Chapter Nine
The Professionals
It is not, in fact, cookery books that we need half so much as cooks really trained to a knowledge of their duties.
(Eliza Acton, Modern Cookery for Private Families, 1845)
The Victorian culinary world attracted the talents of some of the most artistic individuals of the age. Chefs became notorious for ruling their domain with an iron fist, enabling them to produce innovative fare through dedication and sheer hard work. Although at the time domestic kitchens were dominated by female cooks, their male counterparts also had ample opportunities to demonstrate their culinary skills and many chefs were trained across the Channel.
The restaurant is credited as a French invention established prior to the Revolution. The term is thought to derive from the word restaurer meaning ‘to restore’ and described a robust consommé intended to restore an invalid’s strength and vitality. In France, caterers who served food were known as traiteurs, and over the years these two distinct areas began to merge. Previously, the guilds of pâtissiers (pastry chefs) and charcutiers (butchers specialising in prepared meat products) had all been licensed by the king. The radical social and political upheaval caused by the French Revolution brought about the relaxation of such rigid constraints, allowing anyone to have access to a variety of meals and foodstuffs if they were able to pay the prices asked. This, in turn, gave ambitious chefs the opportunity to create dishes for a much wider market.
Despite male chefs attaining the top jobs in Victorian England and being heavily influenced by the chefs and styles of the continent, there was still an acknowledged role for the female cook. French food critic and journalist Eugène Briffault explained in his 1846 book, Paris à Table:
Those who underestimate the feminine sex where culinary matters are concerned forget their high level of achievement which has earned them the accolade of cordon-bleu. It is impossible to bring more skill and delicacy, more taste and intelligence to the choice and preparation of dishes than women have brought.
Aided by the mechanical innovations of the Industrial Revolution, more changes followed throughout the nineteenth century and mass market foodstuffs began to be produced. As more public eating places were required, jobs within the catering trade saw a rapid increase in roles for both men and women who had an aptitude for and interest in food preparation.
Dressed to Impress
The distinctive chef ’s uniform of white jacket and tall hat developed out of necessity. The hat, known as a toque, is probably the most recognisable part of the outfit and is said to have been worn by those in the trade as far back as the sixteenth century.
By the 1800s, the term chef (meaning ‘chief ’ in French) was commonly adopted as a title for the professional male cook. The traditional grey worn by French chefs was considered a suitably sombre colour for kitchen apparel, until famed French chef Marie Antoine Carême redesigned the uniform in white to signify cleanliness in the workplace. Made from thick cotton to withstand constant washing, not only did the double-breasted jacket look smart, it also insulated the body against the extreme heat given out by the stoves, acted as protection against splashes from hot liquids and enabled stains to be easily covered. The chef ’s hat was also reshaped to indicate the different ranks within the kitchen and the chefs wore tall hats, while junior cooks would wear shorter hats or caps.
Celebrity Status
Alexis Benoist Soyer is known as the first ‘celebrity chef ’. Although born in France, Soyer would become one of the most celebrated cooks in Victorian England.The son of a grocer, he served his apprenticeship in Paris restaurants before becoming the second cook to the French prime minister in 1830. A move to Britain saw Soyer rise to the position of aristocrats’ favourite, working for the Duke of Sutherland and the Marquess of Waterford, among other illustrious employers.
But it was during the Irish famine, not sumptuous meals served in upper class dining rooms, when his culinary skills came in to their own. In 1847, he established a soup kitchen in Dublin to serve thousands for free. Whilst there, he wrote a book, Soyer’s Charitable Cookery, donating the proceeds to the needy, before returning to London to set up a similar soup kitchen operation for the destitute silk weavers of the East End.
In addition to his charitable activities, Soyer became known for his numerous innovations, including using refrigerators cooled by cold water and ovens with adjustable temperatures, even marketing his own ‘magic stove’, a tabletop cooker allowing people to create food on the move. During the Crimean War, Soyer dispensed advice to the army on cookery techniques and designed his own field stove. He educated soldiers on how to avoid malnutrition and food poisoning, enabling them to prepare an acceptable meal wherever they may find themselves stationed.
But perhaps his most important work was his 1854 book Shilling Cookery for the People, aimed at the ordinary householder who wished to create a wholesome meal, without the addition of exotic ingredients or the need for expensive equipment and utensils. Here, Soyer gives hints and tips on how to get the best results from the simplest dishes and describes in detail how to prepare the most basic of fireplaces for cooking a joint of meat:
In the first place, the fire must be made up, and cleared from ashes. Place before it the dripping pan, and from above the fire, suspend from a hook a piece of worsted thread, sufficiently strong to bear the joint, and the hook suspended at the end. Have a piece of stick forked at one end, place against the mantelpiece, so that it keeps the thread at a sufficient distance from the fire. By having two pieces of stick, the distances can be easily managed. Twist the worsted; put on the joint; give it a sufficient distance from the fire. Every cottage should have removable piece of iron, or steel, screwed on the mantelpiece, with teeth fixed in it, so as to be able to hang the joint at any distance from the fire.
By using this method and positioning all meats 18 inches from the fire, Soyer recommends that:
Ten pounds of beef will take from two hours to 2 ½ hours roasting,
Three ribs of beef, boned and rolled, well tied round with paper, will take 2½ hours- only basted once. If beef is very fatty, it does not require basting; if very lean, increase the paper, and baste well.
An eight pound leg of mutton will take 1 ½ hours roasting.
To complete the perfect roasted joint, Soyer advised:
In roasting of beef, mutton, lamb, pork and poultry, place a dripping pan under the meat, with a little clear dripping or fat, which should be very hot when the meat is basted. A quarter of an hour before serving add half a pint of water to the fat in the dripping; dredge the meat with flour and salt. When the meat is dished up, pour the contents of the pan into a basin, straining it through; remove all the fat, add a little salt to the gravy, and pour it into the dish under the meat.
Good Housekeeping
Professional chefs and kitchen workers cooked for a living but some, like Soyer, saw the advantage of sharing their skills, knowledge and recipes with the masses. From the early 1800s, books and manuals provided advice on all aspects of housewifery and how to run the perfect home, becoming essential, or at least unavoidable, reading for the nineteenth century ‘domestic goddess’.
Once, the housewife had relied upon a small notebook in which she would write any useful hints and tips she had picked up from her contemporaries, also using it to record her household accounts and keep all her recipes. When instruction on domestic economy began to find its way into lessons for schoolgirls, specific books dedicated to practical housekeeping were a natural progression and copies could be referred to again and again.
The instructions offered by the growing numbers of household manuals were often lifesavers to the new bride setting up a home or inexperienced servant taking on their first position. Intended as working manuals, they were rarely set in fine bindings, and illustrations were kept to a minimum, although diagrams showing cuts of meat and examples of kitchen equipment seem to have been common.
The Girl’s Own Paper
The Girl’s Own Paper was a popular publication for young middle-class women during the Victorian era and it reveals a great deal about the type of domestic opinions and subjects deemed to be of most importance to girls at this time. Founded in 1880, the weekly magazine was initially sold for the bargain price of one penny, and promoted, alongside morals and virtues, practical advice to help Victorian women manage their own financial affairs and maintain their homes.
Packed with stories, cookery pages, clothing and needlework tips, history and travel articles, the magazine gave the reader advice on every subject from how to emigrate to the colonies and what to wear to the races to more domestic concerns, like keeping chickens and step-by-step instruction on baking bread. Each issue had at least one cookery segment covering a particular theme, with numerous culinary suggestions and recipe guidance.
An issue published in 1883 contained an article entitled ‘Cookery for the Poor’, explaining how those with a very tight budget could create nourishing meals economically. The writer took into account the fact that not everyone had the same amount of money to spend, encouraging readers not to judge others less fortunate than themselves. Yet, she still displays obvious snobbery, writing, ‘it is the middle class who are, as a rule, willing to receive new ideas, and who are anxious to learn all they can about domestic management’ and sweepingly stating that, ‘the majority of poor women known little about cookery, and care less’. This snobbery also extends to the daily diets of different classes:
If we go into the poor districts, and notice the food which is offered for sale (for that is the food which is eaten), we see black puddings, small savoury pies, pigs and sheep’s heads, liver, hearts, pig’s feet, cows heels, tripe, chitterlings, cheap fish, including mussels, whelks and cockles, but we hardly ever see lentils, haricot beans or maize; yet district visitors and charitable people have tried their best to make lentils popular – and, so far, without success.
Rather condescendingly, the writer adds:
there are a great many clever managing women amongst the poor who cook very well, and who are willing to prepare good food for their families. All honour to these virtuous ones! They are doing their life’s work nobly, and they will have their reward in seeing their children grow up healthy, and knowing that their husbands are steady and respectable.
It would have been difficult enough for poor working class housewives to make ends meet without the scornful opinions of the middle class women, who thought they could run a home much more efficiently in similar circumstances. It was very easy to come up with a range of dishes when you had access to the wide variety of ingredients a larger family budget could afford.
Along with the subject of food, came the moral question of drink, and the article advised when an alcoholic beverage should be consumed and its possible effects, not only upon the appetite but also on the lifestyle of the drinker. Apparently, the answer to overindulgence lay in beef tea:
A large number of those who ‘take to drinking’ begin to go wrong by taking beer as a substitute for food. They feel exhausted, there is no food ‘handy’ , and so they take a draft of beer and this quickly revives them, the experience is repeated, they gradually acquire the habit of relying on beer, and go from bad to worse. If some true friend had given them a cupful of good beef tea, or a cupful of coffee to drink instead of the beer, they would have felt better almost as quickly and no harm would have been done. Unfortunately, however, beer is always to be had, and beef tea is a rarity, and so the mischief is done.
What the Dickens!
Charles Dickens may have been adept at describing the favourite dishes of his fictional characters but he was not the only one in his family whose love of food found its way into their written work. His wife Catherine (née Hogarth) was just as accomplished at putting pen to paper when it came to her passion for cookery. Despite raising ten children, Catherine found time to host regular dinner parties at their London home, the menus bursting with dishes to satisfy the appetites of the most distinguished guests.
Her decision to collate her most popular recipes and share them with the public resulted in the colourfully titled What Shall We Have for Dinner?, which had an equally descriptive subtitle of ‘Satisfactorily Answered by Numerous Bills of Fare for from Two to Eighteen Persons’. Her love of dinner parties ensured that the book included a wide range of recipes suitable to grace the dinner table on any occasion, with ‘leg of mutton stuffed with oysters’ being just one example.
Under the pseudonym of ‘Lady Maria Clutterbuck’, the book was published in 1851 and it sheds light on the dining habits of the middle class Victorian. Course after course of soup and light fish dishes followed by meaty mains, a choice of desserts and a cheese board, were what the average dinner guest could expect. One summer menu features ‘Oxtail Soup, Salmon in Lobster Sauce, Mackerel a la Maitre d’Hotel, Boiled Spring Chicken and Asparagus Sauce, Lobster Curry, Sweetbreads, Veal Olives, a Fore Quarter of Lamb, Oyster Patties and Ducklings accompanied by peas, new potatoes and asparagus’. If that wasn’t enough a choice of dessert was recommended of ‘Currant and Raspberry Tart with Cold Custard’ or ‘Lemon Jelly and Charlotte Russe’. This was a fine spread for a party of between eight to ten people.
Some of her recipes were complex, with an extensive list of ingredients and various stages of preparation, even for something as relatively simple as asparagus soup. But there was a good mix of inexpensive, nourishing meals thrown in too. In this small volume, Catherine displays elements of thrift alongside extravagance, but with a distinct lack of vegetables. She undoubtedly catered for those with a love of cookery whether for a large gathering or a small family meal.
From stewed eel to stuffed haddock, this manual was extremely popular, prompting reprints in 1852 and 1854.
Mrs Isabella Beeton
Today the most well-known Victorian domestic guide is, of course, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. At the age of 21, Isabella Beeton began to write a column for her publisher husband’s periodical, The English Woman’s Domestic Magazine. Such was the interest shown in her advice that she went on to write her own manual, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, initially issued in 1859 as a series of 33 monthly instalments, before it was released as a single volume in 1861. Selling 60,000 copies in its first year, the book inspired readers to try out new recipes and follow practical tips on how to successfully run their homes, putting emphasis on the woman being in charge of her own domain.
Even Isabella Beeton’s opening sentences instil confidence in the home cook:
As with the commander of an army, or the leader of any enterprise, so as it is with the mistress of the house. Her spirit will be seen through the whole establishment; and just in proportion as she performs duties intelligently and thoroughly, so will her domestics follow in her path.
Mrs Beeton subtly implied that the skills required to run a successful home gave power and authority to the middle class female. For women who had spent a lifetime under the influence of their menfolk, her words inspired self-belief through accomplishment and it was no wonder that this book became hugely popular. Perhaps more than anything, it assured readers and aided them in every possible cookery and household problem. The depth of content enabled good home-cooked fare to be produced on a daily basis by providing lists of ingredients, information on the duration of the cooking process and the price of the finished meal, allowing different dishes to be considered within the confines of a household budget.
Sadly, Mrs Beeton did not live to see the fruits of her labour. Five years after she began her culinary tome, Isabella died at the age of 28 from puerperal fever, only eight days after giving birth for the fourth time. Despite her early demise, she lived on through her published work to become a household name, with sales of her book reaching two million copies within three years of her death.
Mrs Beeton’s success followed in the wake of and overtook contemporaries, such as Eliza Acton whose 1855 book Modern Cookery for Private Families was aimed at middle class women who were overseeing the running of the kitchen and planning their own meals. Acton’s emphasis was on easy to prepare dishes requiring the minimum of ingredients. Similarly, The Modern Cook, published in 1846 by Charles Francatelli, was so popular that it went through 29 editions. Francatelli catered for those who wanted slightly more advanced cookery techniques, yet to remain economical with ingredients.
Encouraged by Isabella Beeton’s success, there was a flurry of publications. By 1887, Jane Ellen Panton, a journalist and author on domestic issues, completed her book From Kitchen to Garret aimed at young householders setting up their first home. Mary Eliza Haweis produced a selection of titles on the domestic layout of the home, while in her 1899 book The Hostess of Today, Linda Larned gave assistance on ‘selecting a menu suitable for the most elaborate repast or the simplest meal … estimating the cost of it at average market prices’.
Mrs Beeton’s work, however, rather than that of her competitors, has left its mark in the culinary hall of fame. Her observations show the sheer variety of food available to the Victorians. She lists 45 types of fish, their cost per pound and the months in which they were in season; pages of ‘provisions and household requisites’; a list of store cupboard favourites including ‘Calves Foot Jelly’, ‘Pickled Mangoes’ and ‘Fine Mushroom Ketchup’; as well as an illustrated display of cordials and essences for every occasion.
She pointed out the importance of tinned goods, emphasising that they ‘now occupy an important place in our food supply, being available at any time, and handy substitutes when fresh provisions may be difficult to procure’. She also reveals possible shortcuts for housewives, explaining that ‘Finest Potted Shrimp, Potted Tongue and Boiled Beef ’ were essential for sandwich making, and that tinned oysters provided a great ‘standby’ for fine dining.
A Cook’s Own Book
Although working cooks were usually highly experienced in their field, many compiled simple journals of their favourite recipes or new techniques they had discovered. During the 1880s, Avis Crocombe was the resident cook at Audley End in Essex – one of the finest Jacobean houses in England. Her recipe book is priceless for the social historian, as she has included details of her career, written in pencil on the front page:
Avis Crocombe – was cook / housekeeper to Sir Thomas and Lady Beauchamp, Langley Park, Norfolk 1870 – 1873 … and … Cook – housekeeper to Lord and Lady Braybrook, Audley End, Saffron Walden.
From simple sponge biscuits and gingerbread cake to elder wine and almond faggots, Avis recorded all of her favourite recipes in her spiky Victorian hand. One in particular that stands out as a dish perfect for a hot summer day is her ‘Cucumber Ice Cream’, which requires a combination of one peeled and deseeded cucumber simmered in a pan with 4oz sugar, a pinch of salt, and ½ pint of water. This would then have been sieved before blending in one pint of double cream and one or two small glasses of ginger wine. A few drops of green food colouring were added to the final mix to enhance the overall look of this refreshing, if slightly unusual dessert.
Practising Thrift
In Victorian Britain the phrase ‘Waste Not Want Not’ was taken extremely seriously. It appeared on decorative pottery, with the wording giving an appropriately moral touch to the design. In the kitchens of Erddig Hall near Wrexham, the phrase was elaborately painted on the wall above the range, to reinforce the mantra to the domestic staff and shows that thrift was also required in wealthy mansions, not merely in ordinary homes.
In an effort to make leftovers stretch further, small pieces of meat were used in appetising entrées, the bones and trimmings providing an essential base for stocks and soups. Cubes of fat were rendered down to reuse for frying, whilst leftover sweet dishes were decorated to make them look even more delicious on their second serving.
Whether in working class or wealthy homes, one of the commonest causes of waste in the kitchen was stale bread. Once hard, dry and ostensibly tasteless, there were many times when there was no option but to relegate it to the bin. Writing in 1883, cook Phyllis Brown declared that ‘servants will not eat it, beggars will not accept it as a gift and puddings have been made of it so persistently that families unite in declining to partake of bread-and-butter pudding’. She makes it her mission to explain some interesting ways to breathe new life into bread that was past its best, including:
Broken bread is excellent for thickening purées and sauces. The bread should be stewed with the flavouring vegetables, then rubbed through a sieve with them. If it is toasted before being put into the liquor, it will help impart colour as well as the consistency of the purée.
Phyllis’s list of thrifty ideas was endless, ranging from various sweet puddings such as apple charlotte and a Viennese pudding made with eggs, candied peel, sultanas, milk and sugar, which she explained, despite having no flour or suet in the mixture ‘tastes very much like a rich plum pudding’, to simple toasted brown breadcrumb crusts to serve with game, and ‘sippets’ (croutons) to add to soup.
One not very enticing idea was to make ‘Toast and Water’ by:
cutting the bread very thin, and toasting it slowly till it is very crisp and dry throughout, and of a dark brown colour. Plunge it into a jug of water, let it stand for about half an hour and then decant it into a water bottle. The liquor should be as clean and bright as Sherry.
Another less than palatable recipe called ‘Bread Raspings with Cold Milk’ required the cook to:
Warm stale bread in the oven till dry and lightly browned. Crush it roughly with a rolling pin, put the crumbs into a bowl, and pour over them cold milk, which has been beaten up with the white of egg and if permitted a tablespoonful of brandy.
Phyllis then adds a hint for its use, ‘I have been told that this preparation is valuable in cases of diarrhoea’.
Labour-saving Devices
Cooking on a kitchen range was hard work and required raking out the ashes each morning and applying a coat of black lead at least once a week. Those with a range were much more fortunate than the poorer classes, who still cooked over an open grate, but easier options had to be found. By the mid-1800s, kitchen ranges began to change dramatically and the graft involved in both using and cleaning them was reduced, greatly improving the everyday life of the cook and kitchen staff. The first temperature controlled ovens were complicated devices with a whole system of flues and plates, but there was real excitement at the prospect of being able to regulate the heat.
Like many other new and innovative creations, a glimpse of what the future might hold for Victorian cooks was witnessed at the Great Exhibition of 1851, when early versions of gas-powered devices were showcased. Although much more practical, the public were at first sceptical about the use of gas in their homes and the risk that a gas explosion might occur at their property. Consequently, gas ovens only caught on with the general public near the end of the Victorian era.
As the century progressed, an array of gadgets and time-saving devices began to accumulate within the Victorian kitchen. Knife polishers, free-standing roasters and butter churns were just some of the equipment required to speed up activities below stairs. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded entry of the term ‘kitchen gadget’ is said to have appeared in the 1951 edition of the Good Housekeeping Home Encyclopaedia, but newfangled utensils were actually appearing on the culinary scene much earlier than that.
The Victorians loved nothing better than a kitchen appliance designed for a specific task, which ultimately made the job easier. After their initial scepticism, most were eager to try out new labour-saving devices, including apple peelers, cherry pitters, cheese graters and later, can openers. In an era of innovation, the kitchen did not escape the nineteenth century inventor’s eager eye and, although some designs were novelty items soon to be relegated to the back of a drawer, most cooks embraced new ideas with open arms.
Other gadgets helped to free up members of the kitchen staff. The fireplace provided an open space to roast large joints of meat. To enable the spit on which the joint was placed to turn slowly over the heat, without requiring the cook to rotate it constantly, the spit was attached to a jack. This gadget saw many changes over the years, as budding engineers tried to perfect their designs. Originally, animals were used to pull the mechanism around, but by the nineteenth century, a system of weights and pulleys provided movement, and an alternative option was to harness the rising air in smoke drawn up the chimney, to power the jack. For smaller pieces of meat, a meat mangle or tenderiser allowed the kitchen maid to take out her aggression in the name of food preparation, whilst the sausage stuffer with a wooden plunger and metal spout helped to speed up the job of creating the ‘breakfast banger’.
Hand-held toasting forks were used to spear bread and brown it over the flames to make toast, but this technique soon developed into hinged devices mounted on the hearth side, which could hold the bread yet enabled it to be turned to toast both sides with very little human intervention. Pot hooks and rods of varying lengths were used to hold the pans over the fire, but also enabled each pan to be moved into, or out of, the heat, helping to regulate the temperature of the food being cooked. This arrangement allowed the cook to choose whether to boil or simmer her ingredients. At any one time, the hearth might also be home to a kettle for rendering fat, a flat griddle pan for making crumpets, pikelets and pancakes, and a cast iron coffee bean roaster, with a handle to rotate the contents, preventing the beans from burning.
The Victorians loved order, symmetry, precise design and regimented layouts even in their vegetables, with bean cutters and asparagus bunchers to create a uniform size. Mrs Beeton would have approved. Although she didn’t refer to them as gadgets, her Book of Household Management had stressed the importance of kitchen tools back in 1861. She listed no less than 37 essential utensils for the art of cookery. Among the equipment she advised cooks to purchase was a pestle and mortar to crush ingredients to a powder or paste, along with grinders, choppers, mashers and squeezers.
Before the introduction of plastic containers, stoneware, earthenware, and later, glass, were used to house groceries, which were often sold unwrapped. Wood and tin boxes were common choices to keep dry goods moisture-free. In fact, many kitchen items were made from wood, usually oak, as it was considered hard-wearing and could be easily cleaned using boiling hot water. The only drawback was that it sometimes became discoloured. Wooden spoons would have been used every day and had a hole in the handle so they could be hung on a hook, or stored together in a ceramic jar in a prominent position. They were always preferred to metal spoons, which could sometimes taint the flavour of certain food items.
Teaching, Training and Tuition
When the Elementary Education Act was introduced in 1870, it offered free primary education for children throughout England and Wales for the first time. Prior to this, only those with the means to pay for tuition were able to provide schooling for their children. The Education Act also gave school boards the power to build and run the establishments, and to compel children aged between five and thirteen to attend. This was a huge benefit to the children of the poor, who had previously gone out to work from an early age and contributed to the household income. Although the family would lose this money, the youngsters were now entitled to an education, with the expectation of better future prospects.
Within ten years the scheme was a success and, as the routine was instilled, the curriculum developed. In The Modern Cook (1846), chef Charles Elmé Francatelli described his conviction that, ‘The palate is as capable and nearly as worthy of education as the eye and ear’. The education boards also believed in teaching children basic cooking skills and girls were taught needlework and cookery. The latter enabled them not only to prepare a meal for the family table, but also provided them with the proficiency to find work in catering or domestic service. Larger schools even had a cookery classroom built purely for this purpose, with a demonstration area to allow the teacher to instruct her pupils. The preparation table, gas stove and range enabled the dishes to be created by following written instructions off the blackboard. The pupils enjoyed putting their new-found knowledge into practice at home.
By the late 1880s, with a background as a fully certified cook and the ability and flair to instruct others on the intricacies of kitchen work, the teacher could expect to earn between £80 and £100 a year. As well as preparing the lessons, her role would include ordering all the products for the dishes she planned to demonstrate, keeping good accounts and the stockroom in order.
Mrs Beeton and Eliza Acton had planted the seed of an idea that it was good for women to gain knowledge and increase their culinary skills. Towards the latter end of the century and well into the Edwardian era, dedicated cookery schools for middle class young ladies began to appear. They encouraged a new breed of young women to look beyond the recipes they were used to and begin experimenting for themselves in preparation for running their own households. Instead of simply employing staff, they would have more idea of the skills needed and an understanding of food preparation. This ultimately gave them a feeling of control in their own homes.
The man might still have been the master of the house, but the Victorian woman was mistress of the kitchen!