Delectations: Cooking Children, Part II

ADULTS have a general responsibility to pass on their culture to the next generation, and that includes how to cook and eat well. If they don’t, the culture will be finished, as is happening both here and in Britain. Parents have a particular obligation, but godparents and others should stand in when parents neglect it-as most do.

How do you teach a child to cook and eat well? Watch the child eat over an extended period. Make notes. Explain carefully what he is doing wrong and why: how he should not mix jelly with eggs and fried potatoes, why asparagus is valued more highly than cabbage, why there is an order to courses, why civilized people eat meat rare, the silliness and ingratitude of refusing “strange” foods. . . . Take him out to watch other people eat in restaurants or their homes. Quiz him to make sure he has acquired the proper admiration for refined eaters and the appropriate contempt for others.

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Digby Anderson

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ADULTS have a general responsibility to pass on their culture to the next generation, and that includes how to cook and eat well. If they don’t, the culture will be finished, as is happening both here and in Britain. Parents have a particular obligation, but godparents and others should stand in when parents neglect it-as most do.

How do you teach a child to cook and eat well? Watch the child eat over an extended period. Make notes. Explain carefully what he is doing wrong and why: how he should not mix jelly with eggs and fried potatoes, why asparagus is valued more highly than cabbage, why there is an order to courses, why civilized people eat meat rare, the silliness and ingratitude of refusing “strange” foods. . . . Take him out to watch other people eat in restaurants or their homes. Quiz him to make sure he has acquired the proper admiration for refined eaters and the appropriate contempt for others.