The Literature of the Kitchen.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 21, 23 November 1910, Page 58

The Literature of the Kitchen.

“Novelettes, ’ would probably be the reply of nine'mistresses in ten if suddenly asked what their housemaids read. Possibly that reply is based on ignorance of the literature of the kitchen. At f least it is not borne out by one investigator who has taken the trouble to \ find out what servants really do read.' In the October “Book Monthly” Mr. Clarence Rook tells us what books have found most favour in the kitchen of his Hat. The vacancies on his bookshelves have in turn told him what literature most appealed to the maid in his employ. “That maid," he explains; “could read anything she liked from a flat plastered with novels and ’littered with papers. But the first book she collared was Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace,’ and volume after volume was returned honestly to the shelf. Then ‘George Eliot’ disappeared, to appear again. Some time -afterwards Guv de Maupassant’s ‘I nc Vie’ was missing—it was the translation cal led ‘A Woman’s Life,’ and it is now on my shelves again. The watching maid. I must confess, collars and reads all the books that are written by people who come into the house—she never misses a Hind or a Hueffer or a Ridge or a Jerome. That is the personal clutch. “But the books that linger longest away from the shelves show the taste of the serving-maid. And as this is just a personal note I may mention that the latest reading of the maid from the country has been of two small volumes of a translation of Dante.” Mistresses, no doubt, will want to know if this habit of reading the best available interferes with the domestic competence of the serving-maid. Quite the contrary, says our informant. One of the books quickly spotted by the literary housemaid was M. Escoffier’s “Guide to Modern Cookery!" Why. oh why, can’t we import a cargo of this class of maid to New Zealand.