Few or no women cook a dinner in an artistic spirit, and
their success in doing it is nearly always the result of
affection or loyalty--which is of course tantamount to saying
that female cookery as a whole is, and always has been,
comparatively poor.
As a proof of this, we may mention the fact--for fact we think it
is--that the art of cooking among women has declined at any given
time or place--in the Northern States of the Union, for
instance--_pari passu_, with the growth of female independence. That
is, as the habit or love of ministering to men's tastes has become
weaker, the interest in cookery has fallen off. There are no such
cooks among native American women now as there were fifty years ago;
and passages in foreign cookery books which assume the existence
among women of strong interest in their husbands' and brothers'
likings, and strong desire to gratify them, furnish food for
merriment in American households. Bridget, therefore, can plead,
first of all, the general incapacity of women as cooks; and,
secondly, the general falling off in the art under the influence of
the new ideas.
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