From the Archives: 1914 Times cooking class

In 1913, Bertha Haffner-Ginger established The Times' cooking school -- named "The Times' School of Domestic Science."

A Feb. 13, 1914, Los Angeles Times story reported on the second year of the school:

Packing the large auditorium on the second floor of The Times Building to overflowing, a throng of eager women attended the reopening of The Times School of Domestic Science yesterday afternoon. Right royally were they entertained by Mrs. Bertha Haffner-Ginger, in whose able hands the work of instruction has been placed….

As she demonstrated the art of making various cream soups, Mrs. Haffner-Ginger kept up a running fire of comment on cooking in general that kept her hearers on edge, eager for the next remark and made fly the minutes during which her deft fingers prepared the delicious broths.

"Women should not learn to cook just to 'catch' some man, as we have been told so many times to do," said Mrs. Haffner-Ginger, as she deftly turned a can of peas into a colander, preparatory to starting a dish of cream of pea soup. "She should learn to cook for her own body and for her own health, for her own satisfaction, and if the man wants to stay long enough to asset in eating what she prepares, so much the better, but a good cook never yet kept a man when he wanted to go," she finished, amid a gale of laughter and applause.

Three different prints were used to make this panorama published in the Feb. 13, 1914, Los Angeles Times.

This post was originally published on Jan. 25, 2013.