There is no common research approach into how home economics educators teach cookery and food safety. A qualitative observation study of six teachers giving cookery classes to 14-year-old students shows how teachers make more or less conscious didactic choices about subject content. These different choices give the content different meanings. Teachers can create a foundation for formative education (bildung) when they enable students to routinize their own choreography, and conceptualise and reflect, when cooking collaboratively.