There is an old adage that aims to put one-half of the world’s population into a box: “Women belong in the kitchen.” This saying is as stale as the water crackers that have been kept in a corner in my own kitchen since Julia Child was still on air—kidding—but what about those of us women who do feel like we’ve found a sense of belonging in the culinary world?
Lessons in Chemistry, the Apple TV+ adaptation of Bonnie Garmus’ NYT bestseller, has the answer. Following Elizabeth Zott (Brie Larson), a fantastic chemist with a knack for lasagna and other culinary delights, the 1950s and ’60s-set series has spent an entire season unraveling the dichotomy between feminism and food. In Lessons in Chemistry, Elizabeth has complete autonomy over her kitchen—she cooks because she enjoys its relation to chemistry, not because it’s a routine she must complete because of patriarchal expectations. By reclaiming the kitchen to use of her own accord, Elizabeth makes cooking for both herself and her daughter a progressive stance against the usual role of “mother” or “wife.”
Elizabeth’s backstory in the kitchen begins before she even has a family. Cooking, for Elizabeth, is both a way to destress and an extension of her career, the same way a professional copywriter might enjoy writing novels on the side, or an architect might become invested in another type of art, like painting or sculpture. Pursuing this hobby allows Elizabeth to use the skills she’s cultivated from her work as a chemist; to her, it feels in no way like a “chore” she must complete as the woman of her household.
In fact, Elizabeth is never married. Though she enters a romantic relationship with coworker Calvin Evans (Lewis Pullman)—who dies before the two can consider marriage—he never demands or even requests her to cook for him. Rather, Elizabeth teaches Calvin about how he can apply science to the kitchen. Later, as a single mother to their child, Mad (Alice Halsey), she prepares school lunches with handwritten notes about why certain foods are important for one’s diet. Mad and Elizabeth hunt for ingredients to make the perfect mirepoix in the grocery store together. Mad isn’t learning about how to be society’s ideal woman; rather, she’s inherited this culinary love as if it were a catchphrase or quirk. To Mad, cooking will always be a North Star she shares with her mother, not a task.
When her male-dominated career field rejects Elizabeth because of the child she has out of wedlock, she makes a big pivot away from chemistry—instead, cooking becomes her profession too. Elizabeth signs on to host Supper at Six, a new show spearheaded by local news producer Walter Pine (Kevin Sussman), one of the sole men to believe in her. All of the other macho news guys, meanwhile, find Elizabeth’s blunt, no-bullshit, scientific manner of hosting to be displeasing. Can’t she be sexy? When she leans over to put a pie in the oven, we should see a little cleavage, not a pencil poking out of her lab coat.
But something miraculous happens: Women start to tune into the show, eventually watching in droves. They don’t mind that Elizabeth’s show isn’t hot and dangerous; rather, they prefer it. Elizabeth and Supper at Six become wildly successful.
Supper at Six gives women a sense of community, and Lessons in Chemistry doesn’t ignore the fact that, during the ’60s women often did feel like they “belonged” in the kitchen. There’s the fantastical element of Elizabeth’s liberation, with her ability to both be a single mom and have a big TV job. But the series also acknowledges the sexism of the era and combats it. Women have to have hot dinner on the table every night for their husbands and children, sure. But Elizabeth also encourages her viewers to make good food and feel proud of their creations. She inspires them to spend their mornings taking classes and getting degrees, and to ask their children to set the table as to give them some respite.
Supper at Six captures why real, similar shows like Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa, Julia Child’s The French Chef, and recent iterations like Selena Gomez’s Selena + Chef are more than just fluffy comfort viewing. (It should be noted that both Garten and Child discovered their passion for the culinary arts while abroad in France alongside their military husbands. Like Elizabeth, both saw cooking as a hobby, instead of a traditional household task.) Programs like these empower women to see cooking as something to do for pleasure, a creative, personal pursuit, instead of just a duty. For Elizabeth, concocting meals—chicken pot pies with the perfect flaky crust, for example—on air is a way to flaunt her chemistry prowess. For the women watching at home, hosts like Elizabeth empower them to reconsider how cooking can reflect their true identities too.
As Elizabeth and her show skyrocket in popularity, there are, naturally, some naysayers. In Garmus’ novel, anti-feminists send death threats and even attempt to bomb Elizabeth’s local news station. Just by saying women belong in the kitchen with the addendum of “on their own terms,” Elizabeth appears to be promoting some act of radical feminism. It’s not. The show is what happens when you give women one opportunity to flex her inventive muscles. I can’t think of a better actress than Brie Larson—an Oscar-winning A-list actress who has faced a flurry of vitriol for her mildly feminist comments in the past—to convey the message that a woman shouldn’t shut her mouth when speaking up for herself, even if it’s met by others with righteous fury.
It says a lot about Elizabeth’s character that she is willing to share her insight about gastronomy not only with her daughter, but also with viewers who likely have their own loved ones at home. She knows that cooking isn’t just a hobby, passion, task, or science experiment—it’s also a love language.
Elizabeth cooks not because dinner needs to be on the table every night, not because a man tells her to, and certainly not because she wants to fulfill the role society assigned to her in the 1960s—but rather, because she wants to spread her admiration for women like her all over the nation. Cooking together, for Elizabeth and Lessons in Chemistry, is a way for women to care for one another.
