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.

CONTENTS

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,