Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1879 — FEEDING A HOST. [ARTICLE]

FEEDING A HOST.

i In the Kitchen of a Saratoga Hotel. New York Tribune. The preparing and the serving of dinner at one of the great hotels at Saratoga at the height of the season is a grand achievement. Whether one has in mind Congress Hall with its 800 or 900 dinners, or the Grand Union with its 1,000, or the United States with a hundred or two more, the work which any one of them performs probably is not equalled outside of Saratoga. The serving of breakfast in these hotels is easy enough, for it is a comparatively simple meal, the preparation of which is extended along from daylight almost to noonday. Supper, too, is easily managed, for it is ordinarily only a matter of a little tea and. toast and a few slices of cold meat. But dinner is an elaborate meal, for which the thousand or more guests wait expectantly, and which is disposed of to a very large extent within an hour and a half of the time when, the grand personage, known as the head waiter, orders the dininghall doors opened. It must also be taken into account that the diners at a Saratoga hotel are not hungry men and women such as one would see hanging about the pit at a barbecue waiting impatiently for the roasting of the ox. The Saratogians do not look forward to dinner because they have aching voids in their stomachs, but because they expect that it will afford some pleasure to their effete palates. In other words, they are in a measure epicures, and the dinner that will satisfy them must be an epicurean banquet. It is not strange that people are curious to know what are the facilities and the methods of the great hotel kitchens that they turn out every day in the week, exactly on time, these enormous dinners. Your correspondent was one of a small party of gentlemen which a few days ago was Permitted to rummage about In the itchen and pantries an 4 store-rooms of what is supposed to be the largest hotel at Saratoga. The proprietor claims that it is the largest hotel in the world. We witnessed the preparation of the dinner from the beginning to the end. Mr. Antoine Ennesee, the head cook of tfce establishment, was our cicerone. We found that gentleman clad after the latest fashion plates of his guild, and looking every inch of him a French cook. If he had been encased in a clergyman’s habit he would not have passed for a clergyman, but rather for a French cook in disguise. f “So you have come to help me get dinner, have you, gentlemen?” said he. “Well, I need all the help I edn get, for I have to feed 1,100 to-day, and my bill of fare is a generous one.” One of the* gentlemen inquired who made up the bill ot fare. “I make it up,” replied the cook. “The steward buys whatever Be likes, and I make my dinner out of what there is in the house. For example, step this way, gentlemen;” and the cook led to one or a number of large blue chests which were ranged about the sides of a large room. In the middle of the room was a butchers’ block and table. Opening the chest, the cook showed us a hundred or so beautiful fish stretched upon the ice side by side. There were salmon, weak-fish, striped bass and Saratoga Lake bass. Each fish was thoroughly cleaned and ready for cooking. “I have two kinds of fish on the bill today,” said the cook, “and I may as well lay them aside.” Thereupon he selected ten of the largest salmon, the average weight of which was about thirty pounds, and fifteen bluefish, which together would weigh about 100 weight. “One of my assistants will come for them when he wants them,” said the cook. “It might interest you,” he added, “to know that I 4pve eighteen assistants, besides the two bakers, the five pastry and ice-cream cooks, and the sixteen women who prepare and cook the vegetables. This is the meat room, gentlemen. In this next chest are steaks and chops, already cut for the grid-iron. We have two butchers who cut and dress the meat. There must be 1,000 or 1,500 steaks, small and large, in this chest. In this next chest are the lamb and mutton. We use about 125 racks a day. Let’s see what there is to come out of here for dinner. ‘Leg of mutton, caper sauce.’ That will take six of these fellows. Then I want ten hind quarters for the ‘spring lamb, mint sauce, ’ and six saddles of mutton to roast. There will be some of this lamb or mutton left over, and we will use it to-morrow under the bead of cold meats. In this chest is the beef. We use a great deal of beef. To-day we shall roast fifteen ribs of beef that average forty-five pounds, and fifteen tenderldins. There will be one rib left for supper. Here, now, are the little spring chickens, and we use between 500 and 600 a day. Don’t they look pretty with their arms tucked away behind their backs? For dinner alone we shall want about 340 of the little chaps. We shall boil forty, roast twenty-five, and use seventy-five more in the ‘Spring saute, a la Marengo.’ The other chests are for cold meats and the salads. We boil about eight hams and twelve tongues every day, and they answer for cold meat the next day. The salad dressing we make as often as necessary. To- day I have a good supply. While we are here, I’ll show you where we put the soup-bones. You know we make the stock for our soups by boiling the bones from the joints after we have carved all the good slices of meat off them. We boll the bones in great kettles by steam. The stock for today’s soup was boiled yesterday. It takes about 125 gallons of soup for a dinner. To-day we have green-turtle soup.”

One of the gentleman interrupted the cook in his story to ask him if he really used turtles in the making of green-turtle soup. The cook looked at the base insinuation in silence for a moment and then said: “Yes, sir, we use turtles. To -day we use two turtles, eighty pounds weight each. We were just about to leave the meat room when glancing at the bill of fore the oook said: “Excuse me, gentleman, I overlooked the ‘Haricot of lamb, a la printanier.’ I use sixty pounds of lamb for that” He selected the lamb and then proceeded to the pastry room, where the cooks were already at work getting ready for dinner. The first item on the bill of fore under “pastry” was “cabinet pudding.” One of the cooks was mixing up the dough for it. He said the result would be 260 small puddings. Three kinds of pie were making, rhubarb, pumpkin and blackben y. One of the party expressed sur-

’ prise that only nine dozen pies would, be needed for the dinner. “Oh.” said Mr. Ennessee, “our guests don’t come much from Massachusetts. They are mostly from New York. They don’t care much for pies. Here is what they like,” and he pdtnted to where people were working on what he said would turn out to be 800 Charlotte Russes. “We make a good deal of cake, too, to eat with the ice-cream and water-ices, and all of it is made in this room. Of course we always have some on hnui. and only have to make a single kiqa or two kinds in a day. We bake the pastry in these tile ovens. These two men are the bakers. They do nothing except make bread. They use four barrels and a half of flour a day. This afternoon they will be at work on teabiscuits. They make between 3,000 aud 4,000 of them a day. There is not much bread eaten at dinner. We use lots of butter and eggs and milk in this room, but I can’t tell exactly how much we use for dinner. In the whole house in a single day we use for cooking and on the table aoout 500 pounds of butter, 400 dozen of eggs, and 700 quarts of milk. The ice-cream takeg consideraole milk and eggs. We make 220 quarts of ice-cream and water-ice together. They freeze it in this room.” We looked in, but there was nothiDg to see other than a very warm-looking man clad in a long rubber apron, who was engaged in turning tne big wheel of the freezing apparatus.

As we came from this room, Mr. Ennesee called attention to the dough that was mixing for the “Queen’s fritters.” “We make bushels of them for dinner,’* he said. Entering the room in which the vegetables are kept, we saw barrels of potatoes, cabbages, onions, turnips, egg plants, and other vegetables. “How many potatoes do you use for dinner?” one of us inquired. “Between three and four barrels, sir; we use eight or ten barrels a day. To-day we have egg plant fried, and we shall use one barrel of the plants.” “What Is the favorite vegetable, the one most called for?” Mr. Ennesee pointed to a stack of green corn. “We shall use 2,500 ears for dinner to-day,” said he. “They like tomatoes pretty well, too. We use ten bushels a day. You don’t see anybody peeling potatoes here, do you?” inquired our guide. “Well, the reason is that we peeHhem by steam. We put a bushel of potatoes into that zinc cylinder and turn on the power. In fifteen minutes they are peeled. You see the potatoes strike on tne sharp triangles that are punched in the cylinder, and that peels them.” A little after noon we paid a visit to the great kitchen. Upon the left side of the entrance, the ribs of beef, the chickens, the lamb and the mutton were roastfng over a hot coal fire; roasting on spits that were turned by a small steam engine close at hand. In pots close by the salmon were boiling. Across the room great kettles filled with vegetables were sputtering on the fire, while at the end of the room a number of cooks were engaged with the spring chicken saute, the sweetbread and the like. The chief cook was bustling about from pot to kettle and from spit to gridiron, giving an order aere, nodding his head there, and I regret to say it, occasionally firing off a volley of French oaths. Once in a while he would go below to the pastry room to see to matters there. “The beauty of this department of the hotel,” he stopped to say to us, “is that the work is divided. I have a general oversight, to be sure, and have to do a good deal of headwork, but I have competent help and enough of it, and I know when the dinner hour comes around everything will be ready.” It was ready that- day certainly; and when the chief water threw open the doors and bade the diners come in, the soup, the flsb, the meats and the vegetables were systematically arranged for expeditious serving. We had been advised to take a position during the dinner hour where we could see without getting in the way and without being m danger of taking soup showerbaths. In ten miuutes after the opening of the dining hall the process of serving d'nner was at its height The sight we looked upon was at first as bewildering as the view through a rapidly revolving kaleidoscope. The waiters flew in and out so fast that it seemed as if there was a continuous black streak from the door of exit from the dining hall to the door of entrance. All the while there was an incessant clatter of dishes, and a din of voices as the waiters chattered at each other, and as they gave their orders. There was an immense rush for the soup tureens at first. One after another the waiters disappeared, bearing above their heads trays covered with plates of steaming soup. After the soup the serving of dinner went on according to the time-honored programme. The soup plates soon came back empty, and were almost thrown into the dish washers’ room to be immediately cleaned again. Fifteen women officiated in this room, and their hands and arms looked as though a little more parboiling would make them tolerably tender.