Why Have We Forgotten The Servants? Part II: Cookbooks
Published May 16, 2008 by Rachel Laudan
If you have spent any time in the United States in the last fifty years, you’ll have some idea of the awe and affection that Julia Child inspires. It all started with a cook book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, that she wrote with greater or lesser degrees of help from Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, and published in 1961.
Her face appeared on the cover of Time magazine, her kitchen is now in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, and she is widely credited with having brought American food out of the dark ages of cans and tv dinners and into the light of gastronomy.
Yet I would bet that the number of American housewives who in the 1960s or subsequently who actually prepared lobster thermidor or ham braised in cream and mushroom sauce or beef filet stuffed with truffles and foie gras was a vanishingly small proportion of the total.
And the reason (apart from the expense of such dishes which are obviously for special occasions) is that this cuisine bourgeoise that Julia Child fell in love with was not middle class cuisine American-style but a cuisine for the tiny proportion of French who shortly after World War II still had cooks.
Julia Child never actually said this outright in her book. But if you read her memoir, My Life in France (2006) written with Alex Prud’homme, little hints pop up all over. The book that Simca and Louisette were working on (the germ of Mastering) consisted of recipes that came from Simca’s “own experiments, her mother’s notebooks, her family’s cook, restaurant chefs, and the Gourmettes” (the exclusive women’s eating club, mainly wives of the premier men’s eating club, limited to a hundred members). Julia Child explains how when the three of them started a cooking school for Americans in Paris she “brought an American practicality to such questions as how to shop, cook, and clean without a staff (something that Simca and Louisette did not have a grasp of at all).” She explains that they included a “peasant dish” cassoulet only at the insistence of their editor, the half dozen they already had being quite sufficient.
In short, Mastering describes the cooking of wealthy households who had not just servants but cooks.
In fact, if I think back to my time in Paris in the late fifties and early sixties when Julia Child was living there, when I shuttled between a top drawer diplomatic family and a solidly middle class family, the food I had, although good, was very simple: vegetable soups, small pieces of meat with no or very simple sauces, boiled potatoes, salads, fruit, occasionally a bought pastry for a special occasion.
So Julia Child was explaining in exquisite detail how Americans without cooks could reproduce the food of the French with cooks. It was a supremely American, supremely democratic, supremely idealistic thing to do. Not surprisingly, though, once she started her television career and once she began her subsequent series of books, the recipes became much simpler and veered away from the cook’s and restaurant dishes of Mastering.
What all this shaggy dog tale is leading up to is that Mastering is more the rule than the exception. Most cookbooks written before 1900, and a surprising number written after 1900, were cookbooks written for people who had a staff, usually a staff that included one or more cooks.
The skewing of pre-1950 cookbooks to those with servants is something I think we need to keep in mind when we hear laments about the decline of kitchen skills and the failure of women to provide tasty home-cooked meals. High quality home cooking can be pulled off without a staff, no doubt about it. But it’s worth remembering how often the good home cooking that is held up as a model is one that is damn difficult to emulate without a kitchen staff.
Coming in the servant series: housewife-servant interactions, servants in other parts of the world, the family meal, what servantss have added to culinary history, and more.
Filed under Food History
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Some of the earlier cookbooks were very open about who was doing the cooking, with “Servant” often being part of the book’s title.
The assumption is that the wife (or stand in) would read the book and use this to direct the servants. In some 17th century cookbooks there are large sections on how to run servants.
In British cookbooks of the 20th century, the assumption that there are servants in the house is lost by the 1920’s to a large extent. Will the exception of books written for those in the colonies.
It would be interesting to compare the raise of restaurant fine dining and decline of the household servant in the 20th century.
Brilliant post Rachel. It is very insightful. When you say most books in the 1900s were written for people with cooks on their staff, is there some research that you are relying upon?
I knew there was a good reason why I dont actually get around to cooking a lot of historic recipes. You have given me my ‘excuse’ when people ask me if I do! Perhaps when I retire from my real job I’ll have to find another excuse. Good series Rachel, thanks.
Janet.
Thanks all of you. Rajagopal, part of the answer to your question is in Adam’s comment. I don`t have a book or article I can send you to. My comments are based on factors such as work in social history about literacy rates, and prevalence of servants, the kinds of dishes described in cookbooks, experience (direct or indirect) of other countries such as Mexico and India. But I’ll be pursuing more of this in coming entries.
Julia Child’s influence in America is so profound that I am still asked questions about French cuisine that clearly use her a meta-reference.
“vegetable soups, small pieces of meat with no or very simple sauces, boiled potatoes, salads, fruit, occasionally a bought pastry for a special occasion.”
This is pretty much my experience in France beginning in the mid 1990s, with a cheese course added which as far as I know tends be regional, much more common in Lyon.
“The skewing of pre-1950 cookbooks to those with servants is something I think we need to keep in mind when we hear laments about the decline of kitchen skills and the failure of women to provide tasty home-cooked meals. High quality home cooking can be pulled off without a staff, no doubt about it. But it’s worth remembering how often the good home cooking that is held up as a model is one that is damn difficult to emulate without a kitchen staff.”
I suspect these laments also had to do with marketing kitchen equipment.
Hmm so those simple meals extended at least until the 1990s. And yes, I actually often had a cheese course too. Though this was not a huge selection but a small piece of the locally-made emmenthaler-gruyere style cheese.
Interesting idea about the denigration of home cooking skills as a way to sell kitchen equipment. Cuisinarts (food processors) particularly I assume.
Yes, the home meals are still simple. The main changes in the last couple of decades are more products of culinary modernism of the mass produced kind and increased interest in “ethnic” recipes.
But they’re still not cooking the kind of French chef food of the Julia Child’s kind, elaborate Madhur Jaffrey Indian or Paula Wolfert Moroccan.
Yes, cuisinarts in particular. But so much in America is about marketing. I’m in Los Angeles so I’m probably more acutely aware of it. I also work in public relations and media relations.