Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1907 — Selections [ARTICLE]

Selections

THE CZAR’S KITCHENS. Teats to Prevent Poisoned Food Reaching the Royal Table. No chef In all the world occupies a more peculiar position than M. Eugene Kratz, the little known but august cordon bleu who presides in the imperial kitchens of the Great White Czar This remarkable man draws a salary rather larger than that of the president of the United States—about $55,000 a year—and has paramount control of the palace kitchens in all the homes of the imperial family, from Peterhof, the Anitchkoff, the Winter palace, the Tsarskoe-Selo, all the way to Livadia, in the Crimea. Six times a year M. Kratz makes the round of all the Imperial kitchens throughout the empire, and his peculiar position may be realized from the fact that his social rank equals that of a general in the Russian army. And an army this wonderful chef certainly commands, with absolute authority—an army whose “weapons” are not the less important for being mere pots and pans. Of course a culinary artist of such rank as M. Kratz does little or nothing at all with his own hands, but is rather an inventive genius, titillating the palate of the emperor and his august guests, for when the autocrat of all the Russias wearies of Russian, French, Italian and English dishes he must be tried with some fantasy such as chicken gumbo as made in New Orleans or some of the delightful sweet dishes of the Balkan states and Turkey. It is well known that in the kitchens of the czar most elaborate tasting ceremonies are gone throhgh, and when the czar is in residence at Peterhof, a palace about half an hour distant from the capital, not only M. Kratz himself, but also his under chefs and certain high officials of the imperial army, are called in to taste every dish that goes to the emperor’s table, after which experiment a reasonable time is permitted to elapse to see whether or not the tasters are poisoned. This curious survival of other days comes down from the time of Ivan the Terrible.—St Louis Post-Dispatch.