The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives

In 1900, three young women gather for afternoon tea and stumble upon an article about "cooking wives" - and what begins as scandalized laughter becomes something far more subversive. Hilda, Prudence, and Nannie Branscome dissect the metaphor with increasing ferocity: What ingredients make a good wife? Who does the cooking? And what happens to the woman who refuses to be served? Elizabeth Strong Worthington's forgotten satire dissects marriage as a domestic arrangement with the same precision a chef uses to prepare a bird. The humor stays light, but the teeth are sharp. This is a book that pretends to be about recipes while actually asking whether women are the dish or the one holding the spoon.