The Kitchen Child-1
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"Born in a trunk", they say when a theatrical sups grease-paint with mothers milk, and if there be a ary equivalent of the phrase then surely I merit it, for was I not ceived the while a soufflé rose? A lobster soufflé, very choice, twenty-five minutes in a medium oven.And the very first soufflé that ever in her life as e mam was called upon to make, ordered up by some French duc, house guest of Sir and Madam, me mam pleased as pun<bdo>?9９ｌiｂ.</bdo>ch to fix it for him since few if any fins becs pecked their way to our house, not even during the two weeks of the Great Grouse Shoot when nobs rolled up in droves to score the feathered booty of the skies. Especially not then. Palates like shoe leather. "Pearls before swine," my mother would have said as she relutly sent the four and twenty courses of her Art up to the dining room, except that pigs would have exhibited mourmandise. I tell you, the English try house, yes! thats the place frub; but, only when Sir and Madam are pas chez lui. It is the staff who keep up the standards.
For Madam would touothing but oysters and grapes ohree times a day, due to the refi of her sensibility, while Sir fasted until a devilled bo sundown, his tongue having been burned out by curry when he was g a bit of Poonah. (I re those Indians hotted up his fodder out of spite. Oh, the cooks vengeance, when it strikes -- terrible!) And as for the Shooters of Grouse, all they wanted was sandwiches for hors doeuvres, sandwiches for entrées, followed by sandwiches, sandwiches, sandwiches, and their hip flasks kept replenished, oh, yes, wash it down with the amber fluid and who tell how it tastes?
So me mam took great pains with the stru of this, her very first lobster soufflé, sending the boy who ground knives off on his bike to the sea, miles, for the beast itself and then the boiling of it alive, how it e squeaking piteously crawling out of the pot etc. etc. ete mam all a-flutter before she so much as separated the eggs.
Then, just as she bent over the rao stir the flour into the butter, a pair of hands clasped tight around her waist. Thinking, at first, it was but kit horseplay, she twitched her ample hips to put him off as she slid the egg yolks into the roux. But as she mixed in the lobster meat, diced up, all nice, she felt those hands stray higher.
That was when too much in. She always regretted that.
And as she was folding ioppling tents of the bowl of beaten egg-white, God knows what it was he got up to but so much so she flings all into the white dish with abandon and:
"To hell with it!"
Into the ovehe soufflé; the oven door slams shut.
I draw a veil.
"But, mam!" I often begged her. "Who was that man?"
"Lawks a mercy, child," says she. "I hought to ask. I were that worried the I give the oven door would bring the soufflé down."
But, no. The soufflé went up like a montgolfier and, as soon as its golden head knocked imperiously against the oven door, she bust through the veil I have discreetly drawhis se of passion and emerged, smoothing her apron, in order to extract the exemplary dish amidst oohs and aahs and of the assembled kit staff, some forty-five in number.
But not quite exemplary. The et her mat the eater. The housekeeper brings his plate herself, slaps it down. "He said: "Trop de ne," and scraped it off his plate into the fire," she announces with a gratified smirk. She is a model of refi and always very particular about her aspirates. She hiccups. She even says the "h" in "hic".
My mother weeps for shame.
"What we need here is a gtial -- hic -- chef to improve le ton," mehe housekeeper, tossing me mam a killing look as she sweeps out the door for me mam is a simple Yorkshire lass for all she has magi her fingers but no room for two queens in this hive, the housekeeper hates her. And the housekeeper is pricked perpetually by the fancy for the importation of a Carême or a Soyer with moustaches like hatracks to bouche her and milly filly her as is all the rage.
"For isnt it Alberlin, chef to the dear Devonshires; and Crépin, at the Duchess of Sutherlands. Then theres Labalme, with the Duke of Beauforts household, dono. . . and the Queen, bless her, has her Ménager. . . while were stuck with that fat cow who t speak nothing but broad Yorkshire, never out of her carpet slippers. . ."
ceived upon a kit table, born upon a kit floor; no bells rang to wele but, far more aptly, my arrival heralded by a bang! bang! bang! on every skillet in the place, a veritable fusillade of copper-bottom kit tympani; and the merry clatter of ladle against dish-cover; and the very turnspit dogs all went: "Bo!"
It being, as you might yourself pute, a good three months off October, Sir and Madam being in London the housekeeper maintains a fiyle all by herself, sitting in her parlour partaking of the best Bohea from a Meissen cup, to which she adds a judicious touch of rum from the locked bottles to which shes fed a key in her ample leisure. The housekeepers little skivvy, that she keeps to fetch, carry and lick boot, just topping the tea-cup up with old Jamaica, all hell breaks loose below stairs as if a ese orchestra started up its woodblocks and xylophones, crash, .
"What oh are the -- hick -- lower ordures up to?" elocutes the housekeeper in ladylike and dulcet tones, giving the ear of the skivvy a quick but vicious tug to jerk the gossip out of her.
"Oh, madamissima!" quavers the poor little skivvyette. "Tis nobbut the cooks babby!"
"The cooks baby?!?"
Due to my mothers corpulence, which is immense, shes round as the "o" in "obese", and the great loyalty and affe towards her of all the kit staff, the housekeeper knew nothing of my immi, amid her waxing wroth, also glad to hear it, since she thought she spied a way to relieve my mother of her post due to this unsolicited arrival and then nag Sir and Madam to get in some ming and pomaded gent to chaudfroid and gêlée and butter up. Below stairs she desds forthwith, a stately yet oo stable progress due to the rum with a dash of tea she sips all day, the skivvy running in front of her to throw wide the door.
What a spectacle greets her! Raphael might have sketched it, had he been in Yorkshire at the time. My mother, wreathed in smiles, enthroned on a sack of spuds with, at her breast, her babe, all ly swaddled in a new-boiled pudding cloth and the e brigade arranged around her in attitudes of adoration, each brandishing a utensil and giving out there with that merry rattle of the ladles, yours trulys first lullaby.
Alas, my cradle song sooers out in the odd thwad tinkle as the housekeeper cast her coldest eye.
"Whats -- hic -- this?"
"A bonny boy!" e mam, planting a smag kiss oender forehead pressed against her pillowing bosom.
"Out of the house for this!" cries the housekeeper. "Hic," she adds.
But what a g and clamour she unleashes with that demand; as if shed let off a bomb in a hardware store, for all present (except my mother and myself) attack their improvised instruments with renewed vigour, ting in unison:
"The kit child! The kit child! You t turn out the kit child!"
And that was the truth of the matter; who else could I claim as my progenitor if not the greedy place itself, that, if it did not make me, all the same, it caused me to be made? Not one scullery maid nor the littlest vegetable boy could remember who or what it was which visited my mother that soufflé m, every hand i called to cut sandwiches, but some fat shape seemed to have hauhe place, drawn to the kit as a ghost to the dark; had not that gourmet due kept a gourmet valet? Yet his outlines melt like aspi the heat from the range.
"The kit child!"
The kitch<var>.９9liｂ?</var>en brigade made such a din that the housekeeper retreated to revive herself with aot of rum in her private parlour, for, faced with a mutiny amongst the pans, she discovered little valour in her spirit ao sulk ient.
The first toys I played with were ders, egg whisks and sau lids. I took my baths in the big tureen in which the turtle soup was served. They gave up salmon until I could toddle because, as for my crib, what else but the copper salmole? And this kettle was stowed high on the mantelshelf so I could shere snug and <s>藏书网</s>warm out of harms way, soothed by the delicious odours and appetising sounds of the preparation of nourishment, and there I y way through babyhood above that kit as if I were its household deity high in my tiny shrine.
And, indeed, is there not something holy about a great kit? Those vaults of soot-darkeone far above me, where the hams and strings of onions and bunches of dried herbs dangle, looking somewhat like the regimental bahat unfurl above the aisles of old churches. The cool, eg flags scrubbed spotless twice a day by votive persons on their khe scleam of row upon row of metal vessels dangling from hooks or reposing on their shelves till needed with the air of so many chalices waiting for the celebration of the sacrament of food. And the range like an altar, yes, an altar, before which my mother bowed iual homage, a fringe of son her upper lip and fire glowing in her cheeks.
At three years old she gave me flour and lard and straightaway I ied shortcrust. I being too little to mahe pin, she hoists me on her shoulders to watch her as she rolls out the dough upon the marble slab, thes me to stamp out the tartlets for myself, tears of joy at my precocity trig down her cheeks, lets me dollop on the damson jam and lick the spoon for my reward. By three and a half, Ive progressed th puff and, after that, no holding me. She perches me on a tall stool so I reach to stir the sauce, s me in her pinny that goes round and round and rouhrice, tucks it in at the waist else I trip over it head first into my own Hollandaise. So I bee her acolyte.
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