COMMON FOOD KITCHENS

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3070, 4 May 1917, Page 3

COMMON FOOD KITCHENS

MEETING THE FOOD PROBLEM. The- system of the common food kitchen to which the "Daily News" lias for some time directed attention: and which may possibly como t5 be widely adopted in this country to meet war conditions, as has been tho case in Germany, has been well established in Bradford for tho last ten years (states an English writer). That city's communal kitchen is capablo of feeding 7000 individuals daily at a, little more than 3d;.per meal (war prices), and the work is done by a staff of about a dozen people. • • The methods adopted in Bradford for providing school'meals secure at all events economy in toying, labour saving, saving of fuel,.and prevention of waste, and, on the positive side, variety of food and excellent cooking. What housewife, for instance, makes twenty different menus on twenty cc-n----secutivo days, cooks her porridge for twenty, hours, can;,, compete in the market with wholesale buyers, or uses no more fuel than the steam available from the neighbouring baths? Tho kitchen is a lofty one-story building which was originally part of a too-large gymnasium. Extensions had been made before the war, and they include a platform at the floor level ■which'is the height of a motor standing outside. • It contains nine huge steam cookers,.four roasting ovens, and a bread-baking oven. If it .is a soup or stew day, the cook, mounted on a stand, will be stirring one of the cauldrons with a ladle as long as himself. A hundred gallons of milk ■ pudding. may bo coolang in another boiler, while his attendants will be craning up several hundredweights of potatoes in the wire net in which they have been lowered for cooking into the boiler. Tho bread, mixed and kneaded by machinery, is baked a day beforehand into yaid-long loaves, and is put direct from the oven into tall racks which can be -wheeled from place to place. The triumph of tho system is in its carrying appliances, and these have all been invented by the officials themselves. Take the bread, for instance. A loaf is put into a' machine; a man prosses an electric button; it slides quickly its own length, and ho takes it up cut into slices and puts it into a zinc-lined box of exactly the right size. At the same time somebody is filling the plate-boxes; these are trough-shaped, and 50 plates fit in without the possibility of a rattle. They are always measured, not counted. By eleven o'clock the dinners are ready, and then the "tanks" come into use. These' are cans of four or eight gallons capacity, made on the thermos-flask .principle with an insulated lining. They have an interior lid which prevents splashing. They aro used for soups and stews. For pies and pudding square boxescapable of holding two great pie-dishes are used, made in similar fashion, but of wood. The meals might be hours late, but the food would still be hot. ■ In fact, tho kitchen recently served up a piping hot meal to the Bradford Valunteers on a routo march twenty miles from .home. The complete staff of the kitchen, apart from motor-drivers, consists of the cook, bakers, and seven porters, and they can turn out 10,000 dinners a day. "" ■!, ' The quality of tho meals is such that a largo secondary school voluntarily takes them for all its boarders, and hundreds of Bradford children on washing or cleaning days tako the meals and pay 3£d. for them. Their actual cost last year was 3.12 d. per head, though in two years of rising prices they have jumped up from 23. Of tho total cost administration accounts for 1.39 d. per head, and this could be reduced by at least a third if largor centres were used and tho business were undertaken on a still more extensive scale. Tho. menus were drawn up years ago by experts in physiology. It is a fact which might interest the Food Controller that only six and a half ounces of meat per week per head are used. ■ '

One "is impressed by tho ease- with which so much food is prepared among perfect conditions and exquisitely cooked. How many Bradford mothers spend hours pooling potatoes, cutting np vegetables, mincing meat, kneading dough with their hands —work which is done here by machinery, and even moio efficiently.

To look forward to a time when fresh means of distributing our food will be necessary is not to hope ior such a time, but tho gloom of shorter rations is lightened by the knowledge that we have in existence at home a simple, effective-, and cheap system, which would feed many of us better, than we have been fed before; would feed all of us satisfactorily; and. would secure great economies.not only in our precious food supply, hut in labour as well.

A .proposal for Uio ppeniug of centres for the distribution of meals, free and at cheap rates, should necessity arise, was recently referred by the Portsmouth Town Council to a committee for-consideration..