THROUGHOUT MOST OF the twentieth century, modernism and socialism tried to eliminate home cooking and home dining. Their reasons were different. The modernist argument was technical: Modern technologies, it was then assumed, need mass production to deliver economies of scale. When applied to food processing, the logic of industrial modernity suggests that bread production, for example, should be centralized in a single facility, supplying countless identical loaves to markets near and far. Sixty years ago, transportation was predicted to soon cost close to nothing, and processed food was meant to keep, basically, forever: “Best before” dates are a postmodern invention.
For socialist humanists, eliminating home cooking would liberate women from domestic labor. For more radical ideologues, communal dining in refectories or canteens could help undermine the fabric of the traditional, cellular family and challenge its patriarchal values. Yes, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky invented the Frankfurt kitchen (1926), but many at the time would have seen Taylorized home coo…
