Social and economic changes resulting from the industrial growth in the decades after the Civil War led to a call for changes in education. Critics attacked the traditional Latin and Greek curriculum and called for practical courses to prepare youths for work in industry or on the farm. The Morrill land grant laws of 1862 and 1890 provided practical education for boys

through manual training courses in public schools and specialized institutes. By the 1870’s, training in domestic skills, considered the equivalent in practical education for girls, was gaining adherents. The decade saw a proliferation of sewing and cooking classes, as well as the establishment of the New York Cooking School in 1876 and the Boston Cooking School in 1879. The 1880’s ushered in an explosion of cooking schools throughout the northeast.

Promoting the latest ideas in scientific cookery, the cooking schools turned out graduates able to find work in a growing number of professions opening up. They could teach cooking, either in public schools or to groups of working girls or the underprivileged, give cooking lessons in other cities, take charge of hospital and school kitchens, run tea rooms and small catering businesses, give public lectures on cookery and diet, and create new recipes and demonstrate new products for the burgeoning manufactured food industry.