Calling all cooks!

On March 30th, 1891, an “Important Institution Begins Its Work,” exclaimed the Fall River Daily Evening News: “The Fall River Cooking School … opened in the Vermont Block, Pocasset street last evening with a class of twenty-two young ladies, most of whom are employed in the mills during the day.”

An informational circular that was disseminated a few weeks prior to the school’s opening, stated “the school is open to all” and “the main object of the school is to provide an inexpensive course of instruction for working-girls.” Yet, if one desired “lessons in richer cooking” it would be available for an extra fee, as well as demonstrations of the “so-called ‘Nurses’ Course’” including, but not limited to, “jellies, gruels, eggs, oysters, custards.”

The Fall River Cooking School was seeking to emulate the objective and cooking styles of the Boston Cooking School. Tickets for ten lectures were priced at $4.00, a single ticket was fifty cents, and ten lessons in practice class were $8.00. Membership to the program could also be obtained and was encouraged if one had an interest in “teaching young girls to make an attractive home” by paying $1.50. Those in charge of pricing must have been blissfully unaware of the average wage of the demographic they were targeting because they were suggesting that this was an affordable course, but affordable, it was not.

While opening day proved to be a huge success and “a more attentive audience Miss Wills [graduate of the Boston Cooking School and instructor] could not desire” rejoiced the Fall River Daily Evening News, the program was short lived. Perhaps due, in part, to the cost of tickets in comparison to the average income of a working-class girl, which would not be much more than the cost of a ten-lecture ticket.

In the words of Chef Frank Terranova (President of “A Class of Cooking” at Johnson and Wales University): “now that’s cooking with class.”