Jenny Ridgwell Press tagged "I taught them to cook"

Teaching cookery in the 1970s

Posted on June 21, 2009 by Simon Ridgwell | 0 Comments

I am currently writing a book about how I started teaching cookery in London schools in the 1970s.
It’s called I taught them to cook.
Having left university with a science degree, I knew a lot about nutrition and the chemistry of food, but I had no idea how to run a cookery room, manage a boisterous class and cook things. My first lessons were a disaster. Bread rolls baked hard as bullets, cakes that sunk, pressure cookers squirting tomato soup all over us.
The 1970s was a time of great change in our food culture, but I had to teach boys and girls really daft things in order to get them through the CSE and O level Cookery. Lessons included

How to lay an invalid tray and make junket,
Awful offal such as stuffed hearts,
Lots of fatty cakes and pastry.
There were no microwaves, food labelling or computers and we learnt as we went along.
The book includes stories of the different lessons I had to teach and the challenges of teaching in the east end of London in such interesting times as the miner’s and teachers’ strikes, the 3 day week and the introduction of strange new foods including TVP.

Posted in 1970s cookery, I taught them to cook