Black Venus_The Kitchen Child-1

The Kitchen Child-1

"Born in a trunk", they say when a theatrical sups grease-paint with mothers milk, and if there be a culinary equivalent of the phrase then surely I merit it, for was I not conceived the while a soufflé rose? A lobster soufflé, very choice, twenty-five minutes in a medium oven.

And the very first soufflé that ever in her life as cook me mam was called upon to make, ordered up by some French duc, house guest of Sir and Madam, me mam pleased as punch to fix it for him since few if any fins becs pecked their way to our house, not even during the two weeks of the Great Grouse Shoot when nobs rolled up in droves to score the feathered booty of the skies. Especially not then. Palates like shoe leather. "Pearls before swine," my mother would have said as she reluctantly sent the four and twenty courses of her Art up to the dining room, except that pigs would have exhibited more gourmandise. I tell you, the English country house, yes! thats the place for grub; but, only when Sir and Madam are pas chez lui. It is the staff who keep up the standards.

For Madam would touch nothing but oysters and grapes on ice three times a day, due to the refinement of her sensibility, while Sir fasted until a devilled bone at sundown, his tongue having been burned out by curry when he was governing a bit of Poonah. (I reckon those Indians hotted up his fodder out of spite. Oh, the cooks vengeance, when it strikes -- terrible!) And as for the Shooters of Grouse, all they wanted was sandwiches for hors doeuvres, sandwiches for entrées, followed by sandwiches, sandwiches, sandwiches, and their hip flasks kept replenished, oh, yes, wash it down with the amber fluid and who can tell how it tastes?

So me mam took great pains with the construction of this, her very first lobster soufflé, sending the boy who ground knives off on his bike to the sea, miles, for the beast itself and then the boiling of it alive, how it come squeaking piteously crawling out of the pot etc. etc. etc. so me mam all a-flutter before she so much as separated the eggs.

Then, just as she bent over the range to stir the flour into the butter, a pair of hands clasped tight around her waist. Thinking, at first, it was but kitchen horseplay, she twitched her ample hips to put him off as she slid the egg yolks into the roux. But as she mixed in the lobster meat, diced up, all nice, she felt those hands stray higher.

That was when too much cayenne went in. She always regretted that.

And as she was folding in the toppling contents of the bowl of beaten egg-white, God knows what it was he got up to but so much so she flings all into the white dish with abandon and:

"To hell with it!"

Into the oven goes the soufflé; the oven door slams shut.

I draw a veil.

"But, mam!" I often begged her. "Who was that man?"

"Lawks a mercy, child," says she. "I never thought to ask. I were that worried the wallop I give the oven door would bring the soufflé down."

But, no. The soufflé went up like a montgolfier and, as soon as its golden head knocked imperiously against the oven door, she bust through the veil I have discreetly drawn over this scene of passion and emerged, smoothing her apron, in order to extract the exemplary dish amidst oohs and aahs and of the assembled kitchen staff, some forty-five in number.

But not quite exemplary. The cook met her match in the eater. The housekeeper brings his plate herself, slaps it down. "He said: "Trop de cayenne," and scraped it off his plate into the fire," she announces with a gratified smirk. She is a model of refinement and always very particular about her aspirates. She hiccups. She even says the "h" in "hic".