Note carefully that, in home-cooking, there are absent these great necessities of progress--specialisation and competition, as well as the wide practical experience which is almost as essential. Go among the most backward peasantry of any country and compare the "home-cooking" of each nation in its present form, with the specialised cooking of the best hotels, clubs, or of those great official or private entertainments which employ the professional cook. It is rare, of course, to find home-cooking wholly unaffected by social cooking, for man, as an ultra-domestic character, learns something elsewhere and brings it home; but the point to be insisted on is that the development in cooking comes from outside the home, and does not originate in it. Still, in spite of all our progress, the great mass of mankind eats two meals at home; women and children, three. The preparation of food is still the main business of housekeeping; its labour, the one great labour of the place; its cost, the main expense. In building, the conveniences for this trade--kitchen, dining-room, pantry, cupboard, and cellar--require a large part of the outlay, and the furnishing of these with linen, china, and silver, as well as the wooden and iron articles, adds heavily to the list. The wife and mother still has, for her main duty, the management of the family food supply, even if she is not the principal worker, and the maintenance of domestic service, to keep our food system in motion, is one of the chief difficulties of modern life. Nine-tenths of our women "do their own work," as has been before shown. Those nine-tenths of the female population--as well as the majority of servants--expend most of their labour in the preparation of food and the cleansing processes connected with it.