The Cook
Link
to Food at Emo Court
At large
houses such as Emo Court, where dinner parties
and lavish balls were a common occurrence, the cooks employed were expected
to produce gastronomic feasts of the highest standard. Cooks worked long hours,
rising early to make the breakfast rolls and pastries, and spending the rest
of the day preparing a succession of meals for the family, servants and children
of the house. The scullery maid and kitchen maid provided assistance in the
kitchen, peeling and chopping vegetables, skinning rabbits, plucking fowl
and scouring heavy pans.
The weekly menu
was determined by whichever fruit and vegetables were in
season, and was ultimately decided upon by the lady of the house. In a
letter to her sister dated 1781, Lady Caroline, Countess of Portarlington
described the arrival of a new male cook at Dawson’s Court and the difficulties of
menu-planning:
“…yesterday
we began with our dinners, for, as you know, our cook has at last arrived and
seems to promise well both in his appearance and in his cookery, being a clean
good-humoured-looking man, and the things we have seen
of his dressing have been very well done; so now follows a train of dinners
which will try my patience to the utmost.”
(Gleanings from an Old Portfolio, I.148)
Cooks at Emo
Court
The ultimate status
symbol was a French cook, although one paid extra for such culinary expertise
– at the start of the 19th century a good French cook could demand
as much as ₤150 per annum. It is not surprising then, that the 1st
Earl of Portarlington urged his wife in London to find them “a cheap French cook such as we had formerly” (Gleanings from an Old Portfolio,
II. 263). The 2nd Earl also had a French cook, named Oliver Camus,
who stayed only a few months, although perhaps long enough to train another,
less expensive, cook in his place. Other cooks at Emo Court included Kearns (1821) and Mrs McGee (1839), ‘Mrs’ being
the customary form of address to a female cook regardless of her marital status.
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While we have no record of how much
cooks were paid at Emo Court, comparative figures come from Abbeyleix, where Lord de Vesci paid
his male cooks ₤34-45 in the early 19th century. Female
cooks, of course, received less. Wages were supplemented by perks, and
while good cooks were expected to let nothing go to waste in the kitchen, in reality, leftovers such as dripping
were often sold for profit. The company advertised here, for example,
not only bought fat and bones, but even paid the carriage-fare to Dublin! |
“The cook was a good cook, as good cooks go;
and as good cooks go, she went.”
H.H. Munro 1904,
‘Reginald’
Good
cooks were hard to find and even harder to keep. The journal of the 2nd Earl of
Portarlington shows that in 1821 two cooks left Emo Court in succession. As the dining-room was not
finished until 1840, perhaps the conditions in the early house were simply too ‘primitive’
for a cook of high sensibilities. In later years, the finished dining room
received great use as the Earl and Countess of Portarlington entertained
widely. At a ball given at Christmas 1911, for example, the table was laid for
300 in what was no doubt a stressful day for the cook and kitchen staff!
Advertisement for a cook in
the
Leinster Express, May
28th 1870
The Kitchen and Larders
The kitchen at Emo Court was located in the basement below the
dining room. It was close to the side-entrance of the house, so that gardeners
and gamekeepers could enter easily with supplies. A door from the kitchen which
led to the lumber room allowed fuel to be brought in directly to heat the oven.
The cook’s room would have been located close to the kitchen, and as a member
of the upper staff she enjoyed the privilege of having meals in the ‘Pug’s
parlour’. Food supplies were stored in the larder next to the cellar, while a
free-standing game-store in the yard outside was easily accessible from the
kitchen.
Dinner was served
on heated plates and carried immediately to the dining room above, to be served
by the footmen and butler. A plate bucket, such as that currently displayed in
the dining room, would have been used to carry plates up from the basement.
This ingenious article of furniture consisted of a wooden bucket with an open
slit down the front, which allowed plates to be carefully placed inside, thus avoiding
damage or breakages which might otherwise have resulted in the dismissal of a careless
servant.
Plate Bucket at Emo Court