Euroa Advertiser (Vic. : 1884 - 1920), Friday 25 September 1914, page 5


LONDON'S CLEVEREST COOK. It is more satisfactory to have an accomplished woman cook than an accomplished chef in the kitchen, for the women are more resourceful, are less apt to make difficulties, and grumble less at their work. On the other hand, however, they are, as a rule, more extravagant than the men cooks, for they do not understand the economic side of kitchen finance. It sounds very revolutionary, and quite contrary to the accepted view of men and women cooks. Nevertheless, that is the opinion of Mrs. Rosa Lewis, the world's cleverest cook chef - the woman who has invented dishes for royalty, whose services are in great demand when famous hostesses are entertaining royal guests, and who has contracted for many of the feasts for great Government depart-ments. She has cooked dinners for the regiments of the Household Cavalry, when they entertained a sovereign, and at one time controlled the kitchen of White's Club, while in her charge Mr. Astor puts his kitchens when he gives his great parties. In the words of that "Prince of Gourmets," Lieutenant-Colonel Newnham-Davis, Mrs. Lewis is the most celebrated woman-cook that this or probably any other day has produced. Mrs. Lewis is the proprietress of the Cavendish Hotel in London, and Lieutenant-Colonel Newnham-Davis tells us in his entertaining book, "The Gourmets' Guide to London" that she began to learn the art of cookery when she was a girl with a pigtail of hair down her back, in the kitchen of the Comtesse de Paris, when she was paid the large sum of a shilling a week. Her second place was in the kitchen of an other French Duke, and ultimately she came to London and built up her unique reputation. In her kitchen are to be found quite a number of girls, who are carefully trained by Mrs. Lewis, and it is interesting to note that no cook with her training complete leaves Mrs. Lewis's kitchen for any place at less than £100 a year. Mrs. Lewis's time-table for a day when she is called upon to cook one of those dinners which have made her so famous provides a striking il-lustration of her energy. She is at the market at 5 am., to buy her ma-terial; at seven her staff is ready to help her in her own kitchen, and she begins with the last dishes of the dinner, preparing the sweets and ices; next she turns to the cleaning and preparation of the vegetables, and then to the materials of the soup and the making of the cold dishes. By one o'clock the meats and birds are all prepared for the cooking, and at six all the things to be cooked at the house where the dinner is to be given are put in hampers and taken over there. It was Mrs. Lewis who invented a delicious kind of .quail pudding, for which King Edward had a special liking. Another: appreciative mon-arch for whose appetite she has ca-tered is the Kaiser, for she ruled the kitchen at Highcliffe Castle during the Emperor's stay there of three weeks. But Mrs. Lewis is critical of diners as well as of dinners. To cook a dinner for people who can-not understand its excellences is, in her opinion, like "feeding pigs on mushrooms."