Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid

by Moran, Mollie

  That morning, as I’d finished scrubbing the steps, I’d sneaked a peek up the large entrance hall. It was a hive of activity as the housemaids scrubbed, dusted and polished. Even the outfits above stairs were smarter as housemaids wore black frocks and little white aprons and the hallboy, footman and butler wore smart black livery and coats with tails and silver buttons.

  The parquet flooring gleamed as fresh as morning dew and the smell of lavender polish and carbolic soap lingered sweetly in the air. Big gilt mirrors and oil paintings lined the walls and a vast glittering chandelier dominated the hallway. Opulent-looking rooms filled with antiques, rich-coloured carpets and Turkish rugs led off the hallway. Velvet curtains framed the vast rooms that looked out on Cadogan Square, and massive armchairs, so big you could curl up and sleep on them, were dotted about in every room. And there were books, beautiful leather books everywhere.

  I sighed. It wasn’t much like the servants’ hall down below. Plain wooden furniture, no curtains, just small windows covered in bars that looked out on to a sparse well between the houses and a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. And as for books? Forget it. We didn’t have time to read, unless you counted Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. What reading material we did have below stairs was either the Home Companion magazine or the News of the World, sold for tuppence an issue. The News of the World was beloved by the working classes like my father, but not by the gentry, who wouldn’t dare be seen with it upstairs. Just as well, as when I appeared in the News of the World a few years on, I wouldn’t have wanted Mr Stocks to see me in all my half-naked glory (but more of this later!).

  The scandal rags were best left below stairs in rooms that smelt not of lavender but of damp and distemper. Everything up here in this scandal-free room spoke of money, comfort and ease.

  This evening Mr Stocks’s guests would be sinking their well-padded derrières into these plush chairs while Mr Orchard served them flutes of ice-cold champagne. Restrained laughter would tinkle around the room as the men gathered on one side to talk business and the ladies would talk about whatever it is posh ladies talked about. Dull as dishwater.

  ‘Oh well, Mollie,’ I said to myself. ‘Back to the kitchen before Mrs Jones blows a gasket.’

  The gentry thought nothing of having six courses, all with matching wines, and believe you me it took all day to prepare them. Flo and I were braced and ready. It was our job to act as a support staff to Mrs Jones. The minute she’d used a pan or a piece of equipment, I had to whisk it out from under her nose, wash it and have it back in a jiffy, gleaming for her. And while Mrs Jones flicked through her bible, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, and began writing out the menus, we would have to lay up her table.

  That in itself was a task. You think about the equipment needed to prepare a six-course menu from scratch. You can’t even imagine. We would have to lay out two chopping boards, one big and one small, two graters, several sieves including a hair sieve and wire sieve, at least five mixing bowls and a bewildering range of knives, spoons, forks and whisks. Then there was the seasoning. A flour canister, caster sugar, salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, paprika pepper, oil and vinegar all had to be ready and waiting.

  At the end of the table we laid a pristine white cloth on which to place the special silver serving dishes. It wouldn’t do to send them upstairs scratched. All the utensils and kitchen equipment were kept on an in-built shelf under the table, so all you had to do was reach under the table and grab them. In many ways these items and the copper saucepans were as precious to Mrs Jones as children. The copper saucepans were worth a fortune and had been in the family for years. Mrs Jones travelled with them and took them with her when she moved between Norfolk and London.

  ‘With care, these pans outlive us,’ she was fond of saying.

  By the time we’d finished, the whole table was completely covered. No wonder those tables had to be so blinkin’ big. Back then there was no such thing as electric whisks, blenders, microwaves or any of the labour-saving devices we take for granted nowadays. A cook was a cook in the proper sense of the word, not someone who just assembles things.

  From that moment, everyone was totally switched on and the kitchen throbbed into life as we peeled, scrubbed, boiled, whisked, sautéed, chopped, blended, marinated and mashed until we felt our arms would drop off. Mrs Jones, to give her her dues, ran that place like clockwork and she was like a conductor commanding an orchestra. She had a lightness of hand that defied her looks and she always knew just which bubbling pan contained what and what time each piece of meat or fish had gone into the range.

  All morning food was delivered via the back stairs in a quantity that would seem extravagant by today’s standards. Even when they weren’t entertaining, the food that arrived down them stairs was mind-boggling. Whole saddles of lamb and mutton, sirloins as pink as a baby’s cheeks and steaks as big as your head would all come streaming into the kitchen, delivered on pallets by a whistling errand boy.

  These things never arrived frozen – no one from the butcher to the fishmonger did frozen – so the smells and tastes made your head spin they were that good. And the flavour … oh, the flavour. Food never tasted as good as it did back then. It makes me laugh when I hear Jamie Oliver talking about freezing to lock in the flavour. I’m a huge fan of his but I don’t reckon that bor knows what real flavour tastes like – I don’t suppose anyone does nowadays. Nothing was ever freeze-dried, frozen, reduced or arrived hermetically sealed. The food was eaten immediately after it was picked, slaughtered or fished. That’s why people shopped or had food delivered every day. And everything was cooked with butter or oil, never margarine or half-fat this or half-fat that.

  I suppose in many ways we was lucky as Mrs Jones had a wealth of ingredients at her fingertips and never had to limit herself much in anything. Mind you, she was ever so good at keeping her stores and never over-ordered anything. She knew how much she had of everything, right down to the last ounce of sugar. If she’d been wasteful she would quickly have been given her marching orders. What meat we didn’t eat from the Sunday roast would be served cold on a Monday and hashed up into stew on a Tuesday. Every bone, scrap and vegetable peeling would be thrown in the stockpot and even the fish leftovers would be boiled up for fish stock for soups and sauces.

  Each morning the milkman would deliver vast pats of glistening unsalted and salted butter, cream and milk. The milk wouldn’t come in bottles but in great churns that the milkman would pour, frothing, straight into our kitchen jugs. If you were to take a sip of that milk today you wouldn’t even recognize it. It wasn’t until a few years after the Second World War that legislation was passed that meant all milk had to be pasteurized. Back then the milk was as fresh as it comes. The taste was just heavenly and it had a head of cream on it four inches thick. Skimmed milk, so healthy today, back then was regarded as the dregs and sold to the poor for a penny a pint.

  Everything went into the pantry and larder, which was down a few steps to keep it several degrees cooler. We had no fridges in them days either, of course, so meat and fish was kept fresh in great big iceboxes in the larder. It was huge and lined with lead and once a week the fishmonger would bring you in a massive slab of ice. The old melted water would run off into a tray at the bottom that I had to yank out and throw away.

  You put the ice in the chest and you either put things around, packed them in or placed them on top of the ice, depending on how cold you wanted them to be. Fresh meat and fish would get packed in and covered with a clean tea towel. It was my job to freeze my fingertips off getting whatever fish or meat cook wanted. I also had to store away cooked meat and butter in the larder on marble slabs. And I’d curl the butter into fancy twirls to put in a butter dish for upstairs or plain pats for cooking.

  With all this food and provision on regular order, Mrs Jones would probably have got a kickback from some of the grand stores like Coopers opposite Harrods and the butchers and fishmongers. She never told me, mind you, but I kno
w I did when I made cook years later. It was regarded as a perk of the job.

  We never had to order any fruit and vegetables as all that came fresh from Mr Stocks’s estate, Woodhall, back in Norfolk, twice a week. I couldn’t believe my eyes the first time I saw Mr Thornton bring a giant wicker basket down the stairs into the kitchen, big as a laundry hamper, stuffed with every vegetable you can imagine. Fresh new potatoes, huge bundles of asparagus, shiny broad beans, plump tomatoes, lettuces, raspberries, peaches wrapped in paper, and anything else that was in season, was all neatly packed away in the hamper.

  It was covered in mud, but was so fresh it’s not true. They didn’t call it organic, but back in them days everything was organic. The vegetables had travelled all the way from Woodhall on the train from Downham Market and Mr Thornton would collect them, like he had me, fresh off the train at Liverpool Street. No such thing as air miles back then! You wouldn’t believe it now, would you? Chauffeur-driven vegetables! But everything had to be the best of the best for the gentry, you see.

  Mr Stocks was obviously a great believer in fresh local produce as he wouldn’t get his fish from Billingsgate. Oh no, only fish caught fresh from the Norfolk coastline every morning would do. It was also Mr Thornton’s job to collect the fish off the train daily and bring it to Cadogan Square. Fresh fish would be loaded on the train at Norfolk, just fished out of the sea that morning, put on the train at Ryston and arrive, still flapping, at Liverpool Street.

  Oh, it was beautiful: whole salmons, plaice the size of dinner platters, lemon sole, turbot and cod steaks cut lengthways. The staff would always have the cod steaks every Friday, as they only cost thruppence each, and Mr Stocks would have the more refined fish, like lemon sole. Mind you, I didn’t much mind. Nothing tasted better than a great big cod steak, served with boiled eggs in a butter and parsley sauce and homemade chips cooked in dripping.

  Every so often, Mr Thornton’s son Louis, who acted as second chauffeur in Norfolk, came up to London to help out his father and, on the day of the dinner party, he’d come to assist him with the chauffeuring.

  Louis was as handsome as they come.

  At twenty-five he was a good ten years older than me, but he had eyes the colour of milk chocolate, jet-black hair and a bum you could bounce a penny off. You could keep your weedy-looking gentry; give me a solid man, a man bred from the land, any day. Louis was a real man through and through. He was as solid as the oaks that grew in the Norfolk soil.

  The minute we heard his whistling come down the area steps, Flo and I nudged each other. Tummies were sucked in, breasts pushed out and hair pushed under our mop caps.

  ‘Morning, ladies,’ he grinned.

  ‘Morning, Louis,’ we giggled back. What silly girls. Honestly, I cringe, remembering it now.

  ‘How are we all today?’ he said, beaming.

  On the left is Louis Thornton (in the white apron), Mr Stocks’s second chauffeur. A good deal of time was spent lusting after this handsome man. On the right is Ernie Bratton, Captain Eric’s valet, a lovely fella who took me to the Chelsea Arts Ball.

  All the better for seeing you.

  We gazed longingly at his tanned, hairy, muscular arms as he helped Mrs Jones unpack the fresh fish his father had just brought in. His hands looked as big as tractors and you could only imagine what he could do with them.

  ‘Got a bootiful big one for you, Mollie,’ he winked.

  One look at those dark eyes and my pulse started to race.

  ‘Oh, I bet you have,’ I simpered, flirting outrageously.

  Louis oozed charm and having him in the kitchen was the highlight of the day. Mrs Jones glowered from across the kitchen, but even her cloud of disapproval did nothing to get rid of the heady mix of teenage hormones that hung like steam over the room. With all the simmering pans and the bubbling hormones, it’s a wonder nothing boiled over.

  Alan skulked about in the background, cleaning silver and shooting Louis jealous looks as Flo and I hung on his every word. When it was time for him to go, we were flapping about nearly as much as the fish.

  ‘See you all when you come back to Woodhall,’ he said with a smile, and then he was gone, off to help out his father.

  Flo and I gazed longingly after him as his magnificent bottom disappeared up the kitchen steps.

  ‘Any chance you silly girls can do some work now?’ shot Mrs Jones, bringing us back to earth with a bump. ‘We’ve a dinner party to get ready, you know.’

  Alan muttered something under his breath and stalked from the kitchen.

  After that it was my job to prepare the veggies for Flo and Mrs Jones. Great mountains of potatoes and carrots needed peeling and chopping, and there were always piles of onions to dice.

  ‘He’s so handsome, ain’t he?’ Flo whispered, sidling into the pantry beside me.

  ‘Reckon I’m in with a chance?’ I whispered back.

  ‘Doubt it, Mollie,’ she replied. ‘I hear he’s courting a kitchen maid back in Norfolk. Anyway, you want a hand?’ She’d been there and done that and knew slicing fifty-odd onions in the cold and dark of the stone pantry was no fun.

  ‘I’m all right, you go on, you’ll get into trouble otherwise,’ I said. Then I grinned wickedly. ‘Afore you go,’ I said, picking up a whole trout from the icebox and slapping open and shut its wet mouth, ‘who’s this put you in mind of?’

  She snorted so loud I could hear Mrs Jones clear her throat loudly in irritation. ‘Out of there, dolly daydreams,’ she bellowed.

  ‘Best go,’ said Flo, flashing me a cheeky grin.

  As I peeled and chopped the onions, I let my mind drift back to handsome Louis. I couldn’t wait to start courting. It was all Flo and I talked about. The laughs and camaraderie that she and I shared were a tonic. We was giddy girls, high on life. Even a tower of onions couldn’t dampen my spirits. Besides, I never grumbled in any case, I just put my head down and got on with it. I knew that the quicker I finished, the more I could hang out in the kitchen and watch what Mrs Jones did. Watching her at work was fascinating and, though I didn’t realize it, I was picking up so much just watching.

  She’d written out the menu and it sounded amazing. Clear beef consommé to start, followed by cheese soufflés. Next came the fish course. Mrs Jones was going to send up a whole dressed salmon. Meat course was poached chicken in aspic with duchesse potatoes. Next came a pudding of peaches and raspberry mousse. And just in case anyone was still hungry, Mrs Jones was going to send up savouries. No one has these any more but back then it was quite commonplace to serve small savoury dishes at the end of a meal. Things like eggs stuffed with prawns, angels on horseback (which is oysters wrapped in bacon), chicken liver on toast, curried shrimps and sweetbreads.

  The meal finished with cheese and coffee and after that, for the men, port and cigars. Mrs Jones kept the cigars near the range in the kitchen to keep them nice and dry.

  This sounds like a lot for one meal, and it was, but the portions were much smaller in them days. Mr Stocks would still have as many courses to eat even if it were him dining alone, apart from the savouries, but most of the dishes would come down with just a few mouthfuls gone from each plate.

  A huge amount of work went into preparing these meals and Mrs Jones made everything, and I mean everything, from scratch.

  Once she’d finished writing out the approved menu, she delicately slotted it into a silver frame and gave it to Mr Orchard to take up and place on the table. This wasn’t a special one-off for the sake of the dinner party. Every day at lunch and dinner, even if it was Mr Stocks dining alone, she would place the menu in a silver frame and up it would go.

  Mrs Jones began work on the soup and soufflés.

  ‘Why are you doing that now?’ I asked.

  ‘A good cook always looks ahead, Mollie,’ she replied.

  For most of the morning she’d had a shin of beef and bones boiling away on the stove. We nearly always had a stockpot on the go. Into that went everything – beef bones, lamb bones, lef
tover vegetables. These scraps, when cooked, produced the most amazing flavour. She added little muslin bags filled with herbs to the beef stock along with carrots, onions and celery. While Flo grated huge piles of Parmesan for the soufflés, she tipped egg whites, egg yolks, and then finally the shells themselves, into the soup.

  ‘Why are you putting egg shells into the soup?’ I gasped.

  ‘That’s what gives it a lovely glossy sheen,’ she said.

  Next she whisked it all vigorously, her huge arms powering through the big copper saucepan, before adding lean beef and sherry and leaving it to simmer.

  Every so often, Flo would skim off the scum and fat from the top.

  Mrs Jones was right, too. When the soup was drained through a super-fine hair sieve it was as rich and glossy as a thoroughbred’s mane. Flo let me sneak a taste and, oh my, I’d never tasted such a concentrated burst of flavour before.

  After that, Mrs Jones made her own aspic jelly with stock and gelatine for the chicken dish, and the salmon was gently placed in a massive copper fish pan that seemed to take up half the stove and poached gently with herbs and water. Meanwhile, Flo was making fresh hollandaise sauce to go with it by dropping egg yolks one by one into a basin and mixing with olive oil, until she had a lovely glossy thick yellow sauce. All the sauces were made fresh.

  Then she mixed potatoes and mashed them up with egg ready to pipe out.

  Meanwhile, I scooted round the kitchen like a little busy worker ant, jumping to Mrs Jones’s every command, washing pans and wiping down. I loved it. What a thrill to be part of this. Mrs Jones’s energy, focus and calm as she assembled the feast was something to behold.

  ‘Over here, Mollie, and wipe down my whisk,’ she ordered. ‘Muddle makes more muddle.’

  There was none of the shouting and hissy fits like you get with these celebrity chefs nowadays. There wasn’t time. You couldn’t turn out a meal like that from scratch if you wasted your energy on shouting.