Servants in the Kitchen: Now You See Them, Now You Don’t
Emilia, Rachel, Alicia, Saveur Shoot March 2007
Some years ago, Saveur magazine, which was running a series on kitchens, asked to include my kitchen in Mexico. I wrote and re-wrote a short piece and they sent a photographer up from Mexico City for a day. One of the photos she took was this one of me with the cousins who worked for me at the time, Emilia and Alicia.
Guess what? In the piece that was finally published, not a trace of Emilia or Alicia was to be found, even though, although not cooks, their presence was everywhere in the kitchen: unloading and putting away groceries, making breakfast and lunch for themselves, the gardener, and any children who happened to be sick or on school vacation, offering a drink to the mail man, water man, or all the others who come to the door, preparing agua fresca or salsa, and, not least, cleaning up. Even the hand over the comal is mine.
I did not mention power or servants In my last post The Indispensable Culinary Middlemen and Women . Yet the talk of appropriation is all about differences in power. Those who worry about appropriation maintain that it kicks in when one person or group is more powerful than the other.
Because the kitchen is where so many culinary exchanges between servants and their employers or owners take place, I’m going update a series of posts on servants in the kitchen with appropriation in mind, including some of the excellent comments from last time around. And I should add that conversations I had this weekend at Texas Foodways with my friends Mary Margaret Pack (who years ago encouraged me to write about servants in the kitchen) and Toni Tipton-Martin (whose deservedly prize-winning The Jemima Code is permeated with this question) prompted me to get a move on.
Doesn’t that photograph look like the very epitome of different power, with me, a white English-American towering over two Mexicans?
Today the question of servants is an embarrassing one. We pussyfoot around the very mention of the word “servant.” It’s just so politically incorrect.
Few people in modern America or Europe (or Canada, Australia, or New Zealand) admit to servants in the house. They’ve outsourced servants’ work to the factory floor, the restaurant kitchen, or the gadget driven by the small electric motor.
If we have people, they tend to be illegal (and thus invisible) or sanitized as a cleaning or gardening service (I see Mexican gardeners and cleaners every day in our middle class suburb in Austin, Texas).
Nor do people work as household servants, if they can avoid it. It just doesn’t seem a good way to go when there’s such a choice of paid employment out there.
This makes the Americans and Europeans among us oddities. We’re oddities in world history as a rare society not divided into patrons and servants.
Americans and Europeans are oddities in the contemporary world where in many countries the divide between servants and employers is still basic. I’ve heard friends in Mexico say, “Either you have a servant (or lots of them) or you are one.”
Obviously over human history, what it meant to be a servant varied enormously.
- Some were young men and women from the local village or estate. Some were poor country girls or boys who had moved to the city hoping to improve their lot (common almost everywhere). Servitude could start early, at 5 or 6 years of age.
- Some were prisoners captured in war (common practice in all ancient societies).
- Some were serfs (Russia) or slaves (the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, or plantation societies from Brazil to the American South). Historians are now beginning to talk about a whole spectrum of unfree people.
- In nineteenth-century England, domestic service was the single largest occupation for women. For men and women taken together, domestic service was the second-largest occupation (even though then and now factory workers and miners get more attention).
- In a nineteenth-century European city, one in every five people was a domestic servant. Leaving children and the elderly to one side, at least a quarter and probably a half of all adults were servants.
- In 1900 in the United States almost one in ten households employed servants. A large number were black. Others were Mexican, Irish, or Japanese, as examples depending on the region.
- “Servants are very much a part of life in Africa. ‘Even’ Omer, our cook/livestock handler, has several ‘garcons’–mainly poor boys of relatives from the country–who live with him, help with the cooking, goat herds and farming. They get room and board, some spending money, medical treatment, and of course the romance that country boys consider is part of living near the capital of Bujumbura.” (from Diana Buja). Servants often had servants.
- Whatever the background of domestic servants, whatever their exact legal status, a large proportion worked in the kitchen. Preparing food was the most tedious, time-consuming back-breaking job in the house. Laundry was the one exception, and it did not come around three times a day.
I’m pretty sure that if I went back three generations, I’d find that some of my great grandparents were servants for at least part of their lives.
If we want to understand the history of food, we’ve got to bring servants back center stage and give them their fair due. What are we, in our little odd servant-less fishbowl, missing if we don’t take servants into account when we write food history?
______
Topics to come include: Who had the culinary knowledge? What was in it for mistress and for cook? Payment and theft. Cookbook authors and the servants. And what is the future of traditional cuisines without servants?
This is an updated version of an article I wrote in June 2006 for the newsletter of the Food History Committee of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, edited by the astute Mary Margaret Pack.
Meanwhile here are a few sources.
Peter Stearns, European Society in Upheaval, 2nd edn (Macmillan, 1979), 52.
Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (Pantheon), p.172.
Caroline Davidson, A Woman’s Work is Never Done (Chatto and Windus, 1982), ch.8.
I like knowing your thoughts! I think that the situtation of people in domestic service where there was more than one domestic in a household was very different from that of the solitary servant: either situation could be good or bad, but in very different ways. Even the manuals of instructions for servants range from considerate to coldly unreasonable.
Barbara, I couldn’t agree more. I think we need to understand something about domestic service before making blanket judgements about it. Solitary is very different from group and there are many other distinctions to be made as well. I hope to include something from your book in this.
My paternal, middle-class grandparents, who were immigrants themselves, had a cook/housekeeper five days a week from when they married in 1905 until they died in the late 1950s. Living an a well-off zip code, I see couples with personal assistants all the time. I also see a lot of nannies. Both personal assistants and nannies are servants in my thinking. I think there is a certain level of wealth in the U.S. where people seem to have one or more people working for them on a full-time basis.
Peter, I totally agree it has not disappeared. But would you agree that it has become something to shuffle off not to boast about?
Hello my family in southern france have always been servants and caretakers on estates. The ladies kept up house and men the woods, fields, horses, heavy work. It was a traditional set up.
No one was looked upon – nor were we ever condescended to when in presence of that family – on or off the estate.
Everyone knew their place in scheme of things – whether in work or on the street or in the office.
Here in PC san francisco everyone is equal. Yet we all know it’s fake.
Spare yourselves guilt. The people are cleaning or cooking or serving you in some way is not wrong. If you can afford it and they are treated well there is no problem.
Treat people with respect and don’t abuse the power
As for your helpers photo shopped out – most likely they were not dressed appropriately in colourful skirts and shawls wearing sandals
sigh
Thanks Lev. All these contributions help. What we are seeing here is a really huge transition from hierarchical to modern societies so I would not be quite so hard on Americans who have never experienced anything different. A place in the scheme of things is hard to reconcile with the (over-optimistic) “you can be anything you want.” My family were on an estate too so greetings.
In 1900, my maternal grandmother, a fifteen year-old orphan, came here as an indentured servant. A local family paid her fare over, and she worked for them for three years; cooking, cleaning and helping raise their children. At 18 she married my grandfather, a successful businessman from the same district in Serbia, and then cooked, cleaned and raised 7 children of her own.
Although my grandfather could have afforded domestic help, which was still cheap to come by, she refused, and kept house above the family clothing store and at their farm for over 50 years.
When we would ask her why she came here, she would always mention that fact that when she boarded the ship that brought her to Ellis Island, it was the first time in her life she had worn shoes.
There was no other way she, or hundred’s of thousands of immigrants, could ever have come.
The best thing about writing this blog post is all the stories it brings out. Thanks so much for telling it.
This is a fascinating topic, and I will try to say what I want to say without getting all soapboxy, which is difficult!
As a white woman who grew up in America without domestic help, and has now lived in South Africa for over 20 years, I often feel that I’m straddling the volatile faultline of the servitude issue. I’ve had the experience of being a somewhat faceless, behind-the-scenes line cook as well as a boss, so I’ve had a taste of both “master and servant”, although not because of my skin color.
Having black South Africans who were poorly educated (thanks to apartheid), work in my restaurant and in my home in “subservient” positions has been something I’ve grappled with — feeling every emotion under the sun from guilt to frustration and aggravation to immense connection, gratitude and love — but my “struggle” has always been from the place of privilege. It can feel excruciating, yet embarassing to talk about how excruciating it feels, when you don’t have the kinds of everyday challenges outside of the workplace that your employees have, nor their history. Which means it’s easy to keep these feelings to yourself, even though they are valid. But, we need momentum for things to change and improve, and somehow have to move forward without forgetting the past. This means that there is bound to be some clumsy stumbling along the way.
I’ve come to realize that we need each other: those of us who offer employment and those who seek it. When it works well, it’s brilliant: the absolute beauty of teamwork, when every person on the team feels they are contributing and receiving something valuable. Hopefully most of us who offer employment are decent, fair and appreciative, as are most who seek it. There is no shame in either role when it’s well-played; only grace.
Just like America, the contributions of slaves and servants to South Africa’s melting pot cuisine were great: their stamp not only on the dishes, but on flavour sensibilities. One cannot eat here, or even live here, without being touched by a servant past. What I think is important is that for our collective global future, we get to know each other as people, and as you discuss in your post, acknowledge not only the vital role of yesterday’s slaves and servants, and but that of today’s domestic and restaurant workers who are behind the scenes doing the important work.
What a great blog you have, Ilana. And thanks for this comment, which is not at all soapboxy.
Thanks so much, Rachel. I always come away from yours feeling enriched!
Rachel,
When I first came to Greece in the late 60’s, my in laws owned a traditional neighborhood taverna in Athens. They did all the cooking themselves and employed a nephew to wait on tables. But the thing that shocked me, the newly arrived American, most was learning about the two young boys [ages 10 and 12?] from a poor village in Northern Greece who lived in the loft above the taverna. They helped do odd chores, cleaning, sweeping, running errands, etc. for a very small amount of money, which they sent home. They did not attend school but my mother in law did insist they do their sums, practice reading and writing, and she made sure they went to church!. She kept them clean, washed their clothes and at least they were well fed and warm. Who knows what conditions were like in their village, I never found out. I did learn that even then it was still common practice to send young boys to the big city to earn money for the family back home.
The taverna closed in 1970 and I never knew what happened to those boys. One day years later, however, a young man stopped us on the street and asked if we didn’t remember him from the taverna days. Costas [ the older boy] told us he would always remember my in laws’ kindness and how grateful he was to them for having helped him and his brother. He had a good job as an elevator repairman and was happily married with kids. I guess it always comes down to doing what you have to do to survive. What was unthinkable to me was just a matter of getting on with life for Costas and his family. Hadn’t thought of this in years, but your post reminded me of it, for what it’s worth.
Linda, I have a similar english story. April came to work for my mother at age 13, the week she left school. She left ten years later, the week she got married. She had her own room, use of the radio and the breakfast room in the evenings (we had no television), and went back to her parents from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning. Thank you for sending along another great story that drives home just how ubiquitous service was.
Rachel,
Thanks for your story. Sorry I forgot to mention an interesting book which has much fascinating info on this very subject subject, Have you read A HISTORY OF COOKS & COOKING by Michael Symons? He dedicates his book to the most indispensable people who have been belittled, etc. Excellent read, I highly recommend to everyone interested in any aspect of cookery, history of, and so on.
Yes, i have read Michael Symons’ book. In fact it was one of the inspirations for my tackling Cuisine and Empire. He was one of the first academics to insist on the importance of cooks.
Rachel,
This is a dear (and painful) subject for me. I was raised in India, where every middle class family had their retinue of cooks, maids, peons, and drivers if they were wealthy enough to own a car. My family employed an older lady who we unashamedly called our servant, because that is what she was. She had been widowed before having any children, so we were all she knew.
I loved her. She took care of me since the time I was 3 months old. As a little child I often left my parents’ bed to go lay down next to her on the thin mat on the floor that she slept on. I remember the smell and feel of snuggling up to her.
I always thought of her as an unfortunate grandmother.
The pain comes from the utter destitution of her life. Towards her later days her betel/tobacco chewing habit brought on strokes and paralysis. They had ruined her teeth much earlier. She was slowly losing her mind and would jabber on to herself staring out the balcony.
I didn’t realize as a child that though she was so dear to me, she could only be an adjunct to our family, not a part of it. Only very limited resources were available for her health needs.
As a comment above says, both the employed and the employers need each other. But one hopes that the employers never forget the others’ humanity. This is why I am glad you are doing this series.
Aneela, so many common themes in your touching story: the widow who has no recourse but to become a servant; the child who finds something in a servant that she does not find in her parents (just as with an uncle or aunt); and the problems of the aging servant in society’s with a limited social net.