FoodNetArchive

Cooking for profit

1886

Page 137

Presented as published in 1886. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
Mr. Farewell has invented and manu- factures the only successful fire escape and in the course of the business has learned a good deal about hotels. He formerly bad a * 'shooting box" at the lake where he would pass an occasional week, then as the lakeshore became settled up he built a house to bring his family to for a few days. Then he built another in which they could live all summer. Then came all the relatives and friends and business acquaintances who respected Mr. Farewell, and he built still another house, wherein they could pass the sum- mer, too. But it is very likely that at the end of last summers pleasure the hostess quit pretty tired. 1 don't know what she said, but the fact is, that this year Mr. Farewell starts in with a regular hotel register a regular manager, a regular housekeeper, ^ a regu- lar cook and a bran new omnibus. I am afraid it will not pay him in cash, but he will get i^eace, rest and pleasure for his family at a less cost than heretofore. {^ So, this is the kitchen; a summer kitchen, truly; not ceiled, with plain boards for a floor. I am glad it is so, for there are no hotel advantages to be counted. FU bet it is just like all the rest of the summer boarding house kitchens, on both sides of the lake, just COOKING lOR PROFIT. like the Trulirural House, over on the point; just like Swibob's on the right and Barnacle's on the left. Yes, it is good enough. And this is the stove, a number 14 or 16, or thereabout ; and this is the cook's hot water tank — a big tin teakettle — the reservoir ^ being for soft-water for the dishwashing. I suppose there has been many a fine meal cooked for a hundred \ or more on smaller stoves than this, and teakettle cookery is not so bad in some places. Anyway, it is as good as all the rest and the stove has an immense oven. The Palmer House at the depot has a fair-sized range and a new 30 inch broiler arrived for it on the last train, but we are not a large house like that. 510— The Question of How Many Fire!$. There is a wonderful disproportion in some hotels between the size of the fur- nishings and appliances and the results they are intended to secure.^ One of the best fitted-up, most city-like country hotels I know of, is the Devereux House in tj^e city of Pandora, State of Cornu- copia, but it is also keeping up one of the silliest pieces of extravagance in run- ning seven fires in the kitchen for the cooking for generally forty and never more than fifty persons; the proprietor at the same time paying $6 a cord for wood and fifteen cents a bushel for charcoal and pinching and saving in all other ways to make both ends meet. As some readers will be puzzled to see how so many fires can exist in one small kitchen at once, we will give a diagram to show : HOTEL KITCHEN. L K H AA — 12-foot range, steam chest and hot water tank — fire sixteen hours a day. B — 30-inch broiler — fire six hours a day. C — No. 10 cook stove for batter cakes, private tea-pots, milk for toast, soft water in reservoir — fire eight hours a day. D— Charcoal toast range — fire six hours a day. E — ^Two-stoiT zinc oven dish-heatei with furnace — fire ten hours a day. F — Carving table with furnace, foi keeping rolls and corn bread warm and for dinner— fire ten hours a day. G — Pastry cooks oven, zinc, with fur- nace—fire ten hours a day.