I think the most amount of cooking we did in Boy Scouts was making doughnuts on a trip to the cabin one time.
Personally, what I have come to appreciate about the Boy Scouts merit badge system is breadth. None (or at least very few) of the merit badges require you to learn much about their topic, but they teach you a little, and introduce you to at least one person who knows some stuff about that thing. I feel that I learned a little bit about a lot, and my Computers merit badge instructor was one of the first computer "experts" I knew; he taught me how to wipe and install Windows 98, and was the first to show me the innards of a computer. I like to think (but don't really know) that lots of other folks stumble upon a passion in a similar way while working through the broad survey in the catalog.
I think it can be a bit hard for kids to find (or stated differently, for parents to provide) this sort of breadth, and I'm strongly in favor of any program that attempts to provide it, not just the boy / girl scouts.
Examples: way too many combinations of sealed chicken/tuna, macaroni, and broccoli; eggs, pasta, using oil and water without/instead of milk, the food safeness of dried sausage.
Though my husband _did_ learn how to cook in Scouts. (It helped that he went through serious wilderness camping trips, so he knew how to do everything from gig a frog to roast a chicken... starting with a live chicken.)