Some of the cooks inside me would be unionized today. Amanda Woyke undoubtedly. Possibly Fat Gret. Sophie Rotzoll with her militant left-wing orientation. But most certainly Lena Stubbe.
At a congress of the food and hostelry workers recently held in Cologne, delegate Lena Stubbe addressed canteen cooks, cooks of the Vienna Woods restaurant chain, cooks for the canning industry, and others. Naturally there were also waiters, waitresses, butchers, industrial bakers, et cetera, in the hall. At the beginning of her short speech on "The Cookery of the Oppressed Classes," Lena said, more in fun than provocatively, "Fellow workers, what's the sense in quick cooking? To hell with convenience food. Even if it saves time, I ask you: time for what and whom?"
She got only a sprinkling of applause. And the few cooks who supported her attack on the frozen-food industry, peppered with examples of poor quality, were those stigmatized as "elitist" because they worked in luxury hotels (Rheinischer Hof, Hilton, Steigenberger, et cetera), where they were faced with supposedly international demands: breast of pheasant on sauerkraut with pineapple. The majority were loud in praise of frozen foods—"That way the common man can afford beef tongue in Madeira sauce" — and one delegate went so far as to speak of "progress in a spirit of trade-union solidarity."
"In that case," cried Lena Stubbe, "you should also sing the praises of pea sausage. Remember that just before the War of 1870, one of our fellow workers, a Berlin cook, reinforced the Prussian army by inventing pea sausage." (Applause, laughter.) "And why not give honorary membership to Count Rumford, who early in the nineteenth century tried to solve the social problem by inventing a stomach pap that was named after him, Rumford soup for the poor. It consisted of water, potatoes, barley, peas, beef fat, stale bread, salt, and flat beer, cooked until it was so sticky that it didn't fall off the spoon." (More applause and laughter among the delegates.)
But when, drawing on early socialist experience, the former cook of the Wallgasse and Danzig-Ohra soup kitchens larded her brief expose with historical references, when she insisted that the proletarian cook book, the need for which
was felt even then, remained a necessity here and now, when Lena Stubbe tried to prove that for lack of class-conscious cook books the working women of the early capitalist era had turned to worthless bourgeois books — Henriette Davidi's and worse — thus becoming alienated from their own class and infected with petit-bourgeois cravings—"Your beef tongue in Madeira, for instance!" — when Lena maintained that the labor movement and within it the unions had neglected to teach the young female industrial workers class-conscious cookery—"They just shut their eyes and reach for a can!" — the majority of the delegates protested. "What's the matter with quality canned goods!" and "Sounds like the old class-struggle crap!" And somebody shouted, "Leftist ravings!"
Nevertheless, the cook from the nineteenth century had the last word. "Fellow workers!" she shouted at the cooks. "Your cooking lacks historical awareness. Because you refuse to recognize that for centuries the male cook was a product of the monasteries and courts, in other words of the ruling class. We female cooks, on the other hand, have always served the people. In those days we were anonymous. We had no time to work up fancy sauces. In our ranks there are no Prince Piicklers, no Brillat-Savarins, no famous chefs. In times of famine we stretched flour with acorns. It was up to us to find ways of varying the oatmeal porridge. It was a distant relative of mine, the farm cook Amanda Woyke, and not Ole Fritz, as you might think, who introduced the potato into Prussia. While you men — all your ideas have been extravagances: boned partridge Diplomat-style with truffled farce, accompanied by goose-liver dumplings. No, fellow workers! I'm for pigs' feet with black bread and dill pickles. I'm for cheap pork kidneys with mustard sauce. If you haven't got the historical taste of millet and manna grits on your tongue, you have no business coming here and shooting off your mouth about grilling and sauteing!"
The cooks were furious. "Come to the point!" they cried. Then the discussion turned to the next round of wage-price negotiations in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Meanwhile the chairman of the Social Democratic Party had been looking into Lena Stubbe's draft project for a
proletarian cook book — not very deeply, but enough to form an impression. He praised the undertaking and agreed that young workingwomen, most of whom came from the country and were used to living in self-sufficient farming communities, were at sea in urban surroundings and in need of class-conscious guidance in matters of housekeeping and most especially of cookery. He was well aware of the enormous amount of sugar consumed by working-class families, to the detriment of their health. And he was convinced that the alcoholism so prevalent among the workers was not unrelated to their unreasonable eating habits. Bourgeois temptation, he realized, began at the shopping stage. And he conceded that his book about women ought to have had a chapter on the subject. Perhaps not only he, but also the labor movement in general, should have turned their minds to these matters from the start and developed a class-conscious sense of taste. After all, everything couldn't be left to reason. There was something dry and theoretical about the demand for justice. It lacked flesh and blood. That was why, shrewdly as socialists could analyze situations, they were short on robust humor. So such a work was long overdue, and he could only congratulate Comrade Stubbe on her commentaries and historical references, for instance, to the meat shortage in 1520 and the resulting development and dissemination of dumplings, both sweetened and unsweetened. He also agreed with her that the introduction of the potato in Prussia had brought about more changes than had the glorious victories of the Seven Years' War. He could only second her opinion that the triumph of the potato over millet had been revolutionary in its implications. All this was good Marxist thinking, although Marx, probably because of his bourgeois upbringing, had failed to recognize the importance of proletarian eating habits. Socialism, like capitalism, had had a puritanical streak from the very start. Moreover, he admired Comrade Lena's knowledge and regarded her as a model of the self-educated working-class woman. He, too, as a turner's apprentice, had learned what he knew by reading, without adequate formal preparation.
So thoroughly had she convinced him that August Bebel thereupon pressed Lena's hand for a long moment and cried out, "What an unforgettable day!" But when Lena, arguing
that as a woman, and an unknown one at that, she would be unable to find a publisher, asked him to write a foreword to her book, Bebel was assailed by doubts. Were the comrades intellectually mature enough to recognize the political necessity for their party chairman's writing a foreword to a cook book? Wouldn't he be making himself ridiculous and so harming the good cause? Not to mention the reaction of the bourgeois public, for in the enemy camp they were only waiting for him to lay himself open. Unfortunately. Yes, unfortunately.
And Bebel also regretfully rejected Lena's suggestion that at least essential parts of her cook book — even without mention of her name — be included in small print as an appendix to his successful work. Comrade Stubbe, he could see, was a regular reader of Die Neue Zeit. So she must have followed his controversy with Simon Katzenstein on the woman question. He was being urged to include Katzen-stein's critical article and his answer in the new edition, so-most unfortunately — there would be no room for excerpts from her cook book. Besides, it would be a shame to abridge her excellent work. No, no. He couldn't do such a thing to Comrade Stubbe.