Mistress and Servant Go to Cooking Class
I have a friend who has a friend who has a sister or cousin, I’m not quite clear which, who runs a cooking school in Guadalajara, Mexico. That’s only three degrees of separation, right?
These are not just any old cooking classes, mind you. She offers cooking classes for young society ladies who are about to marry, together with the women who will be their cooks.
Together the mistress and the cook learn the classics of the Mexican kitchen and the international kitchen. Together they will be able to provide the finest of Mexican cooking and in international, that is largely French, cooking. This is essential because the bridegroom will be a senior lawyer, politician, businessman or diplomat.
What the course costs, I don’t know. I do know that the spiral-bound recipes book goes for $200, US dollars that is, not Mexican pesos.
In the past in Europe and the United States, and still today in many parts of the world, anyone who can afford to do so hires a cook.
We’re not talking modern America and personal chefs trained in a professional culinary school. We’re not talking royalty or the super rich who have always had male chefs trained by apprenticeship. Queen Elizabeth never had to take cooking classes with her servants.
Upper middle class and upper class housewives did have to, along with the servant who was to cook.
The young lady about to start on her housewifely career had not learned to cook at her mother’s knee. She had not had to lift a finger to do household chores because they were done by servants. She might know a good bit about fine food because she had eaten at her parents’ table. Or perhaps not, because she ate in the nursery or boarding school. In either case, she could not cook.
Hence the cooking classes. In the 1950s in England young ladies went to finishing school in Switzerland before they “came out” into society. They were taught the survival skills they would need such as how to swoop gracefully down a staircase in a long dress and do a deep curtsy without falling on their faces.
They also learned how to make gelatin from pigs’ feet. In my innocence, I thought this hopelessly impractical because who, fifty years after the introduction of packet gelatin, was going to go through the mess of boiling pigs’ feet and clarifying the gelatin?
Not these young ladies, of course. That was a job for their cooks so that they could offer a variety of dishes in aspic. That, at least, was the expectation. I suspect it was swiftly dashed as empire melted away.
Such schools, though, I think were pretty common in many parts of the world in the first half of the twentieth century, often run by poverty-stricken single ladies from the appropriate class background.
The bride-to-be learned three things, I believe.
First, how to manage a kitchen, how to put on a dinner party without breaking the bank, how to supervise the servants, how to manage the supplies, how to preserve foodstuffs from the estate, how to check the silver and china to see if any had been robbed, how to oversee the pantry and the shopping. Those supposed ladies of leisure I suspect worked harder than we can imagine.
Second, the basics of the recipes so that she could supervise the cook. She had to know the complex terminology of French cooking (wherever she was more or less as French cooking swept the world), know the traditional high class recipes of the region, have a sense of how to season and make final adjustments to the recipes. It was the housewife’s duty, in general, to plan the menu, to explain any novel dishes to the cook, to go into the kitchen and put the final touches to the dishes.
Third, how to cook sweet dishes: confections, sweets, and desserts, skills that were appropriate to her station and that demanded great skill and exact measurements.
I find it hard to read many of the great cookbooks of the nineteenth century without this perspective. Just take a look at the marvelous work by Elena Molokhovets, A Gift to Young Housewives, first published in Russia in 1861 and wonderfully translated (at least much of it) and edited and introduced by pioneering food historian, Joyce Toomre.
In essence, it’s a more formal version of that $200 book that the young ladies of Guadalajara purchase.
The UK is interesting in this regard. By the end of the 18th century it wasn’t only the young lady/future house wife who was going to these cooking classes as you describe, it was the servant (obviously a senior one). There seemed even to be periods when the mistress of the house was no longer expected to know exactly what went on in the kitchen, only that if she asked for X dish to be produced then it would be.
Cooking as a required skill of the elite class seems to go in and out of vogue.
Yes, I think frequently the servant went to the cooking classes as they still do in Mexico.
Do you think that the question of asking for a certain dish versus knowing how to cook is a matter of fashion or a matter of place int eh social scale. I suspect the latter. But I’m skating on thin ice here as I know of no detailed studies of this, certainly no comparative ones.
I think that both cases are possible. Social scales are dynamic and so are domestic arrangements. Also, I’m not sure how to take the fashion aspect out of differences due to place in social scale?
One of the most popular cookbooks of the 18th century is Henderson’s “The Housekeeper’s Instructor” (frontispiece shows the cook been instructed from the book by the owner of the book BTW), by the end of the next century the most popular cookbooks were written for a class of people (the affluent middle-class) that didn’t really exist in Henderson’s time. Difficult to compare the two books and the motivations of the people who read them as the groups are so different. Oddly though, in some respects your description of upper class 21st century Mexico, sounds identical to late 19th century England. Maybe there is a similar social structure between the two, maybe not?
I guess it gets back to the changing role of women in society also. What is thought needful for a women to know is dynamic. By the end of the 19th century it seems that a lot of middle-class ladies wouldn’t think it proper to actually cook themselves, while at the begining of the previous century over-seeing the kitchen provisions and personally preparing certain dishes would have been the expected role of an upper-class women.
I wonder if, whatever the period in history, some knowledge of what was going on in the kitchen was considered necessary if the mistress of the household was to keep track of expenses. There seems to be a prevailing fear (or maybe expectation) throughout history that the servants would steal and cheat if not properly supervised. Do you think this might be relevant to the servant/mistress cooking lesson issue?
Janet, I think the accounting part was crucial and that theft (which like corruption is a pretty flexible term and about which I have much to say) was indeed a constant problem. Whether it had to do with classes, I’m not so sure. Adam, I think another change to throw into the pot (groan) is the change from rural to urban households. In the country all except the super rich had to supervise preserving etc. In the city they could buy much more. It is my suspicion though that it was very few ·housewives” who could escape a knowledge of kitchen management.
I guess that, even aside from the ‘theft’ issue, that knowledge (of cooking procedures etc) was power in that other old way – of being more likely to generate ‘respect’ for the boss lady, and reducing the possibility of the boss lady being intimidated by the cook and servants – especially in the case of a new young housewife.
Yes, I agree with you completely Janet. If you didn’t know what was going on in the kitchen you could be intimidated. Plus you could not challenge costs or the time to prepare certain dishes.
A long but interesting extract from a 19th century domestic economy manual. It demonstrates that conflict in the role of the house wife in the kitchen at this point:
A young wife whose condition in life before her marriage has exempted her from the drudgery of the kitchen at her paternal home, and whose husband is in circumstances entitling her to similar exemption in her new relation, is, nevertheless, obliged to perform menial duties in her kitchen, not only to instruct her first servant, but she has to give similar lessons to every new servant which her frequent changes introduce into the family However unwelcome such labour, no one imagines that it is in the least degree disreputable, after her marriage, to teach her servants by practical lessons, or to assist them statedly in the duties of the chambers or kitchen. And yet the same duties and toils, cheerfully performed after marriage by the mistress, and to which she has пеvег been accustomed, are deemed by young women dependant on their labour for bread as beneath their fancied dignity ; and pauperized seamstresses, are ground into the dust by their taskmasters, whose compulsory bill of prices fail to reward their hard earnings with even the necessaries of life, will turn up their noses in aristocratic pride by excluding from their society a young woman who is occupied in domestic service, either as kitchen maid, or servant of all work, and this though the lady of the house herself shares in the humblest of her labours. The only adequate protection to housekeepers from the endless troubles connected with their domestics is to be found in correcting the mistaken idea among our own young countrywomen, that there is anything degrading in the routine of domestic service, or that it is less respectable to labour at household duties for hire than to toil with the needle for the miserable pittance which speculators in female servitude allow such to receive аз wages for their industry. How insufferably absurd is such folly, when this same seamstress, when she has luckily married some labouring man of her own degree in life, enters upon housekeeping for herself without a servant of any kind, and becomes reconciled at once to those very kinds of labour which she before regarded as humiliating and disgraceful ; and when, by dint of industry and frugality, the young couple find themselves able to look out a servant to relieve the wife of her daily task, and share the burdens of an increasing family, she finds her former notions of the degrading character of domestic service so universal among her own countrywomen, that she is now convicted of her infatuation, and is compelled to take under her roof a raw Irish or green German girl, neither of whom know how to boil a potato or cook a beefsteak until they serve an apprenticeship in her kitchen….
My wonderment comes from the realization that this type of cooking class still exists, that there is still a need for this type of education.
Adam, that’s a great quote. It is especially revealing on how the housewife had (and has in Mexico and many other places I am sure) to teach the servant to cook.
Judith, is the wonderment that cooking classes exist or that cooking classes for the upper class exist? And I’d be interested to know what you think has replaced them. Cookbooks?
You might enjoy the rest of the comment then. Book was published in 1855, there are a few comments of slaves in the Southern USA and how this relates to domestic management.
Under such circumstances as here alluded to, it is obvious that the classification of servants recognised in England is impracticable in America. And, moreover, the high notions of equality and independence inspired by a ” free country” would render such an army of servants in a household as unmanageable as a regiment of dragoons, and as dangerous to the peace and safety of a family as a ” gunpowder plot.” Indeed, there are very few in this country whose income would justify so large an outlay for domestic wages as the foregoing table shows, nor is there any family establishment for private residence in America which could furnish occasion for so many servants
I think my wonderment comes from the concept of bringing along your servant to the cooking class. The entitled one watches, observes, but doesn’t get her hands dirty while still thinking that she now knows how to cook.
No, it’s the Food Channel that has replaced this kind of class. Within the comfort of your own home you can watch food prepared as theater, again without any mess or smells. I’m also completely dumbfounded at the popularity of food programs. Yesterday I was buying some wood carving tools at an art supply store and wound up telling the nice cashier that I would be using them on food. Her response, “Oh, I love to watch cooking programs! It’s so comforting.”
Her colleague looks over and says, “Yeah, but you never cook.”
Her: “Oh no. I just like to watch.”
While this is not a parallel to the lady and the maid cooking class, it still makes wonder why an entitled lady would take such a class, and why the cashier lady is comforted by watching Emeril.
Adam, thanks for the rest of the quote. Interesting that by 1855 the difference between the US and Europe was so marked. But I have to wonder if the author was including the southern states. And whether there was a surge in servanthood in the robber baron era. I simply don’t know.
Also interesting is the fact that servants changed so rapidly. I have another wonderful quote on that that I will post soon.
Thanks Judith for the clarification. And to clarify back, I think the entitled young ladies do learn to cook in these classes and do get their hands dirty. As to cooking programs, their appeal escapes me too. Perhaps it’s like magic, perhaps it’s a dream world of luxury and elegance for all the insistence on ease.
The is quite a bit to say about the North v the South. n.b. 19th century people are my least favorite people to read, the come across as bloody aweful people.
“In the Southern States, where slaves are trained bytheir masters and mistresses with, special reference to the service of the family in the department of labour allotted them, the difficulty of which we speak is not realized to any great extent. Servitude is their not, as it has been that of their ancestors, and they are, for the most part, ignorant of any higher destiny being attainable or even desirable ; and multitudes of them are contentedly happy, and free from any aspirations after a change of their condition, which, though one of bondage and dependance, is attended by no care or anxiety for the means of subsistence, which with them is the ultimatum of desire.
But in the non-slaveholding states, and especially in the northern cities, the case is widely different. The coloured people are free, and when they can find any employment, however menial, which they can conduct on their own behalf, they refuse to become hired servants, or the domestics in families, regarding such service as beneath them, approaching, as they seem to think, to the nature of slavery. And of those who are compelled, for want of subsistence, to enter domestic service, it is their misfortune more than their fault to say that, for the most part, they are mere eye-servants, and are not often found either qualified or trustworthy.
Their number being very inconsiderable, our population in the North have to be mainly dependant on the Irish and German emigrants, who constitute the great mass of our domestics ; for most strangely it has come to pass that white females, especially in the humble walks of life, however humble, regard the condition of hired servants as beneath them, and the domestic duties of the household too degrading for freeborn Americans !
They prefer harder labour, coarser fare, and destitution of a comfortable shelter, if they can only be seamstresses, tailoresses, hat and shoe binders, book-folders, shopkeepers, milliners, or anything else except the hired girls, helps, or domestics of a family. Multitudes of them in all our cities toil from Monday morning until Saturday night in miserable garrets, hovels, and even cellars, working at prices which stint
them for even the necessaries of life, wither their health, dim their eyes, and often sacrifice their lives, who might be actively and healthily employed in the bustling duties of domestics, at ample wages, with the comforts and even luxuries of life, and a good home. But such is their infatuation on this particular subject, that very few American girls, of suitable age for household service, can anywhere be found in the capacity of
domestic servants. It is for this reason that Irish and German domestics are almost universally employed
in the northern cities, and these are, for the most part, wholly uninstructed in the duties of household service ; and however willing multitudes of them are to work for hire, they have to be taught by the mistress of the family even the most common kinds of service,
being, for the most part, wholly ignorant of the plainest cooking, house-cleaning, washing, ironing, &c., so that they often receive wages for months before they begin
to make themselves useful in the family, or can at all be relied on for their every-day routine of duty. By this time they often become corrupted by the intercourse they have with other servants during their frequent leisure, and are prompted to demand an advance of wages,
and to make exactions of time for visiting their numerous cousins and other relatives from the old country, as well as to fill your kitchen with strangers, both male and female, until the annoyance becomes insufferable. Next they abruptly leave the family where they have been taught at great pains, and have but just learned the work they are required to do, either to seek a nurse’s place, or some lighter form of service, for
higher wages, or, perhaps, to get married to some one of their countrymen, whom you have allowed to quarter upon your premises rather than risk the loss of your servant, now that she has learned how to be useful. These are but a few items in the list of grievances which are perennially multiplied.”
Hmm. Thanks for taking the time to type out that long and revealing passage. Maybe it’s time to hear it from the servant’s side!
Seeing that there hasn’t been any response from the servants’ side in the last year and half, I’ll offer this bit of hearsay. My mother and her mother were “domestics” in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Her mother was from a relatively privileged family in Japan, probably expected to marry into more money than she did. When she came to Canada around 1900, having married a sawmill worker who was 20 years her senior, she had to learn to cook – something that was done by servants in her parents home. She worked as a domestic, and learned some cooking skills from “the woman of the house” my mother said (interestingly, using terms that were strange to me, and probably from her own period of servitude), including how to make bread (which I doubt she had even eaten in Japan). She apparently baked all the bread for the family, including 6 children. My mother spoke of the wonderful smell of freshly baked bread, and eventually, my mother did bake bread for us, but more as an amusement, not a necessity.
After graduating from high school, my mom worked as a domestic in Shaughnessy, which continues to be a wealthy enclave in Vancouver. I only learned that she had been a maid when she was into her mid-80’s and there was a picture of her in her uniform. Who is that? Looking back, my mother seemed to have a lot of knowledge about domestic activity – how to wax and polish a floor (with paste wax and an electric polishing machine – something no one else in our modest suburban neighbourhood owned), how to shine the mirrors with the old bath towels before they went into the wash, rotating the sheets top to bottom halfway through the week, and how to iron those heavy linen sheets (hint: spray with water and roll in a plastic bag – the trick is how to press without letting the sheet touch the floor). In retrospect, my mother was a good housekeeper, but always seemed angry when she was doing housework. It was not something she enjoyed, and she did not try to teach me these skills while I lived at home. At age 80, when she had a stroke, she acceded to a housekeeper once a week for a very short period. She did not like having someone else doing her housework, a matter not based on economics. She said she needed to do the work herself as part of her rehabilitation. Maybe. What strikes me now is that instead of expressing the pleasure of home ownership around household tasks that other mothers seemed to have (at least to my young eyes), my mom seemed to be conflicted. It is too late to ask her, and I now wonder how much it had to do with her period as a domestic.
Thanks for sharing this story, dramatic evidence of changes in the last three generations.
One thing that strikes me, in the quotes about the foolishness of young women choosing penury as seamstresses over domestic work, was that it wasn’t just a choice to do with status. One of the things that comes up again and again, at least in 19th/early 20th century writing from the UK, was the ‘problem’ of what were called ‘followers’. In other words, servants having a personal life or courtships. Many employers forbade their female servants to have male callers, and I’ve definitely read somewhere (really sorry, can’t remember where) that in 19th century England servants of both sexes were much less likely to marry than other members of the working classes. Those who did marry often left service, so had to find other employment.
So young seamstresses who refused to become housemaids may have been trading short term penury for longer term independence within marriage, as opposed to the security combined with repression of domestic service.
This seems to me right to the point, Sheila. I would love to see an honest discussion of contemporary live in servants and followers. Perhaps there aren’t so live in servants in the UK now, though with an enormously wealthy upper stratum perhaps there are. But in many parts of the world they are still common. How come we sweet this whole servant issue under the rug when we talk about food history and even present day food?