Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1884 — Cooking as an Art. [ARTICLE]

Cooking as an Art.

The man who presides over the kitchen in a first-class hotel is an absolute monarch. Nobody ventures to question his acts, and even his employers make their feeble suggestions in a deferential way. The modern chef is an artist as well as a student, and for his use is provided a library filled with all the standard works upon his art. Here he consults his authorities, and plans his campaigns of gastronomic conquest. In the kitchen are subordinates of many grades who look up to him with awe. The chef of a leading hotel in New York lately admitted a reporter to his inner sanctum, and there confided to him the great secret of the cooking art. This, it appears, is the making of sauces. “Everything in its raw state,” says the oracle, “has a distinctive taste, but the cook’s art is to bring it to the surface so that it reaches the palate. The secret in our profession is to supply the flavors when they are absent and develop them when they are there, just as a painter makes his effect stand out from the canvas.”— Boston Herald.