WHERE ARMY COOKS ARE MADE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 23, 1 December 1939, Page 4

WHERE ARMY COOKS ARE MADE

(By 23/762)

the instructors have finished with the pupils of the Army Cooking School some minor miracles have been performed in discovering latent talent. Men without previous training are preferred. A few months ago one of these pupils was a marine engineer; to-day, after a course at the school, he is the star pupil and a cook of the first order. Army cooking. to-day is a vastly different thing from what it was during the last war. Those endless and uninspired stews we all remember have disappeared; so has rice and raisins, which passed for a pudding over a number of years and was never known as anything else but "spotted dog." The New Zealand soldier is the best fed in the world and his daily ration the largest, including as it does, his 14% lbs. of fresh meat per man per day. That ration, in the hands of the army cooks, becomes three good and satisfying meals every day of the week. No Waste Nor is there any waste. The army food bill to-day is cheaper than it ever was and yet the men have greater variety and a larger ration. A glance at the menus served at Trentham shows that the changes are probably greater than those of an average home. Pupils of the army cooking school undergo a thorough course and are taught to make the most and the best of the ingredients at their disposal. This is most essential, for the army cooks of the last campaign suffered a good deal of abuse, poor chaps, though for the most part they never deserved it. They were simply the traditional stew and boiled rice men, their only equipment the camp cooker or the dixie. At the Trentham school I saw one group being instructed in the arts of making a custard, and very good it ‘looked to me. All round the spacious camp kitchen were the products of their morning’s labour — batches of nutty brown scones, pieces of pastry and currant squares, meat pasties and the like. Another group was being instructed in the mysteries of making a " Colonial goose," for that evening’s dinner. Pupils are taught every branch of simple cookery such as roasting, boiling, braising and frying meats; making steamed and boiled puddings; stewing fruits; making salads, fricassees, soups, etc, This, of OO many cooks don’t spoil the broth at Trentham. By the time

course, is for established camps, with all the conveniences of the modern camp kitchen at their disposal. The men are also given a full course in field cookery, with the result that soldiers in the field are given a greater variety of food than they ever had in the past, Field Cooking This field cooking is another minor revolution. The old camp cooker and dixie will still find a place in army equipment, but new devices have been invented and put to excellent use. For instance there are the new field kitchens, rather like a large primus stove. These can be quickly transported and easily handled, Petrol supplies the fuel and a long flame going across the stove under the pots enables a considerable amount of cooking to be done at one time. Another innovation is a cork insulated container in which food can be kept hot over a long period. These containers are designed with a view to easy transport by hand, as, for example, the carriage of hot food to men in the trenches. They are box-shaped, the outside being an insulated chamber, containing space for a container holding the food. This inside compartment can be lifted out as desired. Partially cooked food can be placed in these containers and allowed to go on cooking in~its own steam. These new containers and field kitchens are being used at the army cooking school. When any of the units spend a night in the open on night operations, they are accompanied by a number of pupils from the school who do the cooking for them. In this way the men are trained for active service conditions. Already @ number of men have passed out of the school and returned to various units of the Special Force to take up their duties as cooks, Cleanliness It seems scarcely necessary to add that cleanliness is a fetish of the school, as it is in the cookhouses generally in the military camps. Nor is a husband to be despised who can turn out a batch of scones, make a custard or a tasty Welsh rarebit when he comes home from work. Many of these young army cooks will be able to show their wives a thing or two about kitchencraft and economy when they return to civilian life, and what a treasure is a man who can "do the cooking "!