Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Major Accident

So far everything is going smoothly.

I let out a sigh of relief at the situation proceeding more smoothly than expected.

But carelessness is forbidden. The phonograph might suddenly spew large noise, the chandelier hanging from the ceiling might fall, a lost pigeon might break the window and fly in. Or is there a law that a drunken policeman won't knock on the front door mistaking it for an inn?

Well, the strange looks the Duke's escort knights were giving from behind, for now I decided to ignore.

While worrying about this and that and entering the kitchen full of tension, Edith the young lady waving her hand at me with a bright smile came into view.

"Mr. Jean! The decoration is all finished! Can I send it out to the customers now?"

"Already?!"

She had already finished all preparations for the next course and was waiting. Too fast, way too fast!

I looked into the plates Edith pointed to. Something was different at a glance.

"Hmm..."

Honestly, now I have no choice but to admit it. Her decoration sense is better than mine. I only told her a few basic principles, but her skill leveled up in an instant as if she had cheated experience points.

The side I'm strong in is the realm of cooking. Since I can read people's emotions in real time with the status window, refining recipes was also easy, and once I completed a recipe I was good at implementing it without error.

But decoration is different. That's a kind of modern art of drawing pictures on a plate with cooking. It heavily relies on talent rather than technique.

Considering color and texture, balanced placement of ingredients, even the height and angle of the food is decoration.

Even the placement of sauce is the realm of decoration. By appropriately arranging spicy or salty, sweet or creamy sauces to enrich the texture of the dish, maximizing the experience of taste and touch.

Edith uniquely arranged chicken pieces, chips, and various sauces including seasoning, and even added visual freshness with finely ground parsley and thyme powder.

A well-decorated plate like this draws the eye at first glance, and makes saliva pool even before eating.

"How did you see it? Is this level okay? I'm curious about Mr. Jean's thoughts."

Honestly, at this level even a Michelin 3-star in modern times would eat it? Was it really only a hobby of baking? Did you secretly learn something else? The past is very suspicious.

Anyway, I nodded.

"It's perfect. There's nothing more for me to touch. By any chance, is there a theme you had in mind?"

The final element of decoration, that's storytelling.

If you put a story in the food, from then on it becomes not a simple meal but an experience of the story. Reading a novel with the tip of the tongue.

Honestly, even the same bibimbap, the one roughly made by next-door Cheolsu scratching his belly and the one the 9th-generation Grandma Kim Bokja of the Suncheon head family carefully mixed feel completely different, right?

Suddenly remembering Mom's taste while eating and tearing up is also a case where a story automatically played in the head melts into the food.

Even at a meeting place, there are people who have ordinary looks but dominate the atmosphere with outstanding eloquence, right? Well-made storytelling can sometimes surpass decoration.

"Ah... A theme? Is that also necessary? I just arranged it to look pretty."

"No, it's important. Even if you throw a simple theme, people try to fill that blank with imagination. Then sometimes they realize something beyond taste. The real emotion in cooking is drawn out through the story contained in the taste."

"Aha, is that so! Important words! Mr. Jean, thank you for telling me today too!"

She's still weak on these details too. Should I be happy that there's room for further growth? No, if she eyes my position then it'll be troublesome.

Anyway, the moment I was about to call Emily and tell her to load this on the serving cart... I felt a strange sense of incongruity from the chicken on the plate.

"Lady Edith. Is this properly fried?"

"Yes? I did it as usual?"

"Did you taste it?"

"Not yet. It's too hot. But the appearance is okay, right?"

Certainly as she said, steam is still rising from the chicken. But something is different.

My outstanding vigilance is ringing an alarm again.

I touched the hot chicken enduring the pain.

"...Hmm."

"Is there a problem?"

"It's greasy."

"Yes?"

"The batter has become soggy. It seems a problem occurred in the double frying (*Double Frying, double frying) process. Did you match the temperature properly?"

"Yes?!"

Korean-style fried chicken is fried twice, first in low-temperature oil, then in high-temperature oil. Because in low temperature the moisture doesn't evaporate sufficiently so it's hard to get a crispy texture.

But if you don't raise the temperature sufficiently when frying the second time, the batter can absorb more oil and become greasy like this.

Come to think of it, the color of the batter is also a bit pale rather than the golden color that should originally come out. I didn't notice because of the lighting.

"Uh, I matched the temperature accurately? It's 370 degrees Fahrenheit. Isn't that right?"

Looking at the thermometer Edith took out from the fryer, the number was within the range I had asked her to definitely keep.

Between 360 and 370 degrees Fahrenheit. When converted to Celsius of modern Korea, about 183 to 188 degrees. An appropriate temperature for the second frying stage.

Originally it would have been convenient to use a Celsius thermometer, but unfortunately only Fahrenheit was available in London.

"Wait a moment."

I tore off a piece from the decorative bread on the cooking counter and threw it into the fryer. A simple method to check when there's no thermometer.

Sizzle. Sizzle.

"The sound is different from usual, right? The temperature from the thermometer and the actual temperature don't match. It looks hot but the oil has already cooled quite a bit."

"It really is. By any chance did the thermometer break? But that was a new one replaced a little while ago..."

"It's new?"

I examined the thermometer. It was clearly different from the yellowish thermometer stained with oil that was used before.

"Actually, earlier the thermometer we were using seemed to be broken, so I brought a new thermometer from Mr. Jean's office. I thought there would be no problem..."

Right, there was a sense of incongruity here too. This time it wasn't hard to recognize.

"Look here. The scale interval is a bit different from the thermometer in the first fryer, right? Originally at this level it should be about 300 degrees Fahrenheit (150 degrees Celsius), but the scale was printed wrong and displayed 70 degrees higher."

"Aah...!"

"It's a defective product. I should claim damages?"

Edith's fault was none. Rather, the improvisation of quickly noticing the abnormality of the thermometer and switching to a new one was praiseworthy. Differences in the color of the batter are hard to notice easily unless you're a veteran like me.

The problem would be the shoddy quality control of this era. These bastards dare to sell me defective products?!

"Anyway... I've grasped the cause."

As if possessed by Holmes, I handed the thermometer to Edith and immediately opened and flipped the plate under the fryer.

The gas stove that should clearly be boiling under there was completely off.

Damn it.

###

Click. Whoosh.

It wasn't a breakdown. When I tightened and opened the valve, the fire ignited again.

In fact, in 1901 London this kind of thing happens frequently. I had experienced it a few times too.

The cause is simple. Because the technology is shoddy, the gas supply is not smooth. Pressure is important to send gas this far, and sometimes air mixes in or there's a leak in the pipe and it happens like this.

So I had even prepared an expensive thermometer in case of temperature problems, but that thermometer was also defective.

"What should I do? It will take quite some time to fry the chicken again..."

It takes a long time for the cooled oil to boil again. But by now it's the time when the Duke's party would finish the appetizer and wait for the main dish.

Waiting until the oil heats up, frying again, and even doing the decoration, the time was too tight.

But I shook my head. If I can't handle even this level of situation, I should return the national representative chef title.

And I already knew the solution.

"Don't worry. This level is simple. Just adjust the course order."

An on-the-spot improvisational answer without any pondering.

Originally the course I planned was 1st Chicken and Chips, 2nd donkatsu, and finally beef galbijjim.

This is an arrangement considering the intensity and weight of the food's taste.

Starting with the relatively light texture of Chicken and Chips, placing the donkatsu with richer taste and thicker batter in the middle, and finishing with the deep seasoning and soft texture of galbijjim.

A design that gradually stimulates the taste and maximizes the enjoyment of the meal.

But in fact, reversing this order is fine.

Starting strongly with galbijjim, and finishing with the lightest Chicken and Chips to cleanly organize the greasy taste is also one method.

If you add sweetness with a dessert like trifle at the end, that too will be a fresh experience.

In fact, even in modern fine dining there were many cases of designing like this for a reversal of taste.

But in this case the start must be an intense-tasting amuse-bouche (*Amuse-bouche, bite-sized dish). That's the standard in this variation.

"Can't be helped. I'll reduce the amount of galbijjim. Let's utilize it as an amuse-bouche."

"Is that okay? Wasn't galbijjim the finale (*Finale, the most important dish)?"

"It's fine. This will also be a fun experience in its own way."

I had already sufficiently explained to Edith how to compose the course cuisine, and also had her taste the galbijjim as a sample in advance. She liked it to the point of screaming.

But with the situation like this, it can't be helped. The soy sauce-based galbijjim has an enormously intense flavor in itself. If you let them eat more than one bite, it's obvious that the subsequent donkatsu or Chicken and Chips will be buried in the sweet taste of the galbijjim.

In times like this, putting out only one bite of galbijjim and instead raising the weight of the donkatsu and Chicken and Chips is correct.

The galbijjim itself is already in a completed cooking state. Unlike fried foods that need to be served hurriedly before cooling, braised dishes rather have the deep flavor of the sauce added as time passes and they age, so I had made it in advance earlier.

What remained was only quickly finishing the plating.

And at that moment, Lady Edith began to display her true skill.

Light flashed from her hands. It was that kind of feeling.

###

After that, everything really went smoothly.

This one sentence explains everything.

【Acquired 70 Cooking Points.】

I swept up without leaving anything, basic points matching the number of people, and even the Wonder Points bonus.

Of course it's nowhere near enough to make up for the points lost summoning Darjeeling, but whenever I see the intense reactions of people who went crazy over my food, I always get excited.

Because the smell of galbijjim is so intense, I was worried that if served as is the impact would be halved by smelling it first, so I deliberately had Emily cover it with a cloche and serve it.

And the moment the cloche opened, Lord Ashford's expression with both eyes widening at the sweet and salty aroma that enveloped the entire hall was really comedy itself.

The donkatsu that went out second, well, there was no need to even say.

Whether their appetite had turned tremendously from one bite of galbijjim, the sight of Lord Blackwood and Lord Ashford stuffing the donkatsu into their mouths in a hurry with expressions all distorted should have been left in a photo.

[ Arthur Blackwood: How can such food exist in the world! / Emotion: Astonishment / Satisfaction: ★★★★★ ]

[ Geoffrey Ashford: I want to eat more! More more more!! I'll eat and die here!! / Emotion: Ecstasy / Satisfaction: ★★★★★ ]

It's regrettable. Not having a camera prepared in the restaurant.

The appearance was so funny that I wanted to take a photo and keep it as a treasure. Lord Ashford's eyes were completely unfocused as if he had drunk alcohol.

Of course the Duke was also extremely satisfied.

Anyway, if it continues like this, won't the quest also succeed safely? A sense of expectation slowly rose.

But as always, the unexpected comes when you let your guard down.

The last composition of the changed finale, Chicken and Chips.

Once that was finished, putting out the prepared trifle and receiving applause mixed with emotion and a shower of gold coins from the Duke would end the matter.

Moreover, there was also the confidence that it would definitely sell because it was proper Chicken and Chips that Edith displayed her skill on once again.

I thought it was a completely different dish? I even marveled that decoration alone can give a fresh shock.

But from the moment the Duke paused for a moment with the Chicken and Chips in front of his eyes, an unusual sign was felt.

Still, since he soon composed his expression and picked up the fork, I thought how moved he must have been for even his hands to tremble.

No, it's the Chicken and Chips he sang about so much.

If it was to the point of making the Duke who should be secretly hiding walk all the way here, I thought there was that much intense emotion.

Moreover, Edith put a lot of effort so the decoration was even more stylish. I even wanted to treat it with preservative and store it because it was a waste to eat.

However, the moment he put the first piece in his mouth, the Duke's wavering gaze was, honestly speaking, an emotion far from that of being moved.

His Royal Highness Prince George, the Duke of Cornwall and Duke of York of the British Empire, the second son of the current King Edward VII and currently first in the line of succession to the throne�

While eating the chicken like that, he suddenly started shedding tears like chicken shit like a child.

The moment the escorts who saw that threw away the chicken and all stood up,

A distant feeling as if my spine chilled and cold sweat would flow.

I'm really screwed. A major accident has occurred.