Quantity Cookery: Menu Planning and Cooking for Large Numbers

type of institution to be served. For reasons that are obvious, the purpose of the high school cafeteria is very different from that of the metropolitan hotel, while neither of these has the same object as the municipal tuberculosis sanitarium. The age, sex, nationality, economic condition and occupation of the patrons must be kept in mind. The adult demands a freedom of choice which may be denied children. For this reason the content of the grade school lunch may be fixed in an arbitrary way, while this will not do when one is dealing with adults of any class. For instance, grade school children are satisfied with the morning bowl of bread and milk and the noon lunch of bread and soup. Adults, even in a charitable home, would undoubtedly complain of the simplicity of such meals. The high school lunchroom may eliminate coffee from its menu and have frequent "pieless" days. Any such attempts to regulate the diet of adults, except for patriotic reasons such as were the incentive to denial during the war, are highly inadvisable. As far as the food elements are concerned, the same kinds of food may be served to boys and girls or to men and women. But, practically, they will not eat the same foods with equal satisfaction, and this should influence the planning of menus in different institutions. School lunch managers and social service workers have found that in order to accomplish their aims they have to recognize racial food tastes. The economic condition of the group to be served may limit variety in the menu, on the one hand, or may permit of maximum variety on the other. The eight-page menu of the fashionable tea room as definitely reflects the ability of the patrons to pay as does the simple meal of three or four dishes served the immigrants at Ellis Island. The occupation of the patrons, whether active or sedentary, determines to a large extent the kind of food served to them, from the dietetic standpoint and from the commercial standpoint as well. The lumberjacks of the north woods require