96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



A KITCHEN COLLEGE. 



By H. BKOOKE DAVIES. 



KITCHEN College! Well, why not? We have a College of 

 Music, of Surgeons, of Physicians, of Preceptors ; why not a 

 College of the Kitchen ? 



It seems a little absurd at first sight, and yet the only absurdity 

 is, that no one ever thought of it before. For many years the servant- 

 grievance has been before the public. The scarcity and inefliciency of 

 domestic servants have been talked about till we are almost as weary 

 of the subject as of our incapable cooks and house-maids, but nothing 

 seems to have been done to remedy the evil ; there has been no im- 

 provement except in wages, for, no matter how incompetent the ser- 

 vant may be, she demands and gets high wages, and gives very general 

 dissatisfaction. 



I do not mean to touch here on the facilities offered of late years 

 by classes and schools of cookery — doubtless servants can learn much 

 from a course of clever practical lectures — but I would venture to 

 point out that in the majority of cases the persons attending the 

 classes are not servants, but ladies — mistresses in many instances — 

 who go with the praiseworthy intention of learning how to be prac^ 

 tical cooks by seeing a practiced instructor roll out pastry, or bake 

 fancy bread in a gas-stove, and then go home and attempt to teach 

 their own cooks ; the second-hand instruction frequently taking a 

 negative form, such as, " Cook, that's not the way to make puff pastry, 

 that's not the way to make a custard, or truss a chicken" ; the mistress 

 herself having only a very indistinct recollection of what is the way. 



However much good the schools and cooking-classes may have 

 done, they do not seem to have reached the real root of the domestic- 

 servant difficulty ; they have caused no perceptible improvement in 

 servants as a class. Servants are still scarce and unsatisfactory, and 

 there is still the same evident distaste for service among the young 

 women of the working-classes from which we naturally expect to draw 

 our supply. Business of any sort, no matter how unhealthy, preca^ 

 rious, fatiguing, and unremunerative, is preferred to domestic service. 

 A girl will work twelve hours a day and half starve rather than be- 

 come a house-maid or kitchen-maid, with good food, a comfortable 

 home, and comparatively easy work. 



Now, there must be a strong reason for this very wide-spread dis- 

 like for service. It is not the love of personal liberty and feeling of 

 independence. No working-woman in the world has less liberty, in- 

 dependence, and comfort than the out-of-door business girl in London. 

 She has to serve not one but many masters ; her work gives her neither 

 time for pleasure nor means of enjoyment ; her life is one long round 



