Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [86]
After the housekeeper, one of the most senior and trusted household figures was the cook. It is the female cook that will be considered here, together with the other female servants, whilst the male cook, or chef, will be addressed later in the chapter, in conjunction with the menservants.
Mr and Mrs Adams’s advice to the female cook is: ‘On her first going into a family [she] will do well to inform herself of the rules and regulations of the house – the customs of the kitchen – the peculiarities of her master and mistress – and above all, she must study, most sedulously, to acquire a perfect knowledge of their taste.’62
After breakfast, she would receive orders from the mistress for that day’s meals. Her chief duties were the cooking of the evening dinner where, Mrs Beeton observes, ‘she must take upon herself all the dressing and serving of principal dishes, which her skill and ingenuity have mostly prepared’.63 Her morning would be occupied by the pastry, jellies, creams and entrées required for that evening’s dinner, and only then would she prepare the luncheon, which would be served after she herself had eaten at midday. A dinner party or house party would be especially demanding, and in the Victorian era would mean many frantic hours of work.
Country-house cooks were often considered rather daunting figures, as the Servants’ Practical Guide (1880) observed: ‘Some ladies stand very much in awe of their cooks, knowing that those who consider themselves to be thoroughly experienced will not brook fault-finding, or interference with their manner of cooking, and give notice to leave on the smallest pretext. Thus when ladies obtain a really good cook, they deal with serving the dinner.’64 Cooks usually expected certain perquisites, such as leftover dripping, rabbit skins or old tea leaves which they could sell for profit.
The cooks usually managed a kitchenmaid or two, who in turn might rise to the position of cook.65 Their responsibility, according to the Adamses, was usually ‘to take nearly the whole management for roasting and boiling, and otherwise dressing plain joints and dishes, and all the fish and vegetables.’ As the cleanliness of the kitchen was one of her foremost duties, the kitchenmaid’s first task was to scour the dressers, shelves and kitchen tables with soap, sand and hot water. Then she was to clean up the kitchen and prepare the breakfast to be served ‘in the house-keeper’s room, and the servants’-hall’. For the rest of the day the kitchenmaid would be ‘preparing for the servants’ dinner, the dinner in the nursery . . . and the lunch in the parlour’, the family dinner and the servants’ supper.66
Because kitchenmaids often did slightly more skilled jobs such as making sauces, baking bread and preparing vegetables, they were frequently paid considerably more than the unskilled scullery-maid, or scullion. According to the Adamses, her unenviable duties might include lighting ‘fires in the kitchen range and under the coppers or boilers, and stew holes’, and then to ‘wash up all the plates and dishes, sauce-pans, stew-pans, kettles, pots and all kitchen utensils’.67 She would also assist the kitchenmaid in the messier food preparation, such as ‘picking, trimming, washing and boiling the vegetables, cleaning the kitchen and offices, the servants’-hall, housekeeper’s room, and stewards’ room . . . and otherwise assist in all the laborious part of the kitchen business’. The scullery-maid, often little older than thirteen or fourteen, would be kept up until the early hours, cleaning and washing up after a major event.68
No Victorian mistress of any consequence could function without her lady’s maid, who ranked under the housekeeper and was