But is that how most people learn to cook? Most things learnt will come from someone teaching it or recipes followed from a book or website. Not many do home economics, our school didn't do it at all. Maths, English, modern language plus 5 other subjects that must include one science and one humanities. Nothing about cooking at all.
Those I know who were taught to cook at school in home ec courses got taught recipes not science. Rote learning. I guess you had a pro science home ec teacher. BTW I suspect we were at school in similar years.
Home Ec was compulsory till I was 14. Mind, I *did* go to a girls public school, so maybe my experiences aren't the mainstream. Also, my mum trained in a professional kitchen. She taught me how to cook, largely without recipes, and that's still how I roll today. The exceptions were things like soufflés and cakes, where you DO need to get the proportion of ingredients right else they won't rise.
I started out by helping mum in the kitchen ever since I was old enough to hold a spoon and stir something. By the time I was seven, I was baking my own cakes and could cook a basic meal. But mum also included instructions on how things work the way they do.
When I dropped Home Ec at GCSE level in '89, my teacher was most disappointed. But I wanted to do engineering, so yeah...
