the Chef’s Reminder

A significant gift I received for Christmas last year turned out to be a little red book entitled “A Selection of Dishes and the Chef’s Reminder”.  The book was purchased by my mother at a public library book sale for $4, and given to me by younger sisters.  Obviously the book was worth more to me than $4 or I would not be writing a blog post on it.  The book was copyrighted in 1896 and 1909, by Charles Fellows and John Willy respectively, my copy being the book’s tenth edition.  It is the book’s content, however, that makes it most fascinating to me.  Most of the book is occupied by a series of entries describing specific dishes.  Many of the dishes are ones that today’s chef might not be familiar with.  Even those dishes that remain, to a greater or lesser extent, in use today, seem to be written with a set of considerations in mind that is entirely different from that of today’s chef. A good example might be the entry for sauce espagnole on page 77:  “Ham, veal, beef, in meat and bones, fried till brown, with carrots, onions, turnips, celery, parsley, thyme, marjoram, savory, bay-leaves, cloves, allspice and pepper, enough flour added to form a brown roux, moistened gradually with good stock, add plenty of tomatoes,  two or three chickens or roast fowl carcasses, simmer slowly for several hours, add sherry wine, and strain.”  Other content that I found particularly interesting included the list of “hints to cooks and stewards” on pages 111-116, a consolidation of culinary dictums that the author was clearly familiar with.  I would personally be interested in knowing what light scientific investigation might shed on the list.   I was also intrigued by the section on pages 192 and 193 titled “a private dinner menu”, which includes the menu served by Fellows to a man described as “the millionaire and terrapin king” Mr. Hermann Oelrichs, along with the accompanying “waiter’s instructions”.  The aforementioned menu, as well as the book as a whole, provide a fascinating glimpse into a previous chapter of American haute cuisine.

The Chef’s Reminder may be read on Google books here, or purchased online relatively inexpensively.