Domestic Science- 1960’s.

I didn't do cookery beyond 3rd year as the choice was one out of music, art and cookery. My mum was a cookery teacher and always seemed criticalof my creations at school, so music was my choice.

After uni, barely able to boil an egg, I'd have to ring my mum to ask for recipes for old favourites. I did learn to cook some basics as a student but a lot of ready meals were consumed - remember 'Vesta meals'?

I eventually became a competent cook and I do remember being told my school cookery was very good when my mum altered the recipes for hers!

I was at a comprehensive school in the seventies and eighties. I enjoyed Domestic Science very much and remember making hot cross buns from scratch when I was fourteen. I would have liked to take it as an ‘O’ level subject, but if I were in the top science sets, as l was, you were only allowed to take one art subject and music was the obvious choice for me. I remember the display of Christmas cakes made by the fourth years (present day year ten, so fourteen and fifteen years old). When I was a student, I bought A Pleasure to Cook by Sonia Allison. This is still the best cookery book I own as it categorises the recipes by cost and ease or difficulty.

aND hand sew directoire type knickers... with a pocket for a handkerchief and e,lasticated at the knee

Not sure that I agree with compulsory cooking lessons as a good use of school time.
I did no cooking at school. My mother was an excellent cook but I didn’t learn from her but Elizabeth David cookbooks after I’d left home. My family were as healthy as anyone else’s.
What might make a difference I suppose is being able to maintain a tradition of family sit-down meals.

Me neither winterwhite.

I realise there are some children who will learn nothing about cooking at home but I do wonder how home economics equips them for practical meal preparation.

Our domestic science teacher was rather large to say the least and I can remember her waddling into the classroom smoking a cigarette… Not much education on healthy eating back then either
I made some toffee and it was so bad had to throw the whole lot away because it wouldn’t come out the tin, definitely not my favourite subject 😵‍💫

I wish I could have taken DS instead of metalwork, I was useless and hated it.

One of the problems in schools today is that students study food technology rather than domestic science or cookery. They may learn to cook some things but the emphasis is on designing products. This encourages them to shop for ready prepared products such as cooking sauces. If parents use mostly these products how will kids learn to cook from scratch.

@jocork, I do certainly remember Vesta meals - when a student the ‘paella’ was an occasional treat when I was marginally less skint than usual.
Cheapest ‘meal’ I still remember, was tinned tomatoes on toast in one of the student canteens, 9d.

Talking of Home Economics, a neighbour friend of a dd, I’ll call her Sue, was doing it for O level, and one project consisted of knitting a basket of fruit and vegetables - inc. a cauliflower!

Hence when the deadline was looming, dd came to me saying, ‘Sue says could your mum please knit me a lemon, because my mum can’t knit!’ 😂
(I did)

The only thing that stood out from my school cookery lessons in the late fifties, apart from the teacher who wore glasses that made her look like a hungry peregrine falcon, was Russian fish pie. We had to make the flaky pastry from scratch, the fold it envelope style round a filling of cod and parsley sauce, egg wash it and bake it. I thought it was lovely - sort of exotic. My mother couldn’t see the point of all that fiddling about just to eat a bit of cod! Cookery wasn’t my strong point but neither was needlework and we had to make our own gingham aprons and a sort of matching headband. Purgatory.
My first cookery book as a rookie housewife was Marguerite Patten’s Cookery in Colour. It contained diagrams for things such as cuts of meat and types of fish, oven temperatures and the like. It served me well for years and still have it, barely holding together after fifty eight years. That and my Be-Ro book, which I also still have, were my cookery bibles.

No cookery at school for me, Latin instead. Suspect cookery would have been more useful. . I painstakingly copied recipes my Mum used into an exercise book and got my ma in law to write down some of hers, sticking the outcome into the book. The recipes we liked were later transferred to a folder, I still use ma in laws Christmas cake recipe (when I make one) and the one my mum referred to as a medley cake. We bought a Marguerite Patten recipe book which is still here somewhere covered in marks and splashes of cake mix. I wonder sometimes what will happen to them when I’m no longer cooking

Greyduster

The only thing that stood out from my school cookery lessons in the late fifties, apart from the teacher who wore glasses that made her look like a hungry peregrine falcon, was Russian fish pie. We had to make the flaky pastry from scratch, the fold it envelope style round a filling of cod and parsley sauce, egg wash it and bake it. I thought it was lovely - sort of exotic. My mother couldn’t see the point of all that fiddling about just to eat a bit of cod! Cookery wasn’t my strong point but neither was needlework and we had to make our own gingham aprons and a sort of matching headband. Purgatory.
My first cookery book as a rookie housewife was Marguerite Patten’s Cookery in Colour. It contained diagrams for things such as cuts of meat and types of fish, oven temperatures and the like. It served me well for years and still have it, barely holding together after fifty eight years. That and my Be-Ro book, which I also still have, were my cookery bibles.

I still have my "Cookery in Colour" - although I have only had mine for 45 years as I bought it on special offer for £2 in 1980 when I was a student. It has been the family go-to book for it's details of preparation and cooking times for meat and fish etc. DD2 wanted her own copy and I eventually tracked one down on Amazon second hand.

I don't think I ever did cookery at school (I don't count the batch of peppermint creams at primary school).

It was interesting seeing my children do the Swedish version. Learning to plan and cook simple meals from scratch - soups, stews, breads, pastas, one-dish suppers, biscuits cakes etc. For the Swedish GCSE they had to make Paella (that included butchering a chicken and preparing prawns) and make a loaf of yeasted bread. It all held them in good stead at Uni.

She had to sew a formal/party dress and crochet a blanket. There also had to learn vacuuming cleaning and washing as well as budgeting and consumer rights.

I went to a girls only secondary modern in the mid 1950s and we had to make a cap and apron by hand before starting DS which I thought was a waste of time as I had been taught to sew at primary school. Also DS was alternated with swimming so I never really learned to cook until I married in my mid-thirties.

We could give up needlework after two years but I carried on doing it as an after school activity and I learnt so much from a superb teacher.

I started at a co-ed grammar school in 1967, all the girls did cookery and needlework, all boys did woodwork and metalwork. Our DS teacher, Mrs Woodhouse, was a stickler for keeping hair out of the way and she’d have had a fit at eg Nigella Lawson constantly tossing her long hair back (and many other television chefs wearing rings, and often with painted nails).

We did Latin in the first year, with no opportunity to take it again until 6th form. We all did three years of French, with the opportunity to start German as an O-Level option in 4th form. When we chose our options I wanted to do cookery (Food & Nutrition) and German, but if we did cookery we had to also do needlework (Needlecraft & Dress) and it wasn’t possible to choose both needlework and German as they were in the same group of subjects. Madness.

I passed both cookery and needlework, but have never since sewn anything more difficult than curtains!

Witzend

Talking of Home Economics, a neighbour friend of a dd, I’ll call her Sue, was doing it for O level, and one project consisted of knitting a basket of fruit and vegetables - inc. a cauliflower!

Hence when the deadline was looming, dd came to me saying, ‘Sue says could your mum please knit me a lemon, because my mum can’t knit!’ 😂
(I did)

Whatever was the point of knitting fruit and vegetables? Surely it would have been better to have used the real things in order to make a healthy meal. Also, what would you do with said knitted vegetables afterwards? About as useful as all these postbox toppers or the proverbial chocolate teapot.

It's a travesty that Home Economics isn't on the curriculum anymore. Learning about nutrition and cooking is a life skill and the state if the nation's health is appalling as a result. My son's girlfriend came round and helped me prepare the dinner and I had to tell her how to hold the potato peeler correctly. My daughter's Food Tech teacher had a degree in an unrelated subject and every recipe she made the students cook ended up in the bin as they were so bad. I went into the school to discuss but they just listened and took no action. So my daughter gave it up but would have been great at it had she had a decent teacher. But as someone above said it's not a patch on what Home Economics was which I studied in the 70s/80s and even started a degree in it. Wanted to become a cookery writer but started a blog instead in my late 40's.

Musicgirl

Witzend

Talking of Home Economics, a neighbour friend of a dd, I’ll call her Sue, was doing it for O level, and one project consisted of knitting a basket of fruit and vegetables - inc. a cauliflower!

Hence when the deadline was looming, dd came to me saying, ‘Sue says could your mum please knit me a lemon, because my mum can’t knit!’ 😂
(I did)

Whatever was the point of knitting fruit and vegetables? Surely it would have been better to have used the real things in order to make a healthy meal. Also, what would you do with said knitted vegetables afterwards? About as useful as all these postbox toppers or the proverbial chocolate teapot.

That’s what I thought at the time, but on reflection the different items probably demonstrated competence in a lot of different stitches/knitting techniques - the cauliflower, for starters!

Notable that many of those who had to do Latin rather than domestic science date from when the most prestigious universities demanded O Level Latin, presumably as an indicator of something essential. I dropped the domestic skills after the third form but did stick with Art as we all had to do one subject which was regarded as less academic. I married a classicist and my son became one too so my classical education was gained second hand.

I can’t remember much about my cookery lessons apart from the ubiquitous gondola basket and turning the Christmas cake upside down to skewer in sherry. Completely uninterested.

However I found myself cooking on a villa holiday in Greece a few years later (my mother hated cooking and I didn’t go in the kitchen).
Off to the market, bought a half starved chicken, put it in a large pan and covered it with the wine that turned up regularly, and generously, at the villa. Threw potatoes in and it simmered away. Big, and surprising success!

This triggered an interest and newly married, would read recipe books in bed. DH delighted by three course meal each night😇
Now widowed, only cook properly when family are here.

My SIL is a whizz with puddings, cakes and biscuits, she has a light touch. I’m a main course enthusiast. Do you think we tend to be one or the other?

I've still got my mother's and use it!
I remember we were taught how to handwash a woollen vest. I use this method to this day for woollens. I learned all my baking skills at domestic science. Sewing was a different matter - never finished a garment yet!