Cooks themselves almost always judge a dinner too partially, and from the wrong point of view; they are, almost without exception, obstinately of the opinion that everything they cook must taste equally good to everybody. This is obviously absurd (but so like a cook), for allowance must be made for the personal equation. Nothing tastes so good as what one eats oneself, so it is not to be expected that one and the same dish will please even the most fastidious octette. Still there have been occasional instances.
The late Sir Henry Thompson once had a new cook, and, in an interview with her after the first dinner-party, she expressed herself as being delighted that everything had been so satisfactory. “But how do you know it was?” asked Sir Henry. “I’ve not given you my opinion yet.” “No, Sir Henry,” said the cook, “but I know it was all right, because none of the salt-cellars were touched.”
It is a mistaken idea that a man-cook can be a cordon-bleu. That title of high distinction is reserved for the feminine sex. According to Lady Morgan (Sidney Owenson, 1841), in her “Book without a Name,” a cordon-bleu is defined as an honorary distinction conferred on the first class of female cooks in Paris, either in allusion to their blue aprons, or to the order whose blue ribbon was so long considered as the adequate recompense of all the highest merit in the highest classes.
The Fermier Général who built the palace of the Elysée became not more celebrated for his exquisite dinners than for the moral courage with which he attributed their excellence to his female cook, Marie, when such a chef was hardly known in a French kitchen; for when Marie served up un petit diner délirant she was called for like other prime donne, and her health drunk by the style of Le Cordon Bleu.
One of the most famous of the bearers of the title was undoubtedly that wonderful Sophie who is so charmingly described in La Salle-à-manger du Docteur Véron. She was cook and politician too, and even Alexandre Dumas père did not disdain to dine with her at a dinner of her own cooking; and moreover eminent statesmen of the period consulted her about politics, her clear-headed simplicity and wide experience of popular sentiment rendering her opinions of considerable value. The editor adds that her name was not Sophie, but that her many friends will nevertheless easily recognize her.
The value of a good chef in a well-ordered household cannot be over-estimated. His tact, his experience, and his art go far to make life pleasant and easy. Moreover, a good cook is a direct aid to good health, for he uses none but the best materials, and, if he be of the highest rank of his order, knows just how to assimilate those suave and subtle suggestions and flavourings which go so far to make cookery such as the great Careme (1828) called le genre mâle et élégant. Cooks were held in the highest estimation in Venice in the sixteenth century. Here is the beginning of a letter from one Allessandro Vacchi, a Venetian citizen, to an acquaintance of his, a cook and carver by profession: “Al magnifico Signor Padron mio osservandissimo il Signor Matteo Barbini, Cuóco e Scalco celeberrimo della città di Venetia.” In our own time honour to the profession is not lacking, for a little while ago the King decorated M. Ménager, his maître-chef, with the Royal Victorian Medal.
At the same time the competition of many rich folk for the services of some of the best-known chefs has made these artists, in some cases at least, place an extortionate value upon their ministrations. A very clever chef, reliable in everything except his sauces, in which he is slightly heterodox, was recently engaged by a nouveau riche at a salary far exceeding that which he paid to his private secretary.
In one of Matthew Bramble’s letters from Bath (“Humphry Clinker”) he refers to such a one as “a mushroom of opulence, who pays a cook seventy guineas a week for furnishing him with one meal a day.” Mushroom of opulence is good. That species of fungus is always with us. Dr. Kitchiner in his “Housekeeper’s Oracle” (1829) quotes from “The Plebeian Polished, or Rules for Persons who have unaccountably plunged themselves into Wealth.” A work of this nature, if published nowadays, should surely command a large sale, for the number of people who have “unaccountably plunged themselves into Wealth” seems to be multiplying rapidly. Most of them know how to feed. Few of them seem to have mastered the mystery of how to dine. “Man ist was man isst” says the German proverb, and there is no valid reason for spending fabulous sums on a dinner of out-of-the-season delicacies, when the good reasonable and seasonable things of this earth are ready and ripe for consumption.
At the same time, meanness has nothing to recommend it. There is no credit in starving yourself or your guests. The difference between mere parsimony and economy has never been more deftly illustrated than in those pregnant sentences from Edmund Burke: “Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential article in home economy. Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists, not in saving, but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment. Mere instinct, and that not an instinct of the noblest kind, may produce this false economy in perfection.”
This is very solid wisdom, because it bears in mind the great element of perspective in expense, which is so often forgotten or overlooked.