BOYS AND SOLDIERS AS COOKS.
Schoolboys also should, and will, be taught. They can help their mothers at home—why not?—especially in daughterless families; and there are many occasions in life—when the wife is ill, or when men are serving in the army or camping—when such knowledge will prove useful.
Apart from practical considerations, it has an educational value, too, training, as it does, the memory, the power of observation, the senses of taste and smell, and the inventive faculty, besides inculcating neatness and cleanliness.
There are times when men who can cook receive better pay than most others, though their work be both easier and pleasanter. For instance, in an article entitled "In Canada's Wilderness," which appeared in the New York "Evening Post" of September 1, 1910, the writer described the trip of a prospecting party through a section of the Northwest which was tapped by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad. Speaking of the cooks, he said that they were "good cooks, and a good cook in that country is almost worth his weight in fine rubies. They are paid from $75 to $80 a month, and receive housing and bedding. This is more money than any of the other men about an engineering camp receive, except the engineer himself."
One of these cooks had been manager and part owner of a great tea plantation in Ceylon; another had been an officer in a British regiment and had served in the South African War. He had just sold $12,000 worth of property in Edmonton.
The London "Daily Mail" of June 20, 1912, gives an account of an Oxford cooking school which has a special class for men who wish to learn to cook. It is well attended and the men, so the teacher says, "are very keen about the work, and much keener than the women would be as to details. Nothing escapes their attention."
The men work in pairs with the simplest of utensils, and each lesson extends over an hour. Special stress is laid upon frying and stewing, and upon the different meals that can be prepared in a pot or pan over a camp fire. They are taught the various ways of cooking vegetables, of making meat pies, and how to produce such delicacies as pancakes and scrambled or poached eggs. Each lesson affords time for cooking three dishes, and at the conclusion a number of recipes are given, and these are duly recorded for future reference.
The London County Council began to encourage boys in the autumn of 1910 when a school for teaching them how to cook was started. There were fifteen pupils. Two years later there were forty. It is only a small beginning, but from such an avalanche may grow. The aim of the school was stated to be to equip boys between fourteen and sixteen with a knowledge of practical cookery to enable them to fill positions as cooks in first-class hotels, clubs, and restaurants. The course lasts three years and positions are guaranteed at the end.
According to official statistics, 106 boys in England attended cookery classes during 1910-11.
Soldiers in all countries have to do a good deal of camp cooking, and they seem to enjoy it. Circular 11 of the United States Bureau of Animal Industry is concerned with army cooking. The 1912 report of Brig.-Gen. Henry G. Shaw, Commissary General, shows that great advantage has resulted from the schools for bakers and cooks that have been established at Fort Riley, Kansas City, as well as at the Barracks in Washington and at the Presidio in San Francisco. During the year 253 cooks, 131 bakers and 52 mess sergeants have been turned out by the schools as experts.
An English translation has been published (London: Forster Ground Co.) of the French Manual of Field Cookery entitled Livre de Cuisine Militaire aux Manœuvres et en Campagne. It is a pamphlet of 35 pages, including specifications and pictures of necessary utensils, with simple recipes, and a preface by the French War Minister, who remarks, among other things, that it is no longer enough to appoint certain men to the duties of cooks, but it is "necessary that every man ... should be able to prepare his own food and that of any of his comrades, who may not be in a position to do so, by means of the simple apparatus available."
In continental countries there are many cooking schools for men. In Copenhagen, for instance, as we read in the "Lancet," "there is an old frigate moored in a canal close to the most fashionable center of the town. Here there is a school for ship's cooks. On board a ship with the limited space such as prevails at sea young cooks try their 'prentice hands at making dishes such as are served to passengers on sea voyages. There is an awning on the deck, tables are laid out, and numerous inhabitants of Copenhagen take their meals there, for they are both varied and inexpensive. Thus fully qualified cooks are being prepared for the sea, and it is not necessary to point out that, whether at sea or on shore, efficient cooking not only adds to the joys of life but is a very necessary aid to digestion."