CHAPTER II: THE COOK
A lady who has kept house with marked success for fifty years once said to me: “My dear, there are only three things of any importance in a house. First the husband, then the nurse, then the cook, and after that it doesn’t matter.”
At the time this collected wisdom slid through my head almost without recognition. I thought my husband perfect, and took it for granted that I knew all about him. I did not then require a nurse, and in my limitless ignorance I supposed a cook to be a person who cooks things, and whom, if she does not cook things well, one replaces by another cook who does. How, indeed, should I know more of the nature and habits of cooks than the general public knows of the physiology of the animals which it sees behind bars at the Zoo? At home I knew that there was a certain fatstriped creature in the kitchen, whom my mother was obliged to propitiate before we could get scones for breakfast, and to whom I vaguely believed my father said prayers night and morning. But meals came up and went down, in winter and summer, autumn and spring, and that was all that I really knew about them.
How should an outsider such as I was know that the personality of a cook is as pervasive in a small house as that of a mellow cheese; that she is as powerful as a dog in a hen-house, as moody as a gipsy, as amenable to flattery as an old gentleman, and as inured to dirt as a pig? So far as I had thought at all, I had always imagined that there was a household formula called “giving orders to the cook.” I had not been married a year before I knew that this is a term invented by novelists, and which has no resemblance at all to the fact it is intended to describe. It is a recognised fallacy like the Cambridge May week, which is not in May, but every one knows what ismeant. Giving orders to the cook really means a very elaborate process of mental suggestion. We learn by painful initiation what are the things she is capable of cooking, and we try, so far as is possible, to direct her choice of what she is willing to cook within the limits of her capacity. By the same process of mental suggestion we add to her repertoire of dishes, and according to the strength of our will and the receptivity of her mind, she elects by and by to cook more or less what we want. It is the art of mental suggestion, not the art of ordering, that makes a mistress the real keeper of a cook.
For instance, when I first knew Ruth I used to make mistakes like this: “You might make a curry of the mutton, Ruth, and give us some stewed pears for lunch. We will have fried fillets of fish to-night, with cutlets from the end of the neck that you have left, and a batter pudding with jam sauce.” And Ruth would reply, “Yes’m.”
When the luncheon came up there would be haricot and apple tart, and for dinnerfillets of fish done in a wonderful wine sauce, cutlets, it is true, and a sweet omelette.
“Ruth,” I said next morning, “you did not cook what I ordered yesterday.”
“Didn’t I, m’m?” she replied, with the candid look of a company promoter accused of fraud. “I’m sure I don’t know how that happened. I quite thought you said I was to do up the mutton.”
“Look at the slate.” I pointed out where curry was ordained in large letters.
“Why, so it was, m’m; I am sorry. I remember now, I hadn’t any chutney by me, and I knew master wouldn’t fancy curry without a bit o’ chutney so I just made a nice haricot instead.”
“And what about the fried fish?” I asked. “And the pudding?”
“Ah,” said Ruth, “yes’m, we shall want a nice frying-pan. The one I have isn’t near large enough to do a nice bit of fish and it’s not the right shape. A nice enamel one the next time you are going into town if you can be troubled to remember.”
Now in these days if I wanted the meals I have described I should begin:
“How about the mutton, Ruth? What are you going to do with that?”
“Well, I think, m’m, a haricot would be as nice as anything.”
“Quite so. And I suppose we shall be obliged to have fish for dinner.”
“Yes’m—fried fish I suppose?” (Ruth’s strong point is frying.)
“Some nice little fillets I think master likes, m’m.”
“Yes, Ruth, fish, cutlets, and a pudding. I suppose a batter pudding would take too many eggs?”
“Oh, no, m’m, not at all. I could manage with two nicely.”
“Very well then; that will do beautifully. We always like your batter puddings so much better than those they have at Buckingham Palace; they are so much lighter, and that jam sauce you make is a dream. And, by the way” (this is just as I am leaving the kitchen), “we must have another curry someday; Admiral Tobasco said he had never met one to touch yours that night.”
“Would you care to have the mutton curried to-day, m’m, as a change from the haricot?”
“Oh, yes, Ruth, that would be delightful. What a good idea.”
But it takes years to learn.
New dishes are acquired in the same way. This is what the novice does:
“Ruth, I want you to try this beefà laSoudanese, it is quite simple.”
“Beef what, m’m?”
“Beefà laSoudanese. You see it is done in this way.”
I read the recipe, while Ruth turns away in silence and begins sweeping up the hearth.
“Well, Ruth, what do you think of it?”
“Oh, just as you please’m, of course.”
“It is quite easy, isn’t it?”
There is a sudden convulsion amongst the fire-irons, and Ruth turns round wiping her eyes.
“Of course, it must be as you like, m’m. It’s your place to give orders, I know, but I’m afraid I shall never give satisfaction the way I am. My mother’d tell you—and indeed I’d sooner she came and spoke to you herself—that I never had no training in fancy dishes, and all you asked for was a good plain cook, which I am, as her ladyship said herself when I left. Of course, you’d very likely not know, being a young lady and having no experience in such things, that we poor girls have to make our own way, and to be respectable is as much as we can hope for, and that I always have been, and I’d sooner starve than take a place where I couldn’t do my duty, and I think it would be better if you were to get some one more experienced; I haven’t been feeling at all settled lately, the way things have been”—and so on.
If by chance your mind’s ribs are made of steel and your sympathies of spun granite, as some women’s are, this network of unintelligible wrath will have no power toensnare you, but the average woman takes years to unwind herself from the thraldom of female hysteria—and then she wriggles out of it by guile.
“Ruth,” I say now, “we had a lovely dish at the club last night. They made a great fuss about it, and said only an expert could cook it, but I believe that your clever brain could find out what it is made of. It looked like—” and then I describe it.
Ruth makes a wild conjecture and says it sounds very like theà laMarengo that master likes so much.
“I don’t know whether it is quite that,” I say thoughtfully, “but we might look in one of the cookery books and see whether there is anything like it to start on.”
Then I turn up the recipe for the dish and suggest that we should try that, and see how it turns out; perhaps, I add, that she need not trouble to make scones that afternoon and that the cold tart will do for dinner.
As regards their pervasiveness and theirpower, it is a remarkable fact that although most of the inmates of a house know what the master wants, and a few know what the mistress wants, and nobody knows what the housemaid wants, yet every one knows what the cook wants. If the cook is satisfied the whole house works smoothly; if not, an atmosphere of awe and discomfort pervades everywhere, meals are partaken of in silence or in a sort of nervous bravado, no bells are rung, people fetch their own boots, and are courteous to one another about the toast sooner than ask for more. And this omnipotent creature in the stripes and a collar that will not fasten before ten in the morning is, as I have said, moody and capricious to the last degree. She says it is the range, but it is not really. Left to myself, as I have been sometimes, I can spend weeks without having a word with the range. In fact, his commonplace obedience to rules has often bored me sadly, and I have wished that he would, just for once, heat up on his own initiative and never mind the flues, or even that he wouldget in a temper and smoke when all was well and the dampers regulated to perfection.
But sometimes he and cook cannot hit it off. I may go down, for instance, at the proper time, neither too early nor too late, and be met by a smell that even a very old skunk would find trying.
“My dear Ruth,” I say, “is it the milk again or what?”
“It boiled over,” says Ruth, looking outraged and insulted, “although I only left it for a minute. I never saw such heat in my life.”
“How extremely tiresome,” I say, frowning at the range. Really he might have been more tactful on this day when I wanted a special soufflé for luncheon. “I wonder whether the man did anything to it the last time he was here?” I say very loudly and distinctly; and then becoming innocent and diffident I suggest, “You don’t think shutting down that damper a little might help, do you?”
Ruth pushes in the damper, mutteringsomething about “must have hot water for washing up,” although the water is already bubbling and roaring in the cylinder—but there, she is a good girl, and you can’t have everything. Only, I do wish sometimes that the range had rather more tact and less common sense.
Talking of ranges reminds me that there are days when she says it is impossible to keep the range clean. Those are the days when she boils everything at full gallop so that it slops over with a horrid frittering noise and the smell gets even into my hair-brushes. I suppose that there are cooks who have a sense of smell, but they probably die very young and leave only those who cook from memory. One question often puzzles me. Does a good chef ever go near the scullery? Can real art survive within fifty yards of that thing which feels like seaweed and looks like a tennis net? or that tangle of greasy grey wire that speeds the departing and welcomes the coming occupant of a saucepan? Can nightingales’ tongues beprepared at a zinc table where pink and grey rabbit-skins, potato peelings, white of egg, and the clammy skeletons of fish are gathered together in reckless confusion?
See a cook’s cupboard and die! It is very like Naples. There are fifty small tins all exactly alike, except that some are sticky, some greasy, and some black with coal dust; their lids are bent into fantastic shapes which prevent them from being opened without a struggle. There are pepper-pots whose holes are stopped up with fat and rust; glass jars containing different sizes of corrugated white bullets; nameless brown powders at the bottom of blue paper bags, screwed up at the neck, and with a currant sticking to the bottom; copies of last year’sTimesstained with paraffin; a cashmere boot, much worn at the heel; fire-lighters smeared with glue and sawdust; a spoon with a piece of cold bacon in it, and one of your best plates from upstairs—chipped.
I suppose Ruth thinks that because we are but dust she had better go on building us up.