Charlotte Perkins Gilman describes this event in Moving the Mountain, where a skeptical male is being given a tour of the future so that he can see how women have transformed the world. “This simple meal looked and smelled most appetizing,” he reports with surprise. “There was in particular a large shining covered dish, which...gave forth so savory a steam as fairly to make my mouth water. A crisp and toothsome bread was by my plate; a hot drink, which they laughingly refused to name, proved most agreeable; a suave, cool salad followed; fruits, some of which were new to me, and most delicate little cakes, closed the meal.” He has three helpings, and his hostess assures him she can summon more food “in the twinkling of an eye.” Later they visit the underground central kitchen that supplies the entire block with meals. Fresh meat and produce arrive by train every morning, and the caterers are so skilled that greed and unhealthy cravings have entirely disappeared from the community.
Other writers who relished this theme pointed out a further benefit of the kitchenless house: The overworked homemaker, too exhausted and irritable to enjoy her family, is extinct at last. In a story by Annie Denton Cridge, the narrator dreams she’s watching huge machines prepare and mash potatoes, make pies, and swiftly transport meals to each home. No dirt, no drudgery, no discord. “Peace, sweet peace, had descended like a dove on every household,” she sighs, and you can hear the longing.
Small wonder the name of the very first meal-assembly store was Dream Dinners. The whole phenomenon is a dream of dinner. Only when you wake up does the cognitive dissonance kick in: Is this a kitchen or a factory? Am I making dinner or fast food? There are still dozens of successful meal-assembly stores; perhaps they’ll find a permanent niche in the culinary landscape, alongside all the other ways we’ve figured out for getting a practically work-free meal on the table. But none of these solutions really feeds us, none truly satisfies, and that’s the difference between our instant meals and the ones cooked up by the feminist visionaries of the past. There was a single, stubborn fantasy at the heart of the dinners they conjured, and it had nothing to do with central kitchens and dumbwaiters. The fantasy was the food. It was sterile, it was wholly impersonal, it came from a machine—yet it nourished the soul as well as the body. Everybody at the table was comforted, everybody felt blessed. Only in Utopia.
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