Food for Thought

The other day we descended a circular staircase in our House kitchen and spent several hours below ground taking a tour of Central Kitchens. We had an appointment with Mr. Charles Whiteside, the chief engineer, who was more than a little harassed when we met him outside the bakery. Mr. Whiteside told us there had been a breakdown in the dishwater recirculation system, which he would have to attend to if the students of Harvard were to be fed that night. He apologized for not being able to take us on a thorough tour but invited us to accompany him on his repair rounds. Of course, we went along.

Trying to keep up with Mr. Whiteside's brisk pace through the underground tunnels, we got some inkling of what it is like to direct operations of the vast kitchen system. "It's literally a multi-million dollar operation," said our host as we passed a row of vats in which sliced bacon was being boiled for the noon meal. "Take this equipment that's just broken down: a million dollar series of pumps, pipes, and filters just to transfer thousands of gallons of dishwater from the dishwashing rooms into the huge kettles of the soup kitchens, where color and vegetables are added."

After a most cursory examination of the water outlets in the soup kitchen he was able to tell us what was wrong. "Simple clogging," he explained. "When too much grease and scum collect in the pipes not enough water flows through--happens periodically." Then, turning to the cooking staff he made a quick executive decision: "Well, girls, there'll be no soup tonight. Suppose you take shifts on filming and spotting this afternoon." We asked what filming and spotting was, but Mr. Whiteside suggested that we leave that until later, going first to the dehydration rooms. "Better take off your jacket;" he grinned, "it's pretty hot where we're going." We were taken into a very large room with grotesque orange lighting that made us look like a jack o'lantern. We noticed several conveyor belts passing into and out of the room through openings in the walls. Mr. Whiteside pointed out that it was unbearably hot, and we agreed that it was with little hesitation. These are infra-red heating lamps," he told us, "temperature of 88 degrees. Dehumidifiers keep the moisture down to two per cent--that's lower than Death Valley." We started to ask why Central Kitchen wanted to maintain a virtual desert in its midst, but just then Mr. Whiteside called our attention to several trays coming along on one of the moving belts. "Just watch that fresh lettuce," he beamed, "curls up like a caterpillar after four seconds in here." We watched entranced as other salad ingredients made the quick trip from one wall to the other.

Most anxious to get to a cooler climate, we suggested to our host that we leave dehydration and indicated that we would like to know about the sources of supplies. "I'm not directly concerned with purchasing, myself," he told us, "but I do know that we make a special effort to get just what we want. Just as an example, take the sand we use in our spinach. Pure, sterile sea sand--chemical quality, mind you, and that costs money--added automatically in measured amounts to each batch of cooked spinach. I might mention that I designed the machine which puts it in." We expressed our admiration for such ingenuity and were about to comment on the meticulous selection of products when a strange sound caught our ears. We asked what it was. "I thought you'd ask about that," replied Mr. Whiteside with a wink. "It's our apple bruiser--only one like it in the East."

We followed Mr. Whiteside into a small room almost entirely filled with a machine whose top surface was made up of rows of heavy wooden rollers. Our host then pushed a control which started these rollers spinning madly. "Okay, Joe," he shouted to an unseen attendant, "let'er roll!" With that, hundreds of apples came cascading down onto the whirling rollers from an opening in the wall. As they hit the machine they were bounced violently up and down and eventually were tossed into a receptacle at one end of the apparatus, much battered and bruised. Mr. Whiteside stopped the motor and again we could hear ourselves think. "That piece of machinery set us back twelve thousand," said Mr. Whiteside proudly, "but it can bruise 300 apples a minute." We whistled in astonishment at this efficiency.

We said we would have to be going, but Mr. Whiteside urged us to look in on filming and spotting before we left. "It's a lovely operation. Each glass gets a thin coating of dilute soap solution before final drying--just enough to give it a cloudy appearance. The spotters use the same mixture on trays; that's a job where people with artistic inclinations can indulge in creative expression." We thanked Mr. Whiteside for his offer but said we really did have to leave. For a while we had fears of getting lost in the tunnels and had to ask several persons for directions. Eventually, however, we found the stairway up to the Eliot House kitchen, which took us back above ground. Noticing that it was lunch time, we proceeded to Elsie's for a sandwich.