I do all the cooking at my house. All of it. Unless I’m really ill, my wife never goes near the kitchen utensils. Even if it’s a quick snack or a bowl of cereal, that’s my job, not hers. My wife is the better cook, I have to admit, but it’s part of our agreement on how we share the household chores.

I try to be good at it and I try to keep the menu healthy, varied and interesting but, after nearly 20 years in this role, I’m still not exactly what you’d call a master chef. However, doing the cooking all that time has taught me a few lessons and given me a deeper insight into the lives of women

Multi-tasking

Women are good at muti-tasking – doing more than one thing at once – and men are bad at it. That’s the received wisdom in our culture and, you know, it seems to be true. However, as a former psychologist, I know that the research suggests that both sexes are equally bad at it without explicit practice. And that, I believe, is where cooking comes in.

Following a complicated recipe with many ingredients, many steps and many parallel activities involves more multi-tasking than I’d ever have to do under any other circumstances. My comfort zone as a writer, as a scientist, as a handyman and in all the other jobs I’ve had, is to enter a state of deep focus on a single task and keep at it without interruption until it is done. Cooking is nothing like that. Your attention has to be all over the place. And, if you get a moment to, say, concentrate on grating a carrot, there will be timers pinging and pans boiling over to grab your attention by the scruff and aim it elsewhere.

So, it seems unsurprising to me that, living in a society where girls are taught to cook and boys are taught to play on their X-box, it is the women who end up with refined multi-tasking skills and the men who enjoy the privilege of being able to fucus on a single thing. Throw a couple of dependent kids into the mix and it’s no wonder women end up possessed of this superpower.

Fingernails

Now this may seem a bit odd but I have learned that short fingernails are the bane of a cook’s life. Every time I cut my nails, I curse my stupidity. How am I supposed to peel garlic with no nails? How am I supposed to open foil-topped sauce bottles or lift the flaps on an oat milk carton? Even the everyday task of lifting the ring-pull on a tin of diced tomatoes or tinned mackerel is so much harder without fingernails?

Is this why women keep them long? I always thought it was vanity. I always thought they wanted to make their fingers look longer and more elegant. Now, I see the real reason.

Mental Load

Mental load is the name given to the constant cognitive effort to remember and organise activities in order to achieve domestic objectives. In most homes, it is the woman who does this work, remembering appointments, making sure the washing is done, paying the bills…

When it comes to being the cook for the household, there is much mental load involved. Stock levels of items in the fridge and pantry need to be monitored, the shopping list needs to be updated and accurate, shopping has to be planned and executed, foodstuffs need to be stored appropriately, frozen foods need to be thawed in time to be used, beans and pulses need to be soaked when necessary, menus need to be planned, recipes need to be found, evaluated and stored for future access, kitchen appliances and utensils need to be sourced and maintained, herbs need to be grown and harvested… It never ends! Get through one week and there’s another one waiting. And another. And another. To the end of your days!

Mental load is not to be sniffed at. Cooking itself may take an hour or two each day but the thought, organisation and activity that goes around it is constant, the work inexhaustible. In taking on the cooking, I have also taken on a mighty load of planning and preparation. That such a burden would normally fall on the lady of the house with no debate or consideration, is astonishing.

Scope

Scope is kind of like mental load but different in that it relates to all the other things apart from cooking and shopping that relate to the job of being the household chef.

The main extensions to the scope of cooking are cleaning and organising.

When you go to cook a meal, you expect clean pots and pans, chopping boards, knives, plates, worktops, and so on. You also expect all the ingredients to be in their allotted places in the fridge and in the larder, and all the dishes, pans and cutlery to be in their allotted places in cupboards and drawers. These things don’t happen by magic, I have discovered. They happen because someone puts all the pans in to soak after they are used, someone washes down the worktops and the stovetop, they stack and unload the dishwasher, they throw away the vegetable waste and the packaging, and they just jolly well clean up after themselves.

The scope of cooking is far larger than just producing two or three meals a day. It includes shopping, planning, organising, preparation, cleaning and maintenance. This is something women learn early and largely accept. It is something men, like me, struggle to get their heads around.

Empathy With My Mother

This is a personal one.

When I was a child, in a poor, working-class family in the North of England, I noticed that my father always got the best cuts of meat, the biggest portions, the best of everything when it came to food – even if, sometimes, my mother – who did all the cooking – went without. I used to resent it, not for myself but for my mother, who always got the most meagre portion despite having done all the work.

I used to think it was a sign of how oppressed my mother was by her culture and by her husband.

Yet, now, I understand what was happening. In my household, we are fortunate never to go without. We always have plenty to go around. In fact, we eat very well. However, when I buy two pieces of fish for a meal and one is not quite as good as the other, I give the good piece to my wife. If I spoil some part of a meal, I take the spoiled part so that my wife can have the unspoiled portion. I do it partly because any fault in the meal is mine and any fault in the ingredients is mine. But also, I do it out of love. It would pain me to be so selfish as to give the woman I love food that was worse than the food I was eating.

So, I see what you did, Mam. I understand it at last. If, one day, I didn’t have enough meat to go around, my wife would get it, not me. It could not happen any other way.