Home cooking is still the way to a man’s heart
Male chauvinism isn’t completely dead after all - 1 in 10 men have admitted to being turned off a woman if they find that she can’t cook, according to new research by Giovanni Rana.
A study analysing 3,000 people’s attitudes towards home cooked food and romantic meals confirmed that, when it came to food and love, modern thinking has done little to shift the engrained ideal of capturing a true love’s heart via the stomach and good cooking abilities.
More men than women (50% vs. 45% respectively) believed a home cooked dinner to be even more romantic than dining out, perhaps because they use it as a means of assessing a partner’s suitability, with 12% of men admitting to being put off by someone romantically because she couldn’t cook.
With so much pressure to perform in the kitchen, it is therefore unsurprising that 61% of women felt the strain of wowing a date with a home cooked meal.
Of those surveyed, the majority (45%) associated Italy as the ultimate country for love, with Italian food regarded the most romantic meal choice out of all the other worldy cuisines (40%).
Surprisingly, British cuisine came a close second, achieving a third of the votes. France, once considered the home of true romance, did less well, with only 9% of people nominating French cuisine as their food of choice for a romantic dinner.
The survey also showed that dining-in is also gaining ground on dining-out as the ultimate setting for a romantic date. Nearly two thirds of us (58%) have cooked a romantic meal to impress a date, and 90% of us said that this was a success (the remaining 10% blamed burnt or badly cook food for the failure, although one respondent claimed that it simply hadn’t been worth the effort as they ‘didn’t get any afters’!).
A further 85% said that they would be impressed if a date tried to cook for them.
The study also revealed that home cooked dinners created the perfect setting for romantic gestures, with 49% of men and women using the moment to say 'I love you' for the first time, present tickets for a romantic getaway (15%) or even proposing marriage (10%).
Interestingly, more men than women use mealtimes as a means of retreating into their ‘cave’ with 17% preferring to dine alone rather than share a meal with friends or a love interest.