The one I had the most trouble with was a middle-aged woman, who came from London, very highly recommended from her last place. She was capital at first—punctual, clean, and as good with her vegetables as she was with the joints and pastry, and that was a great thing, for some English cooks think vegetables are beneath their notice and ought to be left to the kitchenmaid; but I am very strong on vegetables in plain English cooking—especially in an hotel. I know from our customers, who have travelled about, that the vegetables are the weak points in most hotels, and potatoes and cabbage will be served with an expensive dinner that would be a disgrace to a cookshop.
A gentleman told me one day, after he’d had his dinner, when I’d cooked the vegetables myself, that he’d been travelling about the country, and it was the first time he’d eaten a well-cooked potato since he’d left home. He said vegetables were murdered as a rule, and were so badly served, that the waiter didn’t even give them their names, but called them “veg” (pronounced vedge). I’ve heard that said myself at a restaurant in London where Harry took me to dinner, so I know it’s true. “Veg on five,” said our waiter. That was for the boy to put vegetables on table No. 5. Then another waiter put his head into the lift and shouted, “Now, then, look sharp with the veg, there!”
Yes, and “veg” was the word for what we got. Three nasty, half-boiled, diseased-looking potatoes, that had been out of the saucepan half an hour if they had been a minute, and a dab of cabbage—“dab” is the only word—and the cabbage was tasteless, sodden stuff, floating in water; and not a particle of salt had that cabbage or potato seen.
That was a lesson to me, because I felt what I didn’t like I couldn’t expect our customers to like. So I said to myself, “No veg at the ‘Stretford Arms,’ Mary Jane; you’ll give your customers good sound, honest vegetables, cooked well, with as much care as the meat or the pastry or the pudding.”
I’ve wandered a little bit, I know, but I can’t help it. I do feel so strongly on the shameful treatment of vegetables by the ordinary English cook. Now, to come back to the cook I was telling you about. She went on beautifully for a month, and I thought I’d got a treasure; and then she went and fell in love with a young fellow in the village—a very decent young fellow, but a bit too fond of gallivanting. He was a good-looking chap, and the girls encouraged him, as they will do, for I’ve noticed that if a man’s at all decent-looking there are always plenty of girls ready to encourage him to be a flirt. He fell in love with our cook—at any rate, he walked out with her once or twice, and then she told me they were engaged.
Unfortunately, he left off his work at seven every evening, and when our cook couldn’t go out with him, I dare say he wasn’t particular if he laughed and joked with the other young women of the place, who could get out.
Cook got to hear of something of the sort, and it made her dreadfully jealous, and she was always coming to me and saying, “Oh, please, ma’am, we aren’t very busy this evening; can I just run out and get a piece of ribbon?” or, “Oh, if you please, ma’am, could you spare me for ten minutes this evening?” And if I couldn’t let her go she’d be careless and ill-tempered, and work herself up into quite a rage—of course, fancying that her young man was “up to his larks,” as the kitchenmaid used to call it, when she chaffed poor cook about it.
I let her go out as often as I could when we were slack; but when we were busy, and there were late dinners to cook, and meat teas and early suppers, it wasn’t possible, and I had to be firm, and say no.
One evening, when we’d let the best sitting-room to a London lady and gentleman, and they’d ordered dinner at seven, cook came to me about ten minutes to, and said, “Please, ma’am, everything’s all ready, and Mary can dish up and see to the rest, if you’ll let me go out. I won’t be long.”
“No,” I said; “I really can’t, cook. I’m expecting people by the next train, and they’ll very likely want something cooked at once.”