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Traditionally baking is the first thing you teach children to cook because it avoids the need to do anything fun (like stirring) near anything hot and generally produces food your child is actually interested in eating.

Now taking a wild stab in the dark here, but most people probably got those lessons from their mother.

Going a bit further out on a limb some basic gender dynamics might suggest that women get pushed a bit further in the childhood cooking stakes and get as far as making pasty before all hope of teaching them to cook anything is abandoned.

I certainly remember making cakes with my mother and grandmother, and cutting shapes out of pastry and all that sort of thing. B. was also taught to bake by his mother. But I was never taught frying or roasting or anything more advanced by a relative.

Of course, the whole theory flounders somewhat in the face of all that evidence which says children don’t get taught any cooking at all by anyone these days.

Cooking for kids involves baking, almost universally. Baking produces cakes and biscuits, which kids can be excited about making. And there’s a clear separation between the active, fun bits (mixing, measuring, icing) and the dangerous bits (oven) that one doesn’t get when boiling potatoes or frying sausages.

(Reading Louise’s comment I realise she said all of the above in fewer words. Damn you! Now I have to write more to stay relevant, without approaching loser-length.)

I guess most kids, if they get any cooking experience, learn the processes of mixing to make cakes. I did a lot of this with my grandmother too! Fewer will be told how to fry an egg or make rice. Having said that, watching your parents cook will help a lot. So I guess it comes down to what kids are encouraged to do - are little boys as welcome in the kitchen as girls? Are girls encouraged to play with fire in the back garden (and not chastised for getting messy)?

When I was growing up I was quite often shooed out the kitchen because my mother prefers to be alone when cooking. More than anything I got the impression that cooking was stressful, not enjoyable. It’s taken a lot of learning to get out of that habit, and I’m not there yet.

It’s difficult to tease apart common perception from fact - how many women are “salad eaters” to men’s “steak eaters”? We ignore the women that eat steak and notice the ones that eat salad, because it reinforces our prejudices. These subjects become so difficult to write about, when all you really know are stereotypes and straw-polls.

So, some questions to the gallery, after this gargantuan reply:

1. Is it still a “man’s job” if the barbecue is a poncy gas-flame, or what amounts to a large George Foreman grill? Does the removal of the fire-starting/stoking aspects reduce the appeal?

2. What happens if we’re talking camp stoves - you’re still outside but the cooking is completely different.

3. Are barbecues as appealing to vegetarian men? Is the draw of searing flesh in the outdoors a factor? And so searing mushrooms doesn’t seem so virile any more?

4. Is bread-baking the same as cake-baking?

5. What about amateur versus professional bakers? (I mean traditional bakers not someone who heats part-baked stuff in a supermarket.)

I’ll wheesht now.

That’s odd. I would go so far as to say I’m a pretty decent cook, and something of a foodie, but I wouldn’t know how to make pastry dough without a recipe.

A curry without a recipe, sure. Various types of pasta sauces, absolutely. (My family is Italian.) I can also bake, but I need a recipe for that.

Perhaps because the men cook as much as the women in my family? I learned as much how to cook from my father and my maternal grandfather as I did from my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.

It could be a division of labor thing? Although that is a traditional sham!

Seriously in the traditional barbecue scenario, women totally get no credit but do most of the work.

Sorry to only respond to part of a question but it turned into a rant!

I got my pastry recipe from my dad, so I don’t know what that does to your gender theory. My dad’s secret ingreedient is gram flour which helps the pastry to bind better.

However I think pastry is a fairly robust material. I tried adding egg once by mistake and that did absolutely nothing to the final consistency.

filo pastry on the other hand…I’ve never made it but want to use it to make baclavas. It sounds a bit of a bitch to make what with all the layers.

Any tips anyone?

Jeremiah – that’s very interesting. I’d not considered that explanation at all. And in fact, the men I know who like baking also like coding and other fairly well-ordered things. Hmm.