Quantity Cookery: Menu Planning and Cooking for Large Numbers

ovens, steamers and top space on stoves. In the kitchen, as in the industrial plant, it is good management to give space only to efficient equipment and to use that equipment to its maximum capacity. Again, incomplete equipment may have to be considered in planning the menu. If there is no power machinery the amount of hand work or heavy physical preparation called for may have to be cut down in accordance with the equipment at hand. In serving large numbers power machinery will often pay for itself in a few months through the saving in labor. It will not only do the work better and more humanely but will allow a much greater variety of food. In the matter of equipment the institution must get away from the idea that it is a large home, with working conditions as they have been in the average home. It should consider itself an industrial plant where one of the aims is maximum production with minimum labor; and it should realize that proper equipment and proper working conditions are necessary in the accomplishment of this aim. Even though the labor supply may be adequate, efficient planning of menus demands that there be an adjustment between those foods requiring much labor and those requiring little, so that proper balance may be maintained. In discussing the limitations in menu making the element of cost has come up again and again. It becomes a definite restriction in institutions that work on a budget, or where the group to be served demands good wholesome food at the lowest price. As examples of such institutions there are the factory cafeteria, the school lunch and the college cafeteria. Though menus must be made out in advance of the day when they are to be used, they should be sufficiently elastic to allow for proper utilization of left-overs. Using left-overs may mean very little change and substitution, or may require complete revision of the day's meals. Left-overs must be used, for it is only by constant care that the food cost can be kept down to a minimum. That