sjs – why not both? (this is, incidentally my answer when s/o asks the incredibly inane question – middos or torah in a boy??)
but about the cooking. in tiferes seminary, you can learn to cook if you want, because the girls are free in the kitchen and can use basic ingredients and stuff like that, and they make their own breakfasts, and melava malka, and, occasionally, make their own in shabbos.
and they also learn rambam.
but when all is said and done, number one, some people can’t even follow a cookbook, and two, the ikker avodah for a woman is wife/mother, and if she can’t balance that with parnassah, then guess which one will have to go?