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Kitchen Management

Another condition upon which successful cookery depends is the proper management of the kitchen. Now, of all the various points that comprise kitchen management, perhaps none is more important than what we will call "clearing up as you go along."

Contrast a well-ordered kitchen with a badly-managed one at that trying moment that cooks call dishing up. In the latter you will find the cook with a flushed face and hurried manner, surrounded by a perfect chaos of dirty saucepans, dishes, spoons, basins, knives, and forks; and woe be to that natural enemy of the cook, the Buttons, who speaks to her under these circumstances. "There! don't bother me! I don't know which way to turn!" Who has not at some dinner-parties witnessed those awful pauses between the courses, and quite felt for the hostess, whose utmost endeavours to appear unconcerned are but ill-concealed, and whose eyes turn anxiously towards the door through which nothing seems to make its appearance. But if the mistress above is to be pitied, much more to be pitied is the maid below, whose flurry of agitation is increased by the footman's "Come, cook, make haste; they are all waiting!"

Now all this confusion arises from want of forethought. The good old maxim, "Never put off till to-morrow what can be done to-day," never applies with greater force than in the arrangement of a good dinner. As far as possible let everything be arranged before hand in proper order. The soup, of course, should always be made beforehand if possible, and be of a nature that will keep. There are so many little things that can only be done at the last moment that it is of the utmost importance that everything which possibly can be done before should be finished and put by. I will give an illustration of a dinner--a very ordinary one--in which the cook can have plenty of time to herself at the finish. Suppose now a long dresser neatly covered over with old newspapers, on which are stood in row cooking utensils as follows:--First, a saucepan, containing mock-turtle soup; second, a stewpan, containing, say, some stewed eels; third, a tin of oyster patties; fourth, a stewpan, with some haricot beef; here a saucepan containing some rich brown gravy, and another in which an onion reposes quietly imbosomed in bread-crumbs and milk. Now, all these things might have been placed there hours before dinner. Say the number of persons for dinner is eight. Now, on the dresser in front of the soup-tureen should be placed a pile of eight clean-dusted soup-plates, and a pile of eight ordinary plates in front of every other dish. We will suppose two roast fowls to be twirling round in front of the fire or roasting in the oven, and that the cook, when she put them down, took into her calculations the time it would take to consume the soup, fish, and two entrees of oyster patties and haricot, and also the average length of delay common to the family: for masters of families who have a trick of ordering dinner at seven o'clock, and coming home at half-past, must put up with two alternatives--one to have dinner regularly half an hour late, the other to have the dinner at times utterly spoilt, from nearly everything being overcooked. We might have added to our list a saucepan full of cold water, in which float sufficient peeled potatoes, and a basin of water, in which float some well-washed brussels sprouts. Now, if a cook arranges all these things a good hour before dinner, has a good clear fire, and everything around bright and clean and washed up, I defy her to get into a muddle. The soup-tureen and the vegetable-dishes must be filled with boiling water some time before they are wanted.

If there is a proper plate-warmer the plates can be placed in it at the right moment, and everything will go straight.

Some cooks, however, with such a simple little dinner to arrange as we have described, would, from simple dilatoriness, get into a muddle just at the finish. You will perhaps find them skimming the gravy or making the bread-crumbs all of a hurry when it wants but half an hour to dinner time. Another instance in which a little forethought will save a great deal of trouble is that of pouring a little boiling water into a saucepan directly it comes off the fire and is emptied. We shall have, another time, to speak of the enormous power enamel saucepans possess of retaining heating. Now, suppose the cook boils up the gravy, pours it into the hot tureen ready for it, and puts the saucepan down just as it is. The dregs of the gravy cake on it as hard as iron from the action of the heat, and the saucepan requires three times more washing than if the cook had had the common sense to put the saucepan under the boiler tap for a second or two, and given it a rinse round. Having now briefly pointed out the outlines of the first principles on which good cookery depends, we will proceed to discuss these principles more in detail. In all large works on cookery it must be borne in mind that recipes are of necessity brief. A certain amount of knowledge on the part of the cook must be pre-supposed. For instance, in cooking fish--say, a fried sole--the directions given would be, "Egg and bread-crumb the sole," etc. I recollect once asking a person of good education (an M.A. of Cambridge) what he would do were he to egg and bread-crumb a fish. He candidly confessed he had not the slightest idea; and on being pressed for an answer, guessed that the best method would be to first boil the egg and chop it fine, etc. Now, of course, this is ignorance of a certain kind, but a very common form of ignorance which, indeed, does not deserve the name. Persons with a little knowledge of a special subject are very apt to laugh at others who, while better educated and better informed generally than themselves, happen to exhibit a little ignorance on that particular subject, which may not be within everybody's province. For instance, a carpenter's apprentice would probably laugh at and feel great contempt for a man who should walk into his workshop and be unable to pick out a jack-plane from the others. For all that, however, this man might be the most brilliant statesman of the age. Again, the greatest living scholar or historian might be supremely ignorant as to the best method of cleaning pewter, and might very possibly be regarded in consequence as a fool by the pot-boy. We consider it, therefore, necessary in our present work to supply for the benefit of absolute novices a few simple directions and explanations which, if given in each recipe, would enlarge the book much beyond reasonable limits. For instance, there is a story on record of a certain royal personage many years ago who remarked that he wondered how the apples were got into the dumpling. Now, why should an ignorant person any more than an educated one be ashamed of saying, "It is all very well to say, `Baste it thoroughly,' but what do you mean by `basting'?" Probably any cook of exceedingly elementary knowledge would laugh at the idea of explaining anything so simple. On the other hand, a professed French cook might as well laugh at her for not knowing how to bone a turkey, or to lard a fillet of beef, or make mayonnaise sauce. In teaching cooking, as in teaching everything else, the great art for the teacher is to bring down his own mind and thoughts to the level of the pupil. We wish, therefore, in the present work, to take nothing for granted. The greatest astronomer commenced his course of study by learning the axioms of Euclid, the first of which is the self-evident fact that "things that are equal to the same thing are equal to one another." There was a period in the life of Francatelli--as of every other cook--when he did not know what it meant to baste a joint, and was ignorant of how to clean a greasy saucepan.