Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/The School of Cookery
THE SCHOOL OF COOKERY.
“God sends the meat and the Devil sends the cooks.” In England we have been content to go on consoling ourselves with this often-quoted proverb for the most abominable style of cookery, and consequently the most extravagant waste of good provisions. Possibly there is not a nation in Europe that possesses such excellent materials for providing a good dinner as our own, and yet has such small aptitude for turning it to good account. Indeed, some persons think the prime nature of the raw material is the cause of our carelessness in dressing it. At all events, where nature has not been kind to us we have not neglected to hold our own even against the best-favoured climes. Where, for instance, can they grow such grapes, such pines, such melons as in old foggy England? France is the land of peaches; yet when our Queen was a guest at the Tuileries, the Emperor sent to Covent Garden for fruit he could not match in his own country. Let us flatter our vanity in this manner if we like, but it is high time that we looked to our cuisine. The Frenchman contemplating an old pair of boots with an eye to concocting a stew, is certainly a picture of art under difficulties far worthier of our imitation than the florid butcher handing over a prime-cut to the tender mercies of the maid-of-all-work. How does that individual pick up her small knowledge of the art of cookery? Could we see pass before us the dismal troop of dyspeptics created by her unskilful touch—could we paint the horrible nightmares she has called forth by her bungling endeavours, we should throw in the shade the sketches of Blake and Fuseli, and inaugurate a literature more weird and elf-like than that of Hoffmann; and she might exclaim, “Alone I did it!” But our business is rather with well-nourished stomachs than with diseased imaginations, and our object to draw public attention to an excellent institution known as the School of Cookery, at 111, Great Portland Street. This establishment is conducted by Mrs. Mitchell, with the amiable intention of instructing servants in the different branches of the culinary art, and of saving the British stomach from being experimented on by their ’prentice hands. The School of Cookery is not a place of mere theoretical study, but a real working establishment, with a scientifically fitted-up kitchen, presided over by a chef de cuisine, a master of his art. The cooking is by no means illusory; the viands are not theatrical properties, to be served up to a make-believe company: on the contrary, every day at half-past six a table d’hôte is served on the premises (consisting of soup, fish, entrées, French and English dishes, confectionery, and ices) for the charge of half-a-crown.
We must not let it be supposed that the instruction given below-stairs is purchased at the expense of the company, in the dining-room, as the cook is responsible for the proper serving of the dinner; but the actual working of a dinner, with its twelve or fourteen courses, gives a reality to the instruction which could not in any other way be obtained. Only those servants who have some knowledge of plain cooking are allowed to receive instruction in this school, as it is rather a finishing establishment than a seminary for simple instruction. Here the servant requiring instruction may either pay the full fee of four pounds, and be perfected in every branch of the art, or she may limit her schooling to any of its branches for a minor fee. She may graduate, in fact, in special subjects. Thus the art of concocting soups may be alone sought for—but what an art! How would our sorrows be lightened if we could depend upon our domestics serving up a really delicate potage! What shins of beef would be economised, and what indigestion avoided, if Betty would only be obliging enough to serve us up a light clean soup Julienne, such as you can get in any restaurant’s in Paris! The art of making entrées, again, would be a special course, or the equally delicate art of confectionery. Surely a proficiency in either of these studies would amply repay the student for the inconsiderable fee charged! As the schoolmaster has been such a favourite of late, is it not rather extraordinary that we are only just beginning to think of educating our helps to serve us up such an essential of life as a well-cooked dinner? What has Paterfamilias been about—that irascible old gentleman whose whole life centres in the dinner-table—that he has never taken steps to secure a decent race of cooks? You will hear him propound the doctrine that you should part with a good professor of the art under nothing less than manslaughter, and you will hear that he has submitted to help the inebriated Molly up to bed with a well-disguised indignation rather than offend her, as he feels sure that she is mistress of the situation. Why should he be thus humiliated in his own household without taking any measures to escape from so frightful a tyranny? The art of Cookery is, something like the egg-trick of Columbus, very easy when some one has shown us how to do it; but it certainly is strange that in all our rage for teaching the people “common things,” one so common and yet so important should never have been hit upon.
Of all the employments of women, what so important as that of cooking? but we hear nothing about it from Miss Emily Faithfull; yet it is of infinitely greater importance that they study the art of feeding the body in a wholesome manner than that they should take to printing, which they cannot do better than men. As for the Social Science Congress, we question very much if its members would not be doing a far greater service to humanity in disseminating knowledge respecting an art on which all sound health, mental as well as bodily, is based, than in discussing desultorily the world’s affairs at large.
Not twelve years ago, the art of design was unknown in England, and we imported from France all the articles required to figure our calicoes and other fabrics. Now there are upwards of seventy schools of design flourishing in the Three Kingdoms; and the French Commissioners, sent over here by their Government to report upon the progress made by us since the Exhibition of 1851, declared that we had so advanced in our artistic training that France no longer could claim a monopoly of art-designing in connection with textile fabrics, but that we had made such strides that their own countrymen must look to their laurels. Surely, if we can conquer a difficulty which was deemed to be beyond our genius, there is no reason on earth why so material a study as cookery, and one which appeals so strongly to our animal appetites, should not be acquired also!
The School of Cookery, after perfecting the student in the art, gives a certificate of capability, which will stand in the same stead to the servant as the diploma does to the doctor. A cook armed with one of these tokens of proficiency, would find that she was not only able to get a better place, but a higher rate of wages; she would be a skilled artisan, in short, and therefore entitled to a higher place in the social hierarchy than she can command at present. We hear that already applications have been made at the institution for these trained cooks, and we have no doubt that they will be sought after as much as are the trained nurses that are now procurable from the institution in South Audley Street. Only those who know the troubles of housekeeping will be able to appreciate the value of a race of young cooks free from the vices of the ancient dames who have held us at their mercy for so long a time. We may hope from the young adepts in the art, an immunity from that gin-drinking which seemed inseparable from the old school of spoiled domestics we have put up with so long.
May not persons of moderate incomes also be expected to benefit by this infusion of new blood into our kitchens? What can a young couple about to marry say to the warning they receive from knowing matrons, that they cannot put down the expense of a really good cook at less than sixty or seventy pounds a-year—what with the extravagant wages they demand and the expensive methods they are accustomed to, to say nothing of their insisting, as they almost invariably do if they are skilled hands, on your keeping a scullerymaid? Let us hope that all this will be changed, and that with cheap instruction we may get cheap cooks, whereby our pockets and our stomachs may be benefited. If prevention is better than cure, surely it is putting the cart before the horse to institute training-schools for nurses before instituting schools for the preparation of wholesome, palatable, digestible food, the want of which is in itself a grievous source of ill-health, and the cause of a demand for nurses! Moreover, we believe that instruction in cooking is a movement demanded in the interest of the working-classes themselves. Those who are acquainted with the habits of our artisans know that a fearful waste is experienced by them in consequence of the ignorance on the part of their wives of the commonest principles of the culinary art. Half the goodness of the meat they boil is thrown away instead of being utilised in soup-making. They know nothing of the art of stewing; very few can boil a potato or a little rice perfectly, and the whole art of making palatable the very inferior meat their means will afford, is lost by their ignorance of the qualifying power of a few vegetables. There can be no doubt whatever, that at least twenty per cent. of the nourishment which a French man or woman would extract from the provisions consumed by the working-classes of Great Britain, is wholly lost to them by their ignorance of cookery. Let us, therefore, welcome most heartily the experiment of establishing a school for instruction in the art; and let us add that, if properly conducted, no speculation is more certain of success, for the reason that it is an attempt to supply the great want of our households at the present moment.