SC - head cook vs. feastocrat

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Mary Morman wrote:
> 
> Had a bit of a discussion on this with my newest apprentice who taking
> charge of his first feast this candlemas.  "Feast-o-crat" is the common
> term here, and i told him when he began using it that I was uncomfortable
> with it - as a made-up word - and thought that head cook was a better
> term.  I would enjoy hearing some commentary on the list about this so
> that I can share it with him.
> 
> elaina

Not only  a made-up word, but an ungainly, ugly, and silly one, at that.
Even "kitchencrat" is preferable to me, over feastocrat. As I recall, we
didn't use that term in the East, for the most part, until perhaps ten
years ago. First person I ever heard use it was an expatriate Meridien.
I don't recall there being another title used, other than cook, with a
small "c". To distinguish between the "head" cook and the other cooks,
IIRC, we used to call all those working in the kitchen "the cooks", but
the person who has since come to be known as the head cook or the
feastocrat was the person "doing the cooking", or "in charge of the
cooking".

So, what makes a good substitute, which both is an accurate decsription
of the feastoc--ahem--  Cook-In-Chief's job, which provides a suitably
lofty title? You all realize we're getting to be like the beaurocracy of
Czarist Russia when we have to worry about who is the Third Assistant
Brigadier General of the Filing Clerk Division, don't you? Actually, I
kinda like "Cook-In-Chief", which, while not especially period, is
properly descriptive and also vaguely heraldic. My main problem with it
is that it would end up being spelled as "Cookin'-Chief", which, as far
as I'm concerned, would be the End Of All Things.

A master cook on, say, a Roman villa during the late Empire, or in the
Byzantine world, would have been known as the architriclinus, roughly
translating as "dining-master", the name for a Roman dining-room being
the triclinium. I have used this term myself. I like it a lot, but some
find it hard to pronounce.

I was just looking at Maitre Chiquart Amiczo's "Du Fait de Cuisine", a
fifteenth-century Savoyard culinary manual, and see that in Terence
Scully's introduction and notes, he includes an account of the liveries
given to the various household functionaries by the Duke of Savoy in a
given year. In that account, Maitre Chiquart Amiczo is listed as a
"cuisinier". Those under him in the pecking order are designated
"solliar" or scullion. Whether solliar always means scullion or has some
meaning outside of a kitchen context I have no earthly idea.

Anyway, the natural English equivalent of "cuisinier" would be
"kitchener", which term seems to have ended up as one of those
occupation-based surnames. Lord Kitchener was Prime Minister of England
around the turn of the 20th century, IIRC. How much more legitimate than
that can you get?

Adamantius, whose name has appeared in event notices as Your
Hash-Slinger for the Evening...
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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