More and more, dads teach kids to cook

As a child, Linda Villafane developed an early interest in cooking. In particular, she enjoyed watching her father prepare favorite dishes for the family.

"He would talk to me about what he was doing," says Ms. Villafane, of Miami. "I would help him chop things and prepare the vegetables. As I got older, I would help him more with everything."

Today Villafane is one of a growing number of women in their 20s who credit their fathers with teaching them how to cook. While mothers and grandmothers still play central roles in passing along kitchen skills to sons and daughters, changes in domestic roles are altering the way new generations learn culinary skills.

A study by Betty Crocker Kitchens finds that nearly a quarter of women in their 20s say their fathers taught them to cook. Among women in their 40s, only 12 percent learned from their fathers.

"It's a very significant change," says Maggie Gilbert, manager of Betty Crocker Kitchens in Minneapolis.

The change reflects the growing presence of men in the kitchen. Two-thirds of the 20-somethings in the study had mothers who worked.

The study reveals other shifts as well. Whereas women in their 40s often learned basic food preparation at school or in 4-H, those in their 20s are more likely to say they are self-taught. They also rely on television and the Internet.

"They're not learning from their mothers the way I did," says Judy Shaver, who coordinates cooking classes at Kitchen and Company in Newington, N.H. "I find young people glued to TV cooking shows. They're watching Rachael Ray. She does 30-minute meals, quick and easy."

For those like Villafane who learned to measure, mix, and sauté from Dad, the advantages go beyond recipes. Many find their relationships deepening.

"It gives him a sense of pride that he can teach his children the traditions of our family," Villafane says of her father. A native of Venezuela, he taught her Latin dishes. She now does all the cooking for the family during holidays.

For Melissa Aiello, cooking with her father involved a single recipe. When she was about to leave home in New Jersey to attend college in Boston, he insisted that she learn how to make pasta sauce.

"I remember thinking it was something so little, because it's just pasta sauce," she says. "But you could tell it was important to him to teach me how to do it before he sent his little girl out on her own."

Ms. Aiello, who now works for a public relations firm in Rutherford, N.J., still makes his recipe.

"Every once in a while I have to buy jarred sauce, but I feel guilty," she says.

The rest of her culinary skills came by trial and error as she and her college roommates taught themselves to cook.

Although Debra Schindler Kohlhepp of Baltimore learned most of her cooking skills from her mother, it was her father who taught her to make what she considers the most important meal of the year - Thanksgiving dinner.

After college, she was preparing to move to the Midwest with her new husband. "My dad woke me up that Thanksgiving morning to teach me how to make the dressing, fry the giblets, and stuff the turkey," Mrs. Kohlhepp recalls. "He showed me every detail, down to smearing butter over the skin of the turkey and salting it before putting it in a cooking bag."

Some fathers start lessons early.

Chuck Casto of Sudbury, Mass., is teaching his four-year-old daughter, Chloe, to cook. Several evenings a week, the two make dinner. On weekends their specialties include pancakes and muffins.

"She's loving it," says Mr. Casto, who owns a public relations consulting firm. "We make casseroles, pasta dishes, cakes from scratch, cookies - you name it."

While they stir and bake, Casto's wife, Elise, often sits nearby, paying bills or doing other activities that keep her connected to them.

"Chloe can see what goes into a recipe, experience the process it takes to create a dish, and behold the finished product," says Casto, who does most of the cooking for the family. "It's a great way to foster her creativity."

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