2. Transition with a new cook

Another exigency in Ellen White’s household, which might require a temporary departure from her normally vegetarian dietary, was the hiring of a new cook who did not know how to prepare vegetarian meals. Until the new cook could be trained to prepare such dishes, diners at Ellen White’s table had to eat what the new cook knew how to prepare, and this probably included meat.EWV 13.3

From the earliest days of her public ministry, which included a great deal of writing, Mrs. White found it impossible to perform the tasks she normally would have undertaken as homemaker, and she had to place the responsibilities of the domestic work in her home largely upon housekeepers and cooks. From her mid-twenties (1852-55) at Rochester, New York, (when “there were twenty-two who every day gathered round our family board” ^{5Letter 29, 1904 (Jan. 17).}), until her closing “Elmshaven years,” several dozen persons might be expected to dine at Ellen White’s table at any given meal.EWV 13.4

In 1870, she wrote rather whimsically,EWV 14.1

I prize my seamstress, I value my copyist; but my cook, who knows well how to prepare the food to sustain life and nourish brain, bone, and muscle, fills the most important place among the helpers in my family. ^{6Testimonies for the Church 2:370}

In this connection, a letter by W. C. White, written in 1935, is illuminating. Said he:EWV 14.2

Sister White was not a cook, nor was she a food expert in the technical ways which come from study and experimentation. Often she had serious arguments with her cook. She was not always able to keep the cook which she had carefully indoctrinated into the vegetarian ideas.

Those she employed were always intelligent young people. As they would marry and leave her, she was obliged to get new cooks who were untrained in vegetarian cookery. In those days we had no schools as we have now, where our young ladies could learn the system of vegetarian cookery. Therefore, mother was obliged with all her other cares and duties to spend considerable effort in persuading her cooks that they could do without meat, or soda, and baking powder and other things condemned in her testimonies. Often times our table showed some compromises between the standard which Sister White was aiming at and the knowledge and experience and standard of the new cook. ^{7Cited by Arthur L. White in a letter to Anna Frazier, Dec. 18, 1935.}

In 1892, Mrs. White wrote to General Conference President O. A. Olsen concerning her need for a new cook and expressing the earnest hope that she might soon obtain the services of “experienced help which I so greatly needed.”EWV 14.3

Amplifying on this problem, she wrote:EWV 15.1

I am suffering more now for want of some one who is experienced in the cooking lines, to prepare things I can eat. The cooking here in this country is in every way deficient. Take out the meat, which we seldom use,—and I dare not use it here at all,—and sit at their tables, and if you can sustain your strength, you have an excellent constitution. Food is prepared in such a way that it is not appetizing, but is having the tendency to dry up the desire for food. I would pay a higher price for a cook than for any other part of my work.... I am really perplexed over this matter. Were I to act over the preparation in coming to this place, I would say, Give me an experienced cook, who has some inventive powers, to prepare simple dishes healthfully, and that will not disgust the appetite. I am in earnest in this matter. ^{8Letter 19c, 1892 (Jan.).}