A Most Essential Accomplishment
[
Testimonies for the Church 1:682-687
(1868).]
It is a religious duty for those who cook to learn how to prepare
healthful food in different ways, so that it may be eaten with enjoy-
ment. Mothers should teach their children how to cook. What branch
of the education of a young lady can be so important as this? The
eating has to do with the life. Scanty, impoverished, ill-cooked food
is constantly depraving the blood, by weakening the blood-making
organs. It is highly essential that the art of cookery be considered one
of the most important branches of education. There are but few good
cooks. Young ladies consider that it is stooping to a menial office to
become a cook. This is not the case. They do not view the subject
from a right standpoint. Knowledge of how to prepare food healthfully,
especially bread, is no mean science....
Young ladies should be thoroughly instructed in cooking. Whatever
may be their circumstances in life, here is knowledge which may be put
to a practical use. It is a branch of education which has the most direct
influence upon human life, especially the lives of those held most dear.
Many a wife and mother who has not had the right education and lacks
skill in the cooking department is daily presenting her family with
ill-prepared food which is steadily and surely destroying the digestive
organs, making a poor quality of blood and frequently bringing on
acute attacks of inflammatory disease and causing premature death.
Many have been brought to their death by eating heavy, sour bread.
An instance was related to me of a hired girl who made a batch of sour,
heavy bread. In order to get rid of it and conceal the matter, she threw
[146]
it to a couple of very large hogs. Next morning the man of the house
found his swine dead, and upon examining the trough, found pieces
of this heavy bread. He made inquiries, and the girl acknowledged
what she had done She had not thought of the effect of such bread
upon the swine. If heavy, sour bread will kill swine, which can devour
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