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QUANTITY COOKERY
MENU PLANNING AND COOKING FOR LARGE NUMBERS
BY
LENORE RICHARDS, B.A. and NOLA TREAT, B.S.
ASSISTANT PROFESSORS OF INSTITUTION MANAGEMENT
COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1922
Copyright, 1922,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Published April, 1922
Printed in the United States of America
PREFACE
This book has been written in response to the many requests for
practical help in the planning of menus and for the recipes in use in
the cafeteria under the management of the authors.
This book is designed primarily to assist the managers of food
departments in institutions. However, it is hoped that the chapters on
menu planning, the recipes, and the list of weights and their
approximate measures may prove useful as a text for those teachers of
institution management who have the problem of teaching large quantity
cookery and menu planning.
N. T.
L. R.
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
January 1, 1922
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING THE PLANNING OF MENUS FOR LARGE NUMBERS 1
II. STANDARDS FOR JUDGING MEALS 8
III. TYPES OF MENUS 11
IV. SUGGESTIVE CHARTS AND LISTS TO BE USED IN MENU PLANNING 42
V. THE IMPORTANCE AND USE OF FORMS 66
VI. RECIPES 73
VII. TABLE OF WEIGHTS AND THEIR APPROXIMATE MEASURES 191
INDEX 195
QUANTITY COOKERY
CHAPTER I
PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING THE PLANNING OF MENUS FOR LARGE NUMBERS
Well-balanced and appropriate menus are absolutely necessary to the
success of any establishment serving food. Given the best of raw
materials and the most competent cooks, the institutional manager will
fail to please his patrons if his menus show lack of careful planning.
The truth of this assertion is verified by the analysis of many
failures.
On the other hand successful menu planning is not especially difficult.
Like any other art it requires careful study and observance of a few
simple rules.
Of course, it is impossible to formulate one set of rules that will
apply to all situations. Each manager must make his own rules based on
the conditions he has to meet. There are, however, certain basic
principles to be recognized and followed. If the ensuing chapters
succeed in explaining these principles and in emphasizing their
importance, the authors' purpose will have been served.
In planning menus for an institution the manager must:
Keep in mind the nature of the institution; its purpose; the character
of its patronage.
Follow certain dietetic principles.
Maintain constant variety in the food.
Keep menus appropriate to the temperature; the weather; the season;
occasional holidays.
Recognize the limitations imposed by equipment; amount and kind of help;
range of cost permitted; left-over foods to be used; form of service.
The first point to consider in planning a menu is the type of
institution to be served. For reasons that are obvious, the purpose of
the high school cafeteria is very different from that of the
metropolitan hotel, while neither of these has the same object as the
municipal tuberculosis sanitarium.
The age, sex, nationality, economic condition and occupation of the
patrons must be kept in mind. The adult demands a freedom of choice
which may be denied children. For this reason the content of the grade
school lunch may be fixed in an arbitrary way, while this will not do
when one is dealing with adults of any class. For instance, grade school
children are satisfied with the morning bowl of bread and milk and the
noon lunch of bread and soup. Adults, even in a charitable home, would
undoubtedly complain of the simplicity of such meals. The high school
lunchroom may eliminate coffee from its menu and have frequent "pieless"
days. Any such attempts to regulate the diet of adults, except for
patriotic reasons such as were the incentive to denial during the war,
are highly inadvisable.
As far as the food elements are concerned, the same kinds of food may be
served to boys and girls or to men and women. But, practically, they
will not eat the same foods with equal satisfaction, and this should
influence the planning of menus in different institutions.
School lunch managers and social service workers have found that in
order to accomplish their aims they have to recognize racial food
tastes.
The economic condition of the group to be served may limit variety in
the menu, on the one hand, or may permit of maximum variety on the
other. The eight-page menu of the fashionable tea room as definitely
reflects the ability of the patrons to pay as does the simple meal of
three or four dishes served the immigrants at Ellis Island.
The occupation of the patrons, whether active or sedentary, determines
to a large extent the kind of food served to them, from the dietetic
standpoint and from the commercial standpoint as well. The lumberjacks
of the north woods require a diet very different in quality and quantity
from that of the telephone operators in a city exchange.
In institutions serving set menus, with little or no choice, special
attention should be given to dietetic principles. Examples of such
institutions are college dining halls or dormitories, hospitals,
benevolent "homes," boarding houses, fraternities and clubs.
For those who have had little or no training in dietetics and who yet
have the responsibility of planning menus, it may be said that if ample
variety is provided, with emphasis on fruits and vegetables, the
dietetic requirements will probably be met.
The sequence of foods in the menu is important. Where several courses
are to be served, and it is the aim of those planning the menu to keep
the appetite stimulated, acids, meat extractives and warm foods should
be served first. Cloying foods such as sweets, very cold foods and foods
which are satisfying tend to depress the appetite and hence have no
place in the first course of a meal, except for luncheon where the menu
may be very simple. In institutions which have fixed menus, it is
especially desirable that the meal, no matter how simple, be so planned
that it may be served in courses. Children especially are likely to
hurry through their meals, and the serving of food in courses prevents
too rapid eating. It is true, of course, that extra service requires
more labor, and so may not prove possible, even though desirable.
The responsibility for maintaining a constant variety in food calls for
the continued exercise of initiative, the determination to avoid
monotonous repetition, a mind open to new foods and new methods of
preparation and systematic marketing trips in order to keep in touch
with seasonal changes. Perhaps the most frequent criticism of
institutions is on the lack of variety in meals. Hotels, clubs and tea
rooms can draw trade by serving out-of-season foods when they first
appear in the market. Institutions whose purchases are limited by a
budget should make the most of seasonal foods when the market is at its
height and the food is cheapest. Such institutions should avoid serving
foods that are not actually in season. Serving berries or melons before
the height of the season dulls the appetite of the patron for these
foods so that by the time they have become economical to serve he has
tired of them.
Variety should be introduced not only in the kinds of food but in the
preparation, garnish and service. Even in charitable homes and other
institutions where the aim is to serve at a minimum cost, the menus can
be made attractive through variety in preparation. Corn meal and cottage
cheese, two of the least expensive foods we have, can be utilized in a
wide variety of ways. There should be no hesitation about serving new
dishes, for maximum variety is essential to a happy patronage whether in
the tea room or the benevolent institution. The point to be kept in
mind, where the guest has the privilege of selection, is that all the
variety should not come within the day or meal but within the week or
month. Surprise always helps to induce appetite and this fact is as
applicable to the menu in the children's home as to that of the tea
room.
It is good business practice as well as good dietetic practice to plan
meals according to the weather and the time of year. Hot, heavy foods
sell best in cold weather. Cool, crisp, fresh foods sell best on the
hottest days. The public is very susceptible to weather conditions.
Holidays give a popularity to certain foods which they enjoy at no other
time of the year. It is good business to make the most of these foods by
serving them on appropriate days.
There are definite relations between the menu and the equipment
available for its execution. For instance, a menu which calls for oven
cooking to the exclusion of the use of the top of the stove or
supplementary steamers will be impossible to carry out. The menu should
be planned in order that the cooking may be divided between all the
available equipment, such as ovens, steamers and top space on stoves. In
the kitchen, as in the industrial plant, it is good management to give
space only to efficient equipment and to use that equipment to its
maximum capacity.
Again, incomplete equipment may have to be considered in planning the
menu. If there is no power machinery the amount of hand work or heavy
physical preparation called for may have to be cut down in accordance
with the equipment at hand. In serving large numbers power machinery
will often pay for itself in a few months through the saving in labor.
It will not only do the work better and more humanely but will allow a
much greater variety of food. In the matter of equipment the institution
must get away from the idea that it is a large home, with working
conditions as they have been in the average home. It should consider
itself an industrial plant where one of the aims is maximum production
with minimum labor; and it should realize that proper equipment and
proper working conditions are necessary in the accomplishment of this
aim. Even though the labor supply may be adequate, efficient planning of
menus demands that there be an adjustment between those foods requiring
much labor and those requiring little, so that proper balance may be
maintained.
In discussing the limitations in menu making the element of cost has
come up again and again. It becomes a definite restriction in
institutions that work on a budget, or where the group to be served
demands good wholesome food at the lowest price. As examples of such
institutions there are the factory cafeteria, the school lunch and the
college cafeteria.
Though menus must be made out in advance of the day when they are to be
used, they should be sufficiently elastic to allow for proper
utilization of left-overs. Using left-overs may mean very little change
and substitution, or may require complete revision of the day's meals.
Left-overs must be used, for it is only by constant care that the food
cost can be kept down to a minimum. That this is true of all
institutions, whether great or small, is shown by the extreme care
exercised in the largest hotels to the end that no food shall be wasted.
Where there is family service, rather than plate service from the
kitchen, there will probably be a large amount of left-over food. It
requires a good deal of ingenuity to use these left-overs in some other
form so as to maintain variety and that element of surprise which is so
essential. In the cafeteria or other institution using _a la carte_
service the left-over problem is not so serious. It is very nicely taken
care of in tea rooms and hotels which serve a club luncheon, the menu
for which may be chiefly made up from the left-overs.
It is obvious that the form of service may influence the kind and extent
of the menu. That is, the cafeteria can serve a large variety of dishes
because the patrons wait on themselves. A similar choice or variety is
impracticable where there is table service, except in hotels,
restaurants and tea rooms where cost is not so great a factor.