Cooking and Mageirocophobia

For anyone suffering from Mageirocophobia, it is not ‘Joy of Cooking’

In reading about food today, I discovered a new word to add to my vocabulary: mageirocophobia. The word originates from the Greek word “mageirokos”, which means a person skilled in cooking. Mageirocophobia is defined as a fear of cooking.

According to a definition of the phobia (any web search will produce multiple results on the subject) there may be a variety of reasons behind the fear of cooking: a fear of causing illness to the recipients of the food cooked, a fear of serving inedible food, concerns about food presentation, fear around the whole cooking process, and fear of recipes.

Certainly, with nearly 3,500 cookbooks in my library, I am not suffering from mageirocophobia, but I never thought about the fact that there might be people out there who were afraid of cooking. Not ‘can’t be bothered’, ‘too much effort’ or ‘don’t have time’, but people who are truly afraid of cooking. Cooking has been such a source of pleasure for me throughout my life that I think I just subconsciously assumed that if you don’t cook, you must be lazy. How wrong I was!

Although I don’t suffer from mageirocophobia, I do deal with a great deal of angst around aerophobia (fear of flying). Fortunately, I am able to do my cooking with my feet planted firmly on Terra Firma!

Aerophobia