Cooking Basics Are What Exactly?

I'm reading this great book called Cooking and Castle Building by Emma Ewing. It was written in 1880. It is just fantastic. I'm only into the 3rd chapter but I am hooked. It is a memoir following 3 wealthy American ladies as they decide that they need to learn how to cook. Their logic for doing this is wonderful. They want their husbands to stop drinking and instead of becoming militant in their involvement with the Temperance movement they have decided that harmonious living is all that is needed to keep their men from drinking. And harmonious living can not be attained if one does not cook well.

These women, wealthy as they were, did not cook at home. They had servants to cook for them. However, they decided that there was no better way to assure good food than to do it themselves. So, they headed off to the country where their mistakes may not be remembered by their peers while they learned.

I have not read all of the book so I don't know how it will turn out or what all they will learn to cook, but they start out the book learning to cook bread. They chose bread because it was the staple of the diet of the time. Bread was eaten in some form or another at every meal and so was necessary to have whether you baked it yourself or ordered it from a baker.

These women have the right idea. Even 100 years later so many of the country's problems could probably be related back to the fact that people don't cook, especially the obesity epidemic. I would like to cover the same concept as the ones in Cooking and Castle Building here on the Blog but I have a small problem. People don't eat bread nearly as much as they did in the 1800's. So what are the basics of cooking for the modern day?

I asked the girls I work with and we came up with Coffee and and eggs are things that everyone needs to know how to make and most people don't know.

What other things are basics that people need to know? Post your thoughts.