This month, in recognition of Valentine’s Day, I’d like to tell you why the kitchen, rather than, say, the bedroom or the parlor, is the best place to audition someone you may be considering for the role of soulmate.

You can learn a lot about a person by fixing a meal with him (or her). Let’s say, for instance, that you and your sweetheart are putting together a dinner party for friends and he (or she) is in charge of preparing the spinach you plan to serve. At this point you may want to point out that adding a pinch of baking soda to boiling water helps preserve the color of any green vegetables you put into it, but it destroys the vitamin C. If your sweetheart goes ahead and adds the baking soda, you may want to rethink the relationship. It could be a sign that he cares more for appearances than for substance. Remember, people, as they age, generally develop a deeper and richer storehouse of knowledge and wisdom, but few of us continue to grow cuter after our youth is gone. Are you sure that this Vitamin C-killing sweetheart will be there for you in the long run, when your hair has gone gray (or simply gone away) and your laugh lines are visible whether you’re laughing or not?

Likewise, if you’ve just brought a live lobster back from the market and are planning to boil it, you might want to point out to your sweetie that boiling it alive is said to guarantee the freshest flavor, but killing it first with a quick knife blow to the middle of the back will spare it a lot of suffering. If he’s willing to go ahead and drop the live lobster into the pot, compassion may not be his strongest characteristic.

Some people claim that putting the pit of the avocado into a bowl of guacamole helps keep the dip fresh and preserves its color. Scientific research shows that this isn’t true. The thin layer of guacamole directly below the pit tends to stay greener than the guacamole elsewhere in the bowl, but that’s just because the pit prevents oxygen from contacting it. Once it is exposed to air, guacamole begins to discolor weather or not you have placed an avocado pit in the bowl. If your sweetie, after hearing this news, still goes ahead and inserts the pit into the bowl, he may tend to be more influenced by groundless superstitions than by cold hard facts.

If you enjoy making your own bread, you might want to ask your potential soulmate to help you out by kneading a loaf of it. Tell him that he can knead the dough by hand for fifteen to twenty minutes or, if he prefers, he can put it into a stand mixer for four or five minutes and mix it automatically. Let him know that the stand-mixer option will make the job quicker and easier but poses the risk of over-kneading the bread. When over-kneaded, the glutens in bread dough break down, weakening the bread’s ability to rise and causing the finished product to be tough and excessively chewy. The sweetheart who chooses to knead the bread by hand is likelier to be a more attentive and “hands-on” lover than the sweetheart who chooses to use the stand mixer.

Baking a cake together is an even better method of rating a potential soulmate’s patience. Let your sweetie know that cakes generally turn out best if the cold ingredients (eggs, milk, butter, etc.) are brought to room temperature before use, but that this warming-up process is not absolutely necessary. If he’s willing to let these items sit on the counter for an hour or so while they come to room temperature, give him one point for patience. Next, let him know that sifting the flour before using it will likely give the cake a slightly better (i.e., lighter) texture but is not absolutely necessary. If he chooses to sift the flour, give him another point for patience. Later, after measuring out all the other dry ingredients (baking powder, baking soda, salt, cocoa powder, etc,) let him know that sifting the flour a second time with all of these additional ingredients will also slightly improve the finished product but, again, is not absolutely necessary. If he reaches for the sifter again, give him another point for patience. When the batter is completed, tell him to preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Five minutes later, when the oven temperature reaches 350, tell him that many experts advise letting the oven preheat for a full 15-20 minutes before placing a cake batter into it. This guarantees that the temperature will be uniform throughout the oven and prevents the cake from cooking unevenly. Again, let him know that a full twenty-minute pre-heat is not absolutely necessary to the success of the finished product. If he chooses to wait out the entire twenty minutes before putting the cake into the oven, give him another point for patience. It is usually detrimental to open an oven door to check on a cake until it has been baking for at least 20 to 25 minutes. If your sweetie refrains from opening the door until 20 minutes have passed since the cake went into it, give him another point for patience. When a cake comes out of the oven, it should cool in the pan for at least ten minutes or it may fall apart during the extraction process. If your sweetie waits the full ten minutes before removing the cake from the pan and placing it on the cooling rack, give him another point for patience. If a cake isn’t thoroughly cooled before being transferred from the cooling rack to a serving plate, the bottom of the cake may adhere to the plate, making it difficult to serve cleanly. If your sweetie waits until the cake is completely cooled before moving it to a serving plate and frosting it, give him another point for patience. Finally, when it comes time to serve the cake, tell your sweetie that a knife will cut through cake more easily if you first soak it (the knife, not the cake) in hot water for a minute or so and then dry it off. If he warms the knife before cutting the cake, give him another point for patience. If he earns all eight points for patience, you might want to start making wedding plans immediately.

If the chocolate soufflé the two of you attempted to make together fails to rise, is your sweetie willing to simply stir up the resultant mess and call it a pudding? If so, he may be someone who is capable of facing disaster or disappointment with admirable composure. If not, he may be too much of a perfectionist for any non-perfectionist to endure.

The Roman poet Martial once quipped: “He who bears chives upon his breath/Need not fear being kissed to death.” The same is true of other odiferous foods – onions, garlic, beer, certain nuts and cheeses. The sweetheart who doesn’t hesitate to kiss you when your breath smells of any one of these things is likely to stick around when things other than your breath begin to lose their freshness.

Grocery shopping with a potential soulmate can also be very revealing. If he or she is willing to spend the extra money to buy fair-trade coffee and chocolate, free-range chicken eggs, cruelty-free meats, and organic vegetables, it could mean one of two things: Either (1) your sweetie is an insufferably self-righteous do-gooder whose impossibly high ethical standards you’ll never be able to live up to, or (2) your sweetie is a compassionate individual who cares about the environment, third-world living conditions, animal rights, and other worthy causes. The amount of attention he calls to himself as he makes these enlightened choices is a good indicator of which type of person he is. Use your discretion.

On the other hand, if your sweetie consistently fills his grocery cart with artificial vanilla extract, imitation cocoa powder, margarine, fake crab meat, frozen waffles, pancake syrup made from corn-syrup and artificial maple flavoring, non-dairy whipped cream, and other phony or prefabbed foods, authenticity may not be his strong point. Of course, it’s also possible that he’s merely allergic to the real thing or trying to save money for something more important (a diamond ring, perhaps?). Don’t be too quick to judge a man (or woman) by the contents of his shopping cart.

You can’t learn everything you need to know about a potential lover in the kitchen but, in my opinion, it is a better place to start than the bedroom. Collapsed soufflés and burnt biscuits are almost never the cause of a shotgun wedding.