St. Paul daily globe., 1888-08-12
Brains Count for More Than Money in
the Kitchen.
THE CHEFS BEST WORE
In This Country the Best Paid Cooks
Serve the Million From the Hotel
Kitchen.

E5E4 WhlSlA opLCuol
kss3 over the land
rs as a freshet carries driftwoOd
VA the information that Van
A derbilt paid his cook $4,000.
gP 1t is true that NJ. Duguiol. to
whom this or smaller sal
airy was paid, for l think it
eventually proved to be only $500 a
| year, was found at last to be not cook,
but maitre du maiSon, sort of cham
| berlain, male housekeeper, whose
| duty it was to manage all the great es-
| tablishment. But even this did not
! greatly alter the real object of the eX-
| penditure, for unless all this manage
| ment led to the perfect dinner of what
| avail was it? If NJ. Duguiol fail there
he might better have been kept out by
the customs laws, as the imported cler-
| gyman who receives about his salary
bids fair to be.
NJ. Duguio's salary brought out. as
as IS apt to be the case, that his i'm
portatlOn, salary and all, was not so
much OF novelty as was thought, for
New York already had five cooks, be-
| ginning with Charles Ranhoffer,
| AT DELMoNICo's,
who were paid nearly as much and did
| quite as important work as any chef
abroad. The one difference which dem
Ocracy brings about is that in New Y York
the best paid cooks serve the million, or
that large fraction of the million which
! can on occasion dine at the best hotel
and restaurant, and in Europe they serve
the millionaire prince. The best cooking
is to be had there i'll great houses. and
here in great hotels. The welcome may
be, as Shenstone found a century or
more ago, warmer at an inn; but the
fare is not. But here the rich turn to the
inn for the best, and | fear me, but too
often, meal and welcome both have been
best bought at a restaurant.
But there is this difference which an
old diner is bound to notive-that the
work of chef is distinctly on a lower
level when he is working to save
money in big hotel or restaurant than
when working to save his redutation in
the houses of the great, where blunders
can be charged off to the profit and loss
account of
| A GREAT INCOME.
The higher flights of the art only
come when a man is not trammeled by
the necessity of remembering an ac-
count current. The real progress of
modern cooking began under Louis
NV., in the last century, when cooks
rivaled singers in their salaries, and the
lavish crusine of Versailles served a
supper, as zen cas-" or Sin case" every
half hour, until the king sat down to
the closing meal of riotous day, be-
cause once the king had come in hun
cry on some forgotten evening when
a supper and had not got it. So, Gin
case" he should ever want it again, the
Zen cas- meals were run in, like the ac-
cOmmOdation trains of a city depot,
every half hour.
We are apt to think that wealth grows
more riotous in these matters, but this
is sad blunder. The riot, profusion
and luxury for the few lie behind US,
and the occasional instances are only
survivals. Meanwhile the level rises
and, here or elsewhere, extremes meet.
1 question if the best work of the table
is done by those with or those
without boundless means. For the old
diner is glad to remember that the
croWning triumphs of the chefs of the
old regime were won in moments of
emergency-like the great
MASTER OF HIS ART
who accompanied Alexander of Russia
on his campaigns and dignified little
Polish village for all time to come by
making veal outlets from chicken
breasts, with a white sauce. when the
autocrat thundered for veal and the
village market rained chickens and
nothing olse. Like the cook who gave
us, for all time to come, chickens a la
MarengO in the Austrian camp through
which DeSalX had ridden to his death so
late in the afternoon. Or like the great
Careme himself, who, when those
stormy days were over and Talleyrand
asked him to end the long series of din
ners at the great congress at Vienna by
some original, but French feat, served
snails in vine leaves-the peasant
dnl nf fhn oh - e l. = Al
hedgerows of Perigord.
All which is only text and preamble
to the great fact that in dinners brains
count and money is but makeweight
in life'S games. AS in art. so in the mar
rover confines of the kitchen and over
the few square yards of white linen at
the dinner table-wOrld enough for con-
quest: restricted field promotes indi-
viduality and
GIVES BIRTH
to new fancy. Since you do not paw
$4,000 to a cook and make both ends
meet, or bare fraction of that sum.
some single significant dish for the sue
cess of your meal.
This is easy, when you know how,
and the way to know how is to be
watchful. erich people and poor
people" it has been neatly said by one
who saw good deal of both, and was a
great deal of the latter, ''eat the same
things; but they eat them in different
months" That tells one story and tells
it well. Never serve anything which is
not in season, and you will be pretty
sure if you have a narrow income never
to serve anything which is not at its
best.
Never serve too much. "It was a
good dinner and there was not too
much of it' is Ouida's apt praise of a
perfect repast. 1t is hard in these
things to have the courage of your
knowledge, to restrict the amount and
the number of the simple dishes you
serve; but this is the only way in which
each will leave your guests
WITH SOME RELISH
for the next and in which your meal
becomes like happy life, well-or-
dered memory of tempting prospects,
instead of having appetite broken on
the round wheel of some single heavy
dish.
Give table service originality by do
ing something yourself. The dressing
for salad offers one such opportunity,
and what can be more charming than a
white-armed woman, mistress of her.
self, her table, and her dressing,
swiftly preparing with ease and grace
the next dish, for whose coming even
talk hangs for an instant, like stream
before it takes its plunge. One such
woman have in my minds eye, whose
| salads are poems and their making
| poetry, whose serene face and serene
manner are like a spirit of peace over
the table as she begins that crux in
| cOOking-a mayOnnaiSe dressing. To