Cooking stirs up creativity
New research recognizes value of mothers’ menu innovations
It sounds like a pitch straight out of Mad Men: Ladies, cook for your family and you’ll feel fulfilled. Be more creative. Strengthen relationship bonds.
Turns out, there’s actually scientific merit to these seemingly retrograde ideas. Anthropologists from two U.S. universities find that improvisation in the kitchen — something we tend to dismiss as mundane — is not only a powerful means of self-expression but also a way for mothers to affirm family identity.
Of course, the researchers aren’t advocating keeping women behind the stove. They do, however, shed new light on why a chore historically linked with submission to patriarchy continues to hold appeal for modern moms.
The study, published in the Journal of Consumer Culture, draws on in-depth interviews, home visits and shopping excursions with four dozen middle-class mothers of all ages from various American cities.
Women were exclusively used because they continue to represent the largest share of household members doing shopping and food prep (on average, women in Canada do upwards of 1.5 times more unpaid domestic work than men).
The aim was to determine whether cooking is as exemplary of the creative process as more widely recognized areas of innovation, such as science and technology.
“Women typically give little credit to their improvisational process in cooking,” said study co-author Timothy de Waal Malefyt, a visiting associate professor at Fordham University in New York.
“Yet, when we watch women cook, we see all kinds of little adjustments. … They’ll get out a special pot, cut a certain way, do something a little different from the instructions. You see a lot of creativity in the observation that isn’t being accounted for.”
Miriam Weaver, a working mother from Richmond Hill, Ont., sets aside each Sunday for what she calls “soup kitchen”: an entire day dedicated to prepping dinners and lunches for her family that week (“By the time I get home from the office, the kids are having a breakdown; they’re ‘starving,’” she said dryly).
Though it’s a lot of work, the tradition has become a cherished outlet for testing her resourcefulness and imagination.
“Through cooking over the years and learning what spices to use, and what fresh herbs to use, I tailor a lot of stuff with my own tweaks,” said Weaver, who draws inspiration from blogs, Pinterest, recipe sites and friends.
“I may use a base recipe from three years ago as a guide, but then I’ll add different vegetables, take some out. … It’s definitely creativity all the way when you have children.”
Alongside Maryann McCabe of the University of Rochester, Malefyt found that mothers’ creativity in the kitchen was particularly motivated by restrictions (for instance, a timecrunch, budget limitations, family taste preferences); that meals served as a reflection of family identity (consider how a handwritten recipe might be passed on and adapted through generations); and that cooking practices affirmed familial bonds as women actively considered the various needs of the people they wanted to please and excite with their food.
In spite of this, Malefyt said “adaptive changes to preferences are not typically thought of as being creative, partly because they’re done with love, care and thoughtfulness, rather than cold strategy.”
The problem, it seems, is that people look backward at the creative process after a major breakthrough, as opposed to taking a more forward-looking view that illuminates ingenuity in action.
“Creativity is something that’s typically acknowledged in retrospect,” explained Malefyt. “This makes the process seem linear and straightforward when, in actuality, it tends to be a matter of serendipity, of multiple tries and of trial and error. It’s much more improvisational.”