of Captain Planet) idea of a great meal or even suitable weekday fare cobbled together when one is tired is maybe perhaps different to that of many normal people. And I'm not just talking about the photos uploaded by, say, ScottyBoy or the people who are working on recipes in the Eleven Madison Park book.

Let's put it this way. The other day I had my first real haircut. Don't misunderstand: I never had my hair down to my arse or anything, it's just that as a child and then a student and then as an adult I went to 'cheap and cheerful' local places that'd do the whole thing, mostly using clippers, in a few minutes. $15-20 and you're set. To someone who charges $60 for a basic male hair cut and almost doesn't touch the clippers at all, the $15-20 quick cut is unacceptable. It's the hair cut version of a can of soup tipped over some microwavable chicken pieces served atop two minute noodles (with the satchets of MSG). To a lot of normal people, the cheap cut does the job. You need to look presentable so you go to such a place and get taken care of. To people who are into that kind of thing, either professionally or out of some desire to look nice or whatever, it's utterly horrid. See also: spirit geeks and Johnny Walker Red. See also: Australian beer nerds and VB, Foster's, et al. There is a certain amount of snobbery involved--something directed at even the best efforts of people who, most of the time, probably regard a meal as no more than filling up the tank.

Edited by ChrisTaylor, 30 January 2012 - 02:17 AM.

[jrshaul]

To people who are into that kind of thing, either professionally or out of some desire to look nice or whatever, it's utterly horrid. See also: spirit geeks and Johnny Walker Red. See also: Australian beer nerds and VB, Foster's, et al. There is a certain amount of snobbery involved--something directed at even the best efforts of people who, most of the time, probably regard a meal as no more than filling up the tank.

The difference between haricuts and cars or food or beer is that haircuts are arbitrary, and the remainder are objectively different.

The preference between two haircuts and the amount of detail required has varied significantly by decade, as has the significance of a particular haircut. What was once an unkempt, wild hairdo is now considered dull and orderly. Beyond keeping hair out of your eyes and soup, there's no real functional difference between the two.

In contrast, an automobile is easily judged objectively. Fit and finish, while somewhat subjective, have definite metrics; safety, performance, and longevity can be determined with a ruler. In almost every way, a Honda Civic is better than the old Volkswagen Beetle.

There's definitely a large amount of personal preference in food, but there's also an equally large amount of objective quality. Fresh ingredients are easily distinguished from their preserved counterparts, and a $13 bowl of ravioli at Olive Garden is inferior in many ways to the $13 bowl of ravioli at a proper local restaurant. Even someone with no prior concept of tomatoes or cheese or Italy will go for the one without the food gum.

Am I a snob? Probably. Some people really can't be bothered about the difference between Olive Garden and the real deal, and that's a question of personal preference, much as wear ugly shoes because I can't be bothered to spend the time and money on non-ugly footwear. The overarching question, then, is why food is now less important than shoes.

[Edward J]

When my relatives from Switzerland visited us in the '70's they were shocked by the size of our refrigerator (very modest model) and the fact that we only went shopping for food once a week.

In Asia, the house hold fridges are pretty small too. My m.i.l. would prepare Chinese n.y. meals of up to 10 dishes for over 50 people, and her fridge was slightly smaller than a bar fridge.

And when I was "invited" to my parent's place, when they were still alive, my Mom who was totally N.Americanized (but still retained her accent) was astounded that I would buy a whole chicken and debone it just for the bones to make stock, neatly wrapping the leg and brst meat for her freezer. It never dawned on her that it was far cheaper to do so and that the bones could actually be utilized.

[LizD518]

I dislike these kinds of threads since my own mother, now 79 years old, has always hated to cook, but she did it anyway. We ate in nearly every night of the week and went out to a moderately priced restaurant once or twice a week. Still, we had hot breakfasts, packed lunches and a home-cooked dinner every night during the week even after my mother went to work full-time. We also so had a kitchen garden and fruit trees that my brothers and I were to tend to when we were old enough to do so.

The "good old days" never were for women like my mother and her sister who dislikes cooking as well, but still did it since she had six children and a husband with a crummy job.

I was talking to my Grandmother (83 yrs old yesterday) about this recently. She, my Mom and one of my aunts were discussing a traditional meat pie they all make. My Mom never uses bought pie crusts - pie crust and biscuits are two of those things she can make in her sleep and nothing else is good enough. And she did work full time for many years, but she also had a garden and canned her own vegetables, made jams, etc, because she enjoyed doing it. My grandmother and aunt always use store-bought crusts - pre-tinned for the bottom crusts and the kind you roll out for the top crust. I don't even think they own pie plates! My grandmother was saying that the modern women of today don't have time to fiddle around with making a pie crust - to which I pointed out that many modern women (and men) today are going back to making their own. But my grandmother raised 8 kids in 12 years as well as working full time so convenience foods were a God-send and there is no convincing her that it is worth the trouble for home made. Holiday meals feature canned corn and peas, cakes are box mixes (and she makes all the family wedding cakes) and sauces are from a jar. But ultimately, her cooking is plenty tasty and we love her and it. But really - I prefer my Mom's pie crust...

[kayb]

I think Chris tags it well. I have friends who consciously attempt to eat healthily, abhor fast food, don't use cream-of soups, patronize the farmers' markets -- and then construct some of the most boring meals on the planet. Veggies overcooked, meat overcooked, both underseasoned, very unimaginative. And they don't like to eat at my house because, well, things are at least adventurous (may be excellent, may be a bust, but they dislike departing from the familiar in either direction). Tastes differ, just like tastes in haircuts differ.

I'm also in ermintrude's camp as far as cooking on the weekend for the week ahead. This past weekend, I did tamarind braised beef over rice, with leftovers that got paired with vegetarian okonomiyaki another night, and I have enough left to put over rice noodles yet another. The pot roast with potatos, carrots and onions has already made one appearance as a roast beef sandiwich, and will turn up in vegetable beef soup tomorrow night. Plus I made a quart of marinara sauce, with no particular plans for it but with tomatos that needed to be used, and a quart of white bean and tuna salad off which I've been lunching all week. Plus I baked a loaf of gluten-free bread that's been serving as breakfast toast all week. And I can come home and have a GOOD dinner ready in 20 minutes.

When I move and get a bigger freezer, I also plan to get a sous vide machine and I expect I'll be cooking more in serving-sized pouches and freezing them, rather than using something during the time period it can be stored in the fridge.

Edited by kayb, 01 February 2012 - 10:02 AM.

[Toliver]

But my grandmother raised 8 kids in 12 years as well as working full time so convenience foods were a God-send and there is no convincing her that it is worth the trouble for home made.

Yes, this. My aunt raised my mom and one day a week was baking day. You didn't buy your bread, rolls, etc, at the store. You baked it all yourself from scratch. It was a lot of work for a huge family and when Biquick debuted, my aunt embraced it eagerly. Anything that coud lessen the overall time spent on the weekly baking was seen as a blessing.
So don't look down your nose at those who choose to use canned this or boxed that. It is their choice and it may be saving them precious time to spend doing something else.
That being said, I believe my mom's Bisquick-topped peach cobbler will kick your peach cobbler's butt any day of the week.

[annabelle]

Yup. If it weren't for the evil Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines, my mother would have never baked our birthday cakes.

Toliver, when I was ten or so we lived in Bakersfield and the dairy that delivered our milk also delivered bread and doughnuts. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the dairy. This was about 1968, I think. Any idea who it was?

[gdenby]

Let me offer this.

My first thought was cans of creamed whatever soup. They've been my crutch, and tho' my mother was an exceptionally good cook, they were hers, also. But then I have to add the ready-made pancake mix, the blocks of cheese process stuff. And on, and on. All of the stuff that has been the best stuff since sliced bread, including sliced bread. The process goes back at least to Napoleon, and the invention of canning.

Yet another layer. A few years ago, a young fellow hit me with this:

"Your generation was so lucky." he says

"How so?" I asked

"You had Kraft macaroni and cheese."

"What?"

"You at least had to know how to boil water. My generation just has the microwave."

My younger son was able to confirm this. Among his college house mates, one could not even make mac-n-cheese from a box.

I'll offer one more thing. Home cooking lost its prestige. Indeed, many home cooks only did the job because it was necessary. But there were some who went out of their way to do better, or at least eventually gained the skill to make something exceptional. As the saying still goes "as good as grandma made..." as if the product was as good as someone who had spent maybe 70 years on a particular dish. Why would anyone bother learning something that did not at least bring the accolade of their family? Why would anyone now want to learn how to "flip burgers?"

[annabelle]

There is a snobbishness about not being able to cook that I've never understood. It's almost as if the lack of a vital lifeskill and a means of economy in one's budget is something to be bragged about.

[Alcuin]

I guess a thread like this will always end up at some point hitting on the notion that saying that people have lost some cooking skills and that facility in the kitchen, or knowledge about food, has declined has to mean at the same time that the person saying this has a low opinion of any cook who takes shortcuts and a high opinion of his/her extremely virtuous every thing from scratch point of view. I don't care to criticize what people like: it doesn't really matter. My take is that if you like it, it's good. One thing I like is cream cheese on toasted storebought mushy pumpernickel bread with generic green olives on it, or macaroni tossed with butter and cottage cheese. I ate these things as a kid and still have a soft spot for them. Judge it if you like, but it doesn't really matter. At the same time, I can say it's a shame that many people seem to think anything more than putting a bunch of stuff in a crockpot and turning it on is too much work to consider.

I don't have to judge what people make or like or how they view food, just because I do think food is important. I can also say that I think less people know how to cut up a chicken, an easy and important skill, while also not caring that my friends don't know how to do it. I don't judge them for it, though I've let them know I think it's a good thing to know and that I'd show them (some of them have taken me up on the offer too).

There may be a decline in cooking skills or not and of course nobody is in a position to know definitively. I think that for many people there has been, since simple sauces like tomato are used exclusively out of the jar by many and many cooking tasks are considered unthinkable, despite the availability of stuff like canned tomatoes, a little oil, and garlic which makes a sauce in about 15 minutes (a little longer than the pasta takes to boil). Many people don't cook as much because they don't have the skills to do it efficiently, and for other reasons which are surely very reasonable but which I'm not talking about, and this is despite the fact that kitchens are so advanced these days, with many people having access to refrigerators, microwaves, ranges and ovens, cheap and effective knives, economically priced stick blenders, etc. People will talk about making gigantic pots of very easy to make soup not because they don't have the time, but because it seems like such a monumental task to them. This is something that I and many many other people here, with our decent knife skills and solid knowledge of food which we learned from experience not mental osmosis, can make in an hour. It's too bad these skills weren't more widespread.

Here's another thing: putting food in your body is a pretty crucial thing you do several times a day: as far as interactions with your environment go, eating is pretty invasive and we do it every day. That's why people get up in arms about a food culture that legislates that pizza is a vegetable in school lunches because of the tomato paste. There's something wrong when we've gotten to the point when the absurdity of that even needs to be pointed out, let alone become part of a program for feeding kids every day they are in school (a lot of the time of their lives). Canned soups or whatever else didn't singlehandedly take us here, but they didn't help (even if they did help people in other areas of their lives).

I just don't think people who want to point out that something went wrong with our food culture are blaming and criticizing people, which seems to be an inevitable subtext whenever anybody starts a thread like this.

edited for clarity

Edited by Alcuin, 01 February 2012 - 03:03 PM.

[Toliver]

Why not put the onus on quick-drying concrete/cement?
Concrete used to create the highways/freeways that allowed for the transportation of goods from one area of the country to another. I grew having known shopping in supermarkets all of my life. Oranges and apples were never out of season. Today I can get aspargaus year-round at my local supermarket. I may not buy it out of season and will stay away from it until the price is more reasonable, but it's there if I want it, 365 days a year.
This is the same concrete poured into every foundation of fast food restaurants which seemed to have multiplied like rabbits since I was a child. My mom says fast food was never an option when we were kids. Going out to eat at a restaurant was only for a special ocassion. Today?...not so much. Today there are so many more choices that can be made when it comes to sourcing our meals.
The OP is looking to throw a black hat onto the one thing that has caused the demise of home cooking but it's not that easy. I think he or she will have to buy quite a number of black hats because there isn't just one answer to the question.

Regarding this previously quoted quote:

But my grandmother raised 8 kids in 12 years as well as working full time so convenience foods were a God-send and there is no convincing her that it is worth the trouble for home made.

When my mom retired after 25 years of working for a local hospital, she told me if she never cooked another meal it would be fine with her. She was expected to hold down a fulltime job and then come home and cook dinner for the family (as an aside, that's how my oldest brother and I became interested in cooking. For example, my mom would leave notes instructing us on how to put a roast in the oven when we got home from school so she'd have a head start on making our dinner).
My dad certainly wasn't going to do what she did and there was no expectation, societal or otherwise, for him to do it, either. Making dinner was put on her shoulders. Hopefully, today it's a different story in a lot of households.
So I don't blame my mother for using condensed canned this and frozen boxed that. If it helped her get the dinner on the table sooner and with less effort, the more power to her.

[annabelle]

I'd like to see actual proof that people don't cook at home anymore.

Just because you may be cooking with convenience foods occasionally, doesn't mean you aren't cooking.

Sweeping indictments of "the way most people cook" are not necessarily factual.

[BarbaraY]

I can't choose any one item that led to the demise but I have watched it happen. I grew up in a family that cooked everything from scratch at first. My grandmother finally succumbed to a cake mix once and that was enough. My mom on, the other hand really, needed the cake mix. She loved to try new recipes but wasn't very good at it.
Married in 1953, I started cooking from scratch and have continued to do so. Can anyone explain why my daughter, who is a great grandmother, prefers to eat Jiffy cornbread, Bisquick or canned biscuits, cake mix cakes, jarred spaghetti sauce, etc.

[Mjx]

I really think people's use of convenience foods is in the 'If you build it, he will come' category.

After all, once, everyone cooked from scratch because they had to; some hated it, some loved it, some were brilliant at it, some sucked, and most people probably didn't give it much thought, and were okay at it. As soon as various convenience foods came into existence, those who hated cooking/knew what they made was appalling/just had no time, joyously embraced them: they were lifesavers. Those who loved cooking used them far less... same as today.

I don't think any one product, or even general category of products changed things in itself; the people who wanted or needed them met them halfway.

It isn't even a matter of upbringing/exposure, since my sister and I, who both grew up in the same food environment (virtually no convenience foods) stand at the opposite ends of the spectrum, cookingwise: I enjoy cooking, started voluntarily when I was about eight, enjoy fiddly, time-consuming technical aspects and lots of science, am demanding to the point of psychosis about what the quality of the content of any cookbook I buy, and become depressed and miserable if things go pear-shaped; my sister never cooked until she was an au pair and in her twenties, began inauspiciously by burning some rice, hates fiddly, detailed recipes, buys cookbooks for their attractive titles or pictures, and is almost pleased when yet another culinary effort tanks. I tend to be dissatisfied with what convenience foods bring to the table, while my sister is quite likely to use them.

I'm fairly certain that if convenience foods had emerged in, say, the renaissance, just as large of a percentage of people would have embraced them then, but by now we'd regard them as culinary classics.

[jrshaul]

I'd like to see actual proof that people don't cook at home anymore.

Just because you may be cooking with convenience foods occasionally, doesn't mean you aren't cooking.

Sweeping indictments of "the way most people cook" are not necessarily factual.

Philadelphia Cream Cheese is now advertising heavily how their products can be used to thicken sauces. Instead of, y'know, a roux. And people wonder why we're fat?

Most people under the age of 40 have a very low failure tolerance, and not unreasonably so. Most food worth the labor is very cost intensive, and blowing $10 on a new recipe with a tricky cooking technique has a much higher risk/reward ratio than buying some burgers. I'm not what I'd call a talented chef, and it took me a several tries and a lot of burned pans to make Bananas Foster properly.

Of course, I can now knock off $50 in restaurant-grade dessert for eight people in about ten minutes using maybe $10 in ingredients. Such is the pay-off for cleaning all those pans. But most people can't be bothered.

I'll offer one more thing. Home cooking lost its prestige. Indeed, many home cooks only did the job because it was necessary. But there were some who went out of their way to do better, or at least eventually gained the skill to make something exceptional. As the saying still goes "as good as grandma made..." as if the product was as good as someone who had spent maybe 70 years on a particular dish. Why would anyone bother learning something that did not at least bring the accolade of their family? Why would anyone now want to learn how to "flip burgers?"

My grandmother has been cooking for over seventy years. She's still awful. Of my remaining 90+ relatives, the food made by the remainder generally favored complexity over technique and cost too much money.