child of the kitchen

plural children of the kitchen

1. historicalAn unskilled kitchen worker assigned to menial tasks.

   The Kitchen :—John Waleston, chief clerk; 8 others. John Cace, master cook; eleven others, with twelve children of the kitchen.

   2015, J. S. Brewer, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII

   3 more examples

   Then in the hall kitchen, two clerks of the kitchen, a clerk comptroller, a surveyor of the dresser, a clerk of the spicery; all which together kept also a continual mess in the hall; also, in his hall kitchen, he had of master cooks two; and of other cooks, labourers, and children of the kitchen, twelve persons : four yeomen of the silver scullery, two yeomen of the pantry, with two other pastelers under the yeomen.

   1815, Edward Wedlake Brayley, James Norris Brewer, Joseph Nightingale, London and Middlesex: or, An historical, commercial, & descriptive survey of the Metropolis of Great-Britain, page 370

   The master-cook began his career with apprenticeship at the lowest level, as a child of the kitchen, where he was subject to harsh discipline: as Olivier de la Marche points out, the master-cook's ladle was for hitting the children as well as for tasting sauces. Careers were often slow: in the French royal kitchens, Jean Jart was a child of the kitchen in 1386, and a master-cook only in 1418.

   2014, Alan Davidson, Tom Jaine, The Oxford Companion to Food, page 216

   Many of the roles had been renamed over the previous 50 years — The Georgian children of the kitchen and boys of the kitchen (all adults, despite the names) had disappeared, while the turnbroaches of an earlier era no longer actively turned spits, and were now roasting cooks.

   2017, Annie Gray, The Greedy Queen: Eating with Victoria, →ISBN