756 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Dec. 13, 1913. 
The Cook In The Camp 
T HE cook in town is a menial; the cook 
in camp is a master. Camp cooks are, 
as a class, altogether different from the 
greasy individuals who dish up “pork and” to 
the weary lunch counter patrons. A good camp 
cook is the most independent man on earth. In 
the cookhouse his will is law. He is there to 
cook and cook he does, but he usually simply 
refuses to cut wood or to draw water. He is 
humored and petted like a star actress. Rash 
indeed is the man who would venture uninvited 
into the sacred domain of the cookhouse. A 
mild-mannered cook might simply complain to 
the boss, but cooks are not, as a rule, mild man¬ 
nered, particularly near meal time. The camp 
cook is neatness personified. He keeps his kitchen 
spotlessly clean. By this is meant the true camp 
cook, not the product of the city afraid to leave 
his own back door for fear of being lost and 
who is always lost in his own cookhouse. Not 
so the genuine article. Everything he is likely to 
need is hanging on the wall close to his hand 
or is carefully boxed in a bunk. There are pans 
hanging above the stove, a knife.drying bag, wood 
neatly racked up, a meat cutting block scrubbed 
snow white, gallons of soft water, pails of drink¬ 
ing water placed near the door so that whoever 
brings it need not cross the hewed and spotlessly 
clean floor, knives of wonderful keenness, a huge 
bread box, tins of provisions to the roof, flour 
in an elevated bin, beans, prunes, apricots, dried 
apples, brown sugar, salt and a hundred and one 
carefully chosen receptacles for provisions and 
the tools of his craft. Every foot is taken up. 
There is a stripped pole near the fire, but not in 
the way, on which to hang cooking cloths and 
aprons to dry in stormy weather. Woe betide 
the hapless greenhorn who so far forgets the dig¬ 
nity of the cookhouse as to hang a pair of milts 
or socks upon this pole. He is lucky if he escapes 
with the loss of his mitts. 
There is often a sink in the cookhouse, with 
an axe hewed waste trough running out under the 
ground. Here the dishes are washed with scald¬ 
ing hot water and a soapy froth created by turn¬ 
ing a perforated can in which there are scraps 
of soap. The cook does this rapidly because he 
is so constituted that he couldn’t do it any other 
way. He churns the dishes back and forth with 
a fork handle, dumps them into a bake pan, pours 
more scalding water over them, minus the soap, 
bangs them into the oven, closes the door care¬ 
fully from force of habit, and leaves them to dry. 
They are brought out wonderfully clean. Then 
the knives and forks. Washed in the same rapid 
way, but, be his gang great or small, he never 
thinks of drying them with a cloth, but piles them 
into a coarse sack and shakes and shakes, pours 
them into a pan and puts them on the back of 
the stove to dry. Thus are the dishes washed. 
If he has a “cookee” or “flunkey,” as the assistant 
is called in the West, this work falls to his lot, 
but the method is the same. A cook can make 
the lives of his “cookees” miserable or happy 
just as he pleases. As soon as the dishes are 
washed they are carried out to the tables and in 
a very few minutes everything is ready for the 
next meal. 
The tables also are a marvel of ingenuity. 
Long and narrow, covered with white oilcloth, 
or bare, with long strong benches, backless, built 
so as to be a part of the table down each side. 
Comfort of the diners is not the chief considera¬ 
tion, for eating is not a pleasure here but a work 
of necessity to be dispatched as quickly as pos¬ 
sible without any wasted words. In some large 
camps almost a complete silence is the rule, but 
in some small engineering camps the supper is 
like an unexpected holiday in a boarding school, 
everyone talking at once. By camps in this case 
is meant any place where men are housed in the 
remote places of the country. Even in the engi¬ 
neering camps is the mood of the cook supreme. 
Unhappy becomes the man who dares to pass a 
derogatory remark in the cook’s hearing about 
the biscuits or the flapjacks. Better by far to 
insult the boss than to offend the cook. Should 
such a man unwittingly offend, then only by be¬ 
coming an abject slave can he return to grace. 
Often the table is all too narrow to accommodate 
the many varieties of food and when this is the 
case a double decked affair is built in the centre 
of the table to hold part of the accumulation of 
cookery. When the men come in each finds 
a plate upside down with an inverted bowl upon 
the plate. One plate to one man is the allowance 
and sometimes the bowl does dual duty for both 
soup and for tea. The cook or cookee walks be¬ 
hind the eaters with two huge pitchers, “Tea? 
Coffee?” “Tea or coffee?” and the man at the 
table may be sure that both are of equal and 
full strength. Milk, if there is any, is already 
upon the table. Condensed milk, to be sure, 
already mixed with water, but nevertheless milk. 
The meat may have been salt, but it has been 
carefully boiled in the huge bake pans before 
frying. Beans, prunes and apricots are staples, 
but it is with cakes and pastry that the cook 
really loves to work. There will be more differ¬ 
ent kinds of cookies than the most hungry man 
can sample, yet the cook knows that the worse 
a man has been fed before he gets into camp the 
more he will complain of the best cooking that 
a really good cook can put before him. Then 
sometimes a man will make a whole meal on 
some particular kind of cake. 
Beans and prunes are the most staple kinds 
of food, but particularly the prunes. So much 
so that a certain Canadian road was said to be 
built of hay wire and prunes—hay wire to tie 
the steel together and prunes to feed the men. 
He is indeed a good cook who can make prunes 
look attractive three times a day for a whole 
year. Ingenuity to the highest power is the 
cook’s watchword. Even before all the men are 
away from the tables the work of clearing away 
the dishes and swabbing down the tables is begun. 
Like everything else in the cookhouse, this is 
done with a rush, but soon it is set again with 
the time-honored way of armsfull of dishes and 
pails of knives and forks. 
After the supper is over the cook may have 
to set bread. There are just as many ways of 
bread making as there are cooks, but there is 
only one way for your true camp cook and that 
is—his own. If he is proud of anything on earth 
it is his ability to make light bread. Tell a cook 
that he is homely, even hideous, and little will 
be said, but be prepared to run before telling him 
that his bread is a horrible delusion. For it he 
is willing to sit up half the night if need be. 
He cuddles it like a sick child and he is as proud 
of the finished product as is the young writer 
of his first story. Once the young hopeful is 
safely past the laborious stage and bids fair to 
become a pride to behold, then is the time above 
all others to coax the mighty man from his lair 
if you would hear a story about any part of the 
habitable globe. If he hasn’t been there he 
knows someone who has, or has read or heard 
something about it, and the story is equally good, 
for of all the outpost story tellers the camp 
cook is the prince of them all. In these happy 
moods the cook will perform any task he .is asked 
to do except clean fish. He’ll be glad to cook 
all that are caught, but clean them—never. He 
wouldn’t risk getting a fishy smell on his hands 
and in his bread for the entire camp. 
PREPARING THE EATS 
