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 fat striped 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 is meant. 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 dinner fillets 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?”