Culinary Ladder · Free, teen to adult
Climb from your first knife cut to the knowledge of a fine-dining cook
Learn what professional cooks learn, in order: every tool in the kitchen, knife cuts at true size, the food-safety rules restaurants follow, every cooking method, the mother sauces, breaking down a chicken, baker's percentages, tempering chocolate, plating, the formal place setting, the brigade, kitchen language and food costing. Short lessons explain the why, pictures you can play with let you measure a cut or check a cooling log, practice checks your answers with real numbers, and every topic has drills to do in your own kitchen and links to the Meal Prep recipes. This can't replace years on a real line, but it can teach you what kitchens expect you to know. No sign-up, nothing to pay.
Teach Yourself to Cook Like a Professional
An honest guide: what home study can and can't replace, a practice plan from first week to capstone, how to find a stage in a real kitchen, and what to buy first at three price points.
The ladder
Each rung is a full course. Start where you are; topics from earlier rungs come back when you need them.
- College
- The Professional KitchenCollege · 11 topics You are here
- Plating and ServiceCollege · 6 topics You are here
- Flavor, Seasoning and Menu DesignCollege · 6 topics You are here
- Garde Manger and PreservationCollege · 5 topics You are here
- Baking and PastryCollege · 8 topics You are here
- Vegetables, Grains, Legumes and PastaCollege · 6 topics You are here
- ProteinsCollege · 8 topics You are here
- Stocks, Sauces and SoupsCollege · 7 topics You are here
- High school
- Heat and Cooking MethodsGrade 11–12 · 8 topics You are here
- Food Safety and SanitationGrade 10–11 · 10 topics You are here
- Knife SkillsGrade 9–10 · 6 topics You are here
- Kitchen FoundationsGrade 9–10 · 8 topics You are here
How the Culinary Ladder works
- Find your rung. A short check, at most 30 questions, skips what you already know and finds your starting point.
- Learn from first principles. Each topic is one small idea. The lesson shows why it works, then walks through worked examples one step at a time.
- Master it before moving on. Three right answers, the last two in a row, pass a topic. If a topic gets hard, we point you to the skill underneath it.
- Review, spaced out. Passed topics come back after 1 day, then 3, 7, 16 days and longer, for two quick problems each. Harder topics that use an older one count as practice for it.
- Mix it up. Reviews and checkpoint quizzes mix problems from different topics, so you learn to tell which method a problem needs.
- Earn XP. About one point per minute of focused work. Set a daily goal and keep your streak going.
- One climb across subjects. Every ladder shares your XP, streak and reviews. When a topic needs a skill from another ladder, such as the algebra behind a formula, that skill comes first, labeled with its ladder.
Why these steps: the U.S. Institute of Education Sciences practice guide Organizing Instruction and Study to Improve Student Learning (Pashler and others, NCER 2007-2004) recommends spacing reviews out over time, alternating worked examples with problems students solve on their own, pairing pictures with words, and using quizzes to bring key content back. The Culinary Ladder is built around those ideas.
More on Teddy Rook Book
- From the Great KitchensEscoffier's five sauces and the classics of the Savoy and Delmonico's, adapted for home
- Make It from ScratchBreads, pasta, stocks, butter, yogurt, pickles and chocolate
- Kitchen Know-HowTools, cookware care, cleaning, food safety and measurements
- Meal PrepFamily recipes that scale, with plans and shopping lists
- Chemistry LadderHeat, acids, reactions: the chemistry under browning and baking
- Biology LadderBacteria, proteins and fermentation
- Etiquette LadderTable manners from the guest's side of the pass
The other ladders
- Math LadderFrom counting in Pre-K to calculus, linear algebra and differential equations. 28 courses.
- Physics LadderHands-on science for ages 9 and 10, then motion, forces and energy, fluids, heat, electricity, light, atoms and the stars, up to college. 11 courses.
- Chemistry LadderAtoms, bonds, moles and reactions, from high school chemistry through a full year of general chemistry. 3 courses.
- Economics LadderHow people, firms and whole economies choose: microeconomics, macroeconomics and calculus-based micro. 3 courses.
- Earth & Space LadderRocks, plates and volcanoes, oceans, weather and climate, and Earth's place among the planets and stars. 3 courses.
- Logic LadderClear thinking, from arguments and fallacies to syllogisms, truth tables and formal proofs, grade 7 to college. 3 courses.
- Etiquette LadderManners as kindness made into habits: please and thank you, the table, conversation, notes and hard moments, age 4 to adult. 3 courses.
- Egyptology LadderAncient Egypt from the Nile and the pyramids to reading hieroglyphs: history, Middle Egyptian, religion and art, and archaeology, age 8 to college. 6 courses.
- Ancient Scripts LadderHow ancient scripts work and how they were read again, beginning with Linear A and Linear B of the Bronze Age Aegean, high school to college. 1 courses.
- Vocabulary LadderOne thousand advanced words, each with a picture and a memory hook, plus the Greek and Latin roots that unlock them, grade 6 to adult. 2 courses.
- Biology LadderLiving things from seeds and tadpoles to cells, genes, evolution and ecosystems, age 5 through AP Biology and college. 4 courses.
- American History & Civics LadderThe American story and how its government works, from the flag and the Pilgrims and stories from world history for ages 9 and 10 to AP U.S. History, civics and the citizenship test, and on to law school courses in constitutional law. 8 courses.
- Writing & Grammar LadderFrom a first sentence to the persuasive essay: grammar and diagramming, usage and punctuation, paragraphs and essays, sources and citations, and rhetoric, age 6 to college. 6 courses.
- Geography LadderMaps and directions for young explorers, then the fifty states, the countries and capitals of the world, and human geography up to AP, age 5 to adult. 4 courses.
- Art & Drawing LadderDrawing from first lines to perspective and faces, color and design, and art history from the cave painters to mid-century modern, age 5 to college. 5 courses.
- Memory LadderHow memory works and how to use it on purpose: spaced review, retrieval, chunking, pictures, mnemonics and the memory palace, then the Major System, PAO and the tools memory athletes use, age 8 to adult. 2 courses.
- Great Books LadderEvery work in the 60 volumes of Great Books of the Western World, one rung at a time, from Homer to the 20th century, with paths for young readers, teens and adults. 9 courses.
- Robotics LadderRobots from a cardboard arm at age 8 to circuits, Arduino and Raspberry Pi, arm kinematics, PID control, Kalman filters, path planning, ROS 2 and robot vision, with an honest six-month roadmap. 10 courses.
- Inventors LadderThe great inventors and how they did it, from Archimedes and Gutenberg to Franklin, Faraday, Edison, Tesla and the Wright brothers, in their own words, with projects to build from scratch. 7 courses.
All the ladders share one progress: XP, your streak and your reviews.
Your progress is saved in this browser
No account needed. To move to another device, or to keep a backup, copy your save code and paste it in on the other device.
See your progress · The site's My Progress page backs up everything at once.