Kitchens. Gary Alan Fine
skill is to decide which preparation should be used so the food is consistent and fine. Even here the knowledge is from memory and experience. When Jon asks Mel whether he has a recipe for making crepes, Mel replies: “I just mix things together.” No more specific instructions are given, and Jon's crepes turn out well.
Because it is difficult to recall specifically how dishes taste, cooks work “by the seat of their pants.” Much cooking involves adding approximate amounts of ingredients. While this might surprise those who imagine the cook must follow a recipe precisely to have the food meet an ideal standard, it reflects practical cooking. Adding ingredients in this way not only saves time but also allows the cook more autonomy.
Perhaps the best example of the use of approximation is the production of stock, the basis of sauces and soups. The stock has been described as the key to haute cuisine. The great chef Escoffier believed: “Stock is everything in cooking. At least in good and well-flavored cooking. Without it, nothing can be done. If one's stock is of good flavor, what remains of the work is easy; if on the other hand, flavor is lacking or merely mediocre, it is quite hopeless to expect anything approaching a satisfactory result” (Crocker 1945, P. 109). Cooks at the Owl's Nest and La Pomme de Terre are proud that they prepare their own stock, avoiding canned broth or powdered stock, but, despite its crucial quality, they do not follow a recipe. What is added to the stockpot is a matter of convenience, rather than planning:
Paul, the head chef, prepares beef stock for brown gravy. He tells me that he usually lets the stock cook for forty-eight hours, but Mel needs the vat tomorrow, so it will only cook for a day.…Later Bruce dumps egg whites and shells into the vat. Larry comments: “Sometimes it's just the garbage can.” The stock vat is located right under the water faucet, so excess water falls in the vat.
(Field notes, Owl's Nest)
| GAF: | What things in the kitchen do you think a layperson would be most shocked by? |
| DIANE: | The stocks, how gross it looks to look in a stockpot. The first time I ever saw them I thought it was just repulsive. I think…for layperson they think, “Oh, my God, don't you just throw that away.”(Personal interview, La Pomme de Terre) |
Stocks and soups represent instances in which workers' choices may seem arbitrary if, indeed, they are conscious decisions. We may have confidence that we know our work, and that everything will be fine, and it usually is. The fact that the stock cooked on Monday differs from the stock on Thursday doesn't affect the evaluation of the meal—it tastes close enough for unknowing, mortal tongues, just as cars, surgical operations, and cowboy boots can pass muster despite their microdifferences. As the ingredients are approximations, so is timing (as discussed in chapter 2). When the Owl's Nest prepares gravlax (smoked salmon), they marinate the fish for anywhere between twenty-four and forty-eight hours, depending when it is needed.
Approximations are so integral in the work environment that cooks josh about the significant margin of error in their work: “Mel pours a dash of vinegar into the salad dressing and jokes to me: ‘It comes out perfect every time’ ” (Field notes, Owl's Nest). The nice thing about many foodstuffs is that no matter what one does to them they taste “the same” to most customers. They are “forgiving.” This doesn't mean, of course, that they taste identical, but our memories of flavors are not so precise as to distinguish between tastes not dramatically distinct. Although we may be more sensitive to textures, cooks can get away with a world of imprecision that would not be possible if their customers were able to engage in comparative tasting. To be sure, customers make judgments between good and bad dishes (and dishes that are better and worse), but most consumers accept the expertise of the cook and do not have sophisticated or educated palates. The evanescent character of cooking, distinguishing it from most other arts that are either material or can be captured in a written, auditory, or visual record, allows for imprecision that is not possible elsewhere. Memory is a capricious judge.
To the degree that workers use forgiving materials, they have flexibility and opportunity for error denied to others. This, for instance, gives psychiatrists an edge over anesthesiologists in malpractice suits although, as the latter practitioners are aware, bodies can stand a range of gases. One illusion that “professionals”—or those who claim the label—demand for themselves is that they work with unforgiving materials while they hide their secrets. It is trying for workers to perform before a knowing and critical audience, but even here the knowing audience may be unaware of the script, and some errors can be rescripted into the drama (Goffman 1974).
SHORTCUTS
While preparing meals, home cooks make many decisions outside the rules of the recipes they follow (Tomlinson 1986): do you fry bacon for a crumbled topping or just add Bac-O-Bits; should your whipped cream come from a mixer or a can? Similar culinary trade-offs characterize professional cooks. Any competent food preparer would be aware of these techniques but might not select them because of their effects on the outcome. Some shortcuts have noticeable consequences as when instant whipped cream is used instead of cream whipped by hand; others have minor effects as when a food is defrosted in a microwave, rather than at room temperature. Of course, what constitutes a significant change in sensory quality is a matter of personal judgment and collective construction, rather than objective fact. The representation of a dish is engraved in a customer's mind, but the means by which a presented dish is judged in light of this representation is complex, affected by cost, the reputation of the house, sophistication of one's palate, and the spirits consumed. The contextual understanding of objects is critical to their evaluation (Dickie 1974).
Audience awareness and demands determines what constitutes an acceptable shortcut. Each occupation has its own audience, but all are evaluated by someone. The question in each work sphere is not whether to limit quality, but how to do so. If the client will not notice the difference, does a difference exist? A difference exists in that the cook knows that he could do “better,” and this affects his occupational self-esteem; yet, other pressures may make this trade-off necessary or desirable. Like all service workers, cooks have at least three audiences for their products: (1) themselves and their peers, who strive for high subcultural standards as long as they can be reasonably met with appropriate effort; (2) management, which demands profits by keeping labor, material, and fixed overhead costs low, and by having customers return to the establishment; and (3) customers, who insist on what they define as high quality, but who are possibly unaware of what quality consists of, and who also demand “good value” (low profit) in the given market niche.
The culinary challenge is to balance these demands. These are not personal standards but demands built into the structure of the setting and the expertise of those evaluating. How dishes are prepared, while grounded in interaction, is also constrained by a set of external and communal standards.
In order to ease their burdens, workers often cook a large quantity of a food at one time and then reheat the food as needed:
The mushroom mousse is cooked halfway through. As Diane tells me: “It takes a long time to set. So we do it this way to save time.” They also do not cook beef Wellington to order but reheat slices when needed.
(Field notes, La Pomme de Terre)
The cooks prepare prime rib by putting it in the hot au jus sauce to heat up, after having previously cooked it to certain degrees of doneness. Al comments: “It's not really the best way to do it, but here [he shrugs] it's what we got to do.”
(Field notes, Stan's)
Cooks also reuse pans to prepare most dishes, only briefly wiping it out to remove some of the previous flavor. Doors of walk-in coolers remain ajar because they are too much trouble to open dozens of times a day. Likewise, all food is cooked at the same temperature. Kitchens do not have enough stoves to vary temperatures. All food that needs to be floured is dipped in the same flour—whether shrimp, scallops, or onion rings. There is not enough staff or energy for cooks to do differently. These techniques are practiced in home kitchens and do not presuppose extensive knowledge. Anyone is capable of choosing these techniques, even though many customers have idealistic views of backstage life in a kitchen.
Convenience foods. The most compelling balancing of values and outcomes can be seen in the