Hotel by Arthur Hailey

Author:Arthur Hailey [Arthur Hailey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi, pdf
Published: 2014-02-16T16:00:00+00:00

"Here you fry at - three 'undred and sixty degrees; the best temperature -for kitchens and the 'ousewives too."

"So while the smoke-point remains about three hundred and sixty, the fat will do its job. Below that, it ceases to."

"That is true, monsieur. And the fat it will give food a bad flavor, tasting rancid, as today."

Facts, once memorized but rusty with disuse, stirred in Peter's brain. At Cornell there had been a course in food chemistry for Hotel Administration students. He remembered a lecture dimly . . . in Statler Hall on a darkening afternoon, the whiteness of frost on window panes. He had come in from the biting, wintry air outside. Inside was warmth and the drone of information fats and catalyzing agents.

"There are certain substances," Peter said reminiscently, "which, in contact with fat, will act as catalysts and break it down quite quickly."

"Yes, monsieur." Andre Lemieux checked them off on his fingers. "They are the moisture, the salt, the brass or the copper couplings in a fryer, too much 'eat, the oil of the olive. All these things I have checked. This is not the cause."

A word had clicked in Peter's brain. It connected with what he had observed, subconsciously, in watching the deep fryer being cleaned a moment earlier.

"What metal are your fry baskets?"

"They are chrome." The tone was puzzled. Chromium, as both men knew, was harmless to fat.

"I wonder," Peter said, "how good the plating job is. If it isn't good, what's under the chrome and is it-in any places-worn?"

Lemieux hesitated, his eyes widening slightly. Silently he lifted one of the baskets down and wiped it carefully with a cloth. Moving under a light, they inspected the metal surface.

The chrome was scratched from long and constant use. In small spots it had worn away entirely. Beneath scratches and worn spots was a gleam of yellow.

"It is brass!" The young Frenchman clapped a hand to his forehead. "Without doubt it 'as caused the bad fat. I have been a great fool."

"I don't see how you can blame yourself," Peter pointed out. "Obviously, long before you came, someone economized and bought cheap fry baskets.

Unfortunately it's cost more in the end."

"But I should have discovered this-as you have done, monsieur." Andre

Lemieux seemed close to tears. "Instead, you, monsieur, you come to the kitchen-from your paperasserie-to tell me what is 'aywire here. It will be a laughing joke."

"If it is," Peter said, "it will be because you talked about it yourself.

No one will hear from me."

Andre Lemieux said slowly, "Others they have said to me you are a good man, and intelligent. Now, myself, I know this is true."

Peter touched the folder in his hand. "I'll read your report and tell you what I think."

"Thank you, monsieur. And I shall demand new fry baskets. Of stainless steel. Tonight they will be here if I have to 'ammer someone's 'ead."

Peter smiled.

"Monsieur, there is something else that I am thinking."

"Yes?"

The young sous-chef hesitated. "You will think it, how you say, presumptuous. But you and I, Monsieur McDermott-with the hands free-we could make this a 'ot-shot hotel.

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