Chapter 45
One morning on a day off, I stopped in the middle of breakfast while drinking water.
‘The water tastes a little different.’
It was a very slight difference.
It was drawn from the same well as yesterday, but the aftertaste was minutely heavier.
Perhaps it had rained a little overnight and changed the smell of the earth around the well, or perhaps the cloth used to wash the water jug hadn't dried completely.
I set down my cup and thought.
‘This won't do.’
Marie, who was tearing off pieces of bread beside me, looked at me.
“Why do you have that look on your face again?”
“The water tastes different.”
Marie drank from her own cup.
“I can't really tell what's different.”
“That's the problem.”
“Why is it a problem that water tastes like water?”
“The problem is that you can't tell.”
Marie frowned.
“Why are you picking a fight first thing in the morning?”
“Looks like you need training.”
“I'm in the middle of eating.”
“The kitchen won't wait.”
Marie made an extremely displeased face, but regardless, I decided training was necessary.
Taste and smell are important to a chef.
It was such an obvious statement that people sometimes forgot it.
Seeing color with your eyes, feeling temperature with your hands, and hearing the sound of boiling with your ears were important too, but in the end, it was the nose and tongue that decided whether a dish was right.
Of course, there were exceptions.
Even in my previous life, there had been people who continued making excellent food despite problems with their sense of smell or taste.
People who filled in the gaps with memory, measurements, help from their colleagues, experience, and their sense of temperature and texture.
Those people were truly impressive.
Compensating for a lost sense in other ways was no ordinary feat.
Among the people I respected was a master of Chinese cuisine who was a perfect example of this.
But for now, I thought it was better to have those senses if you had them.
There were people who could cook without a knife, but having a knife was still better.
The tongue was the same.
I changed the schedule for that morning.
“Today, we're doing a taste test.”
Everyone in the kitchen looked at me at once.
Thomas already looked anxious, while Nina straightened her back nervously.
The newcomers, Ria and Baron, also watched my expression.
Marie tried to sneak away.
“Marie, where do you think you're going?”
“I'm not a chef.”
“The person in charge of serving needs to know flavors to explain them.”
“Can't I just say it's delicious?”
“At Maison Monbel, saying ‘it's delicious’ without more is forbidden.”
“Since when?”
“Starting now.”
Marie despaired.
Uncle Bernard was quietly watching from a distance.
“You have to do it too, Uncle.”
“Me as well?”
“You explain things to the guests, don't you?”
Uncle Bernard was silent for a moment, then took off his gloves.
The fact that he didn't run away proved he was a strong man after all.
The first was smell.
I prepared several small cups covered with cloth.
Inside were herbs, vinegar, old oil, fresh butter, slightly burnt bread, underripe fruit, dried mushrooms, and a piece of fish whose condition I had deliberately made ambiguous.
“If you look, it's too late. In the kitchen, you have to recognize things by smell first.”
Thomas asked cautiously.
“Are any of them spoiled?”
“Yes.”
“We're not eating them, are we?”
“Not yet.”
“What do you mean, ‘not yet’?”
I didn't answer.
People concentrate when there's a little fear involved.
Marie smelled the first cup and said,
“Grass.”
“It's an herb.”
“It's grass.”
“You have to say what kind of grass.”
“Tasty grass.”
I pressed a hand to my forehead.
“Fail.”
“That's harsh.”
Nina accurately distinguished the dried mushrooms from the old oil.
Ria confused the vinegar with the underripe fruit.
Thomas smelled the burnt bread and said it smelled a little sad.
“Good description, but that's not the answer.”
“I'm sorry.”
Uncle Bernard quietly smelled the cups one by one.
“Herbs. Oil three days old. Fresh butter. Burnt bread. Underripe fruit. Dried mushrooms. The fish must not be served to guests.”
The kitchen fell silent.
“Uncle, would you like to work in the kitchen?”
“I must decline.”
Butlers were frightening.
The second was basic flavors.
I prepared salt water, samples of sweetness, acidity, and bitterness, a broth containing umami, and a soup I'd deliberately made bland.
They had to say not only what it was, but how far off it was.
“You can't just stop at ‘salty’ or ‘bland.’ You need to know by how much. A difference of one pinch of salt can change a guest's reaction.”
Baron tasted the broth and said,
“It's a little undersalted.”
“How much?”
“About two pinches…”
“One and a half pinches.”
“How can you tell?”
“You know by adding it.”
I added it immediately and handed it to Baron.
The moment Baron tasted it again, his expression changed.
“That's right.”
“The tongue remembers. It isn't enough to say something is vaguely delicious; you need to know why it's delicious.”
Ria was good at detecting acidity. Her hands showed that she had handled a lot of pickled vegetables.
Nina picked up umami well, but was weak at bitterness.
Thomas was conscientious overall, but his answers were cautious. He seemed afraid of getting them wrong.
“Taking too long to speak is more dangerous than being wrong.”
“Yes, Chef.”
“When tasting seasoning in the kitchen, you have to speak with conviction. If it's salty, say it's salty; if it's bland, say it's bland. Even if the head chef is wrong, you have to say so.”
Thomas's eyes widened.
“Even if you're wrong, Chef?”
“Of course. I may be an experienced and skilled chef, but I'm not an omniscient god. I have to account for the possibility that I'm wrong.”
The third was combinations.
I had them dip the same piece of meat into three sauces and taste them.
One lacked acidity, one was too sweet, and one was balanced.
Here too, they had to say not only which was correct, but which sort of guest it would suit.
Marie unexpectedly did well on this test.
“This one's so sweet it'd be good at first, but you'd get tired of it quickly. This one lacks sourness, so the meat feels heavy. This one's best, and a guest who's had a lot to drink might like the first one, too.”
“Marie, I take it back. You did really well just now.”
Marie's face immediately lit up.
“Really?”
“Yeah. You considered the guests' reactions too.”
“I look at them every day. You can get a rough feel for it.”
She was definitely right.
Marie watched the guests' faces a lot.
I, as the head chef, made the food, but Marie was often the one who got a closer look at the moment a guest took their first bite.
That experience was a sense, too.
“Taste more dishes from now on.”
“Okay.”
“But you have to put your impressions into words.”
“I don't like that.”
“Then eat less.”
“I'll talk.”
“Pig.”
“Hey! Do you want to die!?”
As expected, food had a quick educational effect.
Finally, it was my turn.
I had to check whether my tongue had grown dull.
I blindfolded myself and asked Uncle Bernard to prepare several cups.
I smelled and tasted them one by one.
Before evaluating others, a chef had to question his own senses first.
It had been the same in my previous life.
When I was tired, my seasoning got heavier; when I hadn't slept, I missed acidity; and the day after drinking, aromas came late.
The senses weren't eternal.
Like a sharp knife, they might seem fine at first, but grew dull if you didn't sharpen them every time.
I answered each one.
“Just water. Water with a very light amount of salt. The broth was boiled one time more than yesterday's, and the acidity is from fruit vinegar. The last sample has absorbed the smell of oil. Even after washing it, it can't be served to guests.”
Uncle Bernard nodded.
“All correct.”
I let out a sigh of relief.
“That's a relief.”
A head chef who couldn't trust his sense of taste was like someone holding a knife without a blade.
Of course, it was possible to compensate in other ways, but I wasn't ready to lose my tongue yet.
Even though it seemed like I had gained more in this world, the most reliable tools I ultimately possessed were my hands, nose, and tongue.
After the training ended, everyone looked exhausted.
Marie slumped over in her chair, Thomas drank water, and Nina was writing her wrong answers in a notebook.
Ria and Baron talked about which smells they had confused.
Uncle Bernard put his gloves back on with an unconcerned expression.
He really was a frightening man.
“We'll do this once a week from now on.”
The kitchen froze.
Marie was the first to shout.
“Why do we have to do it so often?”
“Because tongues need training, too.”
“What about our days off?”
“Not on days off. Let's do it once every Monday morning, more or less.”
“But we'll be busy getting ready to open…”
“We still have to do it.”
I looked around the kitchen and said one more time,
“The reason Maison Monbel's food is expensive isn't just because the plates are pretty. Someone has to smell things, taste the seasoning, throw out what's spoiled, and make up for what's lacking. If you can't do that, it doesn't matter how much of a story you put behind the food.”
No one objected.
Everyone knew.
That today's test, though tedious and brutal, was necessary.
To sell an expensive meal, the staff themselves had to be prepared.