What are the most useful skills to learn while social distancing?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: What are the most useful skills to learn while social distancing?
Position‹4 of 5›: Domestic skills
Argument1 of 3›: Master the soufflé

Upgrade your kitchen skills from cereal to cordon bleu and master the art of the soufflé while stuck inside.

The argument

The soufflé: bringing together cheese, cream, and eggs to form a soft cloud of rich and satisfying indulgence. It is the stuff of dreams under lockdown, as restaurants are closed and we are all confined to our own kitchens. But what if it were not the stuff of dreams? The ingredients are ordinary and the equipment is whatever is already in the cupboard; what has always stood between a home cook and a soufflé is not access but practice, and practice is the one resource lockdown has supplied in abundance. There is a case to be made that mastering the subtle art of the soufflé may be the best way to spend some of that time. The dish is difficult in a specific and instructive way: it cannot be rushed, it cannot be improvised, and it fails visibly when technique is careless. That makes it an unusually honest teacher. A skill that returns immediate and unambiguous feedback is exactly the kind that rewards repetition, and repetition is precisely what a person stuck at home can offer it. In Julia Child's 1961 cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the soufflé is described as the "epitome and triumph of the art of French cooking." That is a high claim, and it is part of the appeal — the ambition of the undertaking is what makes succeeding at it feel like something more than making dinner. At a time when most of the world feels somewhat defeated, many have taken the time they never thought they had and spent it on mastering the soufflé. Those in favour have emerged from the experience feeling satisfied and accomplished, which is not a small thing in a period that has offered very few opportunities to complete anything at all. Guevara also says that "Soufflé makes people happy", and who couldn't use a little happiness these days. A domestic skill that produces competence, pleasure and something to eat at the end of it is a good use of an unwanted stretch of time.

Context

While the Covid-19 pandemic forces most of the world into lockdown, people all over the world are looking for ways to occupy their time at home.

Premises

[P1]Lockdown gives people the rare gift of time to devote to demanding domestic skills they normally cannot pursue. [P2] Mastering the soufflé, hailed as the epitome of French cooking, delivers a sense of accomplishment and brings happiness to those who attempt it. [C] Therefore, learning to master the soufflé is one of the most useful domestic skills to take up while social distancing.

Counter-arguments

Mastering the soufflé is a charming pastime but a thin candidate for the *most useful* skill to learn. It is a single, narrow culinary trick with little payoff beyond the dish itself, whereas usefulness implies durable, transferable value — the kind offered by learning to cook staple meals on a budget, basic home repair, or the language and digital skills the rival positions propose, all of which keep paying off long after lockdown. A showpiece dessert delivers a moment of accomplishment more than lasting utility, so it is hard to rank it among the most useful things to take up.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting C] A single specialised dessert offers enjoyment rather than durable, transferable usefulness, so it does not qualify as one of the most useful skills to learn.