In Episode 5 of Season 4 of Downton Abbey, the Crawleys' second footman Alfred Nugent takes his first step towards pursuing his dream of a career in the culinary arts by going through a perilous cooking test at the Ritz London Hotel. During his trial, Alfred struggles to demonstrate sophisticated knowledge of famous dishes by the most eminent chefs of the day and works hard to exhibit his ability to cook and artistically display the most intricate of delicacies on demand and under pressure. Alfred is tested not only on his knowledge and practical skills, however, but also on his reasons for pursuing the occupation of a professional hotel chef. As Alfred’s experience with the Ritz’s cooking trial demonstrates, by the post-Great War year of 1922, many of the occupations formerly associated with the Edwardian great houses were in transition from the private sector to the public sphere, and as a result, remaining in domestic service for the entirety of one’s life was no longer a safe option nor a spiritually rewarding one. Alfred’s desire to “do more with my life” by attending cooking school illuminates the theme of the spirit of individual progress and self-fulfillment that takes possession of characters both upstairs and down throughout Downton Abbey.

From the late Victorian period through the Edwardian period, cooking schools grew in number and prominence throughout England due to a variety of factors, including the falling prices of many foodstuffs, the rising incomes of much of the middle class, the invention of new forms of cooking equipment, and innovations in food preparation techniques (Holland). Rather than putting nervous young men like Alfred through intense tests and trials, cooking schools were originally less formal institutions that were created to teach basic skills – from how to kindle a fire in a stove to methods for preserving jams to the proper way to skin freshly-killed game – as well as to provide students with recipes for both everyday and special occasions. In addition, schools would also teach their students such tips as tricks for substituting foods in recipes with more readily available and cheaper ingredients and guidelines for how to set and dress a dining table (Lessons; Mann).           

Cooking schools were originally geared towards women, but included women from all social spheres and walks of life. As the 1879 handbook for the National Training School of Cookery in South Kensington states, the students at their cooking lessons included “cultivated ladies, the daughters of country gentlemen, old housekeepers, servants, cooks, and colored girls from South Africa, together with a large proportion of intelligent young women who were preparing to become teachers” (Lessons vi). These schools, then, were aimed towards improving the culinary abilities of those working in the private sphere, whether as the lady of the household or the servant in the kitchen downstairs.

English cooking schools gradually shifted in purpose and in the demographics of their students, however, during the turn of the century and into the Edwardian period. Rather than a culinary “art,” cooking increasingly became known as a “science,” and institutions such as the Glasgow Schools of Cookery began to incorporate into their practical lessons elements of chemistry and gastronomy. These students – almost universally male now – were taught about such subjects as the molecules that make up edible dishes (proteins, fats, sugars, carbohydrates, etc.), the stages of digestion and metabolism, and other dietetic and health-related matters. As James Knight noted in his textbook for the Glasgow Schools, “no teacher of cookery can secure a first-class diploma without some knowledge of the chemistry of foods and the digestive processes” (iii). This increased focus on the science behind cooking came about due to a shift in purpose:  where cooking schools were once meant to teach women working in various capacities in the home, they increasingly focused on educating men who sought to cook professionally in a public space, such as a high-class restaurant, hotel, or similar institution. As with many of its fellow establishments, in the years following the Great War, the three-hundred-plus staff of the Ritz London experienced an incredibly high turnover rate (Montagomery-Massingberd 77); this, of course, lead to an opening up of many culinary positions for experienced chefs as well as those educated in cooking schools and in internal training programs at the Ritz itself.

The first appearance of the Ritz’s cooking test in Episode 5 of Season 4 of Downton Abbey (24:16-25:18) clearly demonstrates that, in this post-war period, cooking schools are only for men seeking a professional career in the culinary arts. Alfred, dressed in an impeccable white uniform, stands at attention with eight other male candidates. Proctoring the test is the Ritz’s sous-chef – the second-in-command of the kitchen – who paces the floor, hands clasped sharply behind his back as he gives orders and demands answers to difficult culinary questions with a biting tone. As the ominous music accompanying the scene indicates, this cooking trial is an extremely serious occasion, the whole affair run with the upmost professionalism and with exacting military precision, reflecting the high standards to which restaurants and hotels held their potential chefs.

Later in the episode (28:02-28:39), the sous-chef compliments Alfred’s culinary work, but notes with concern that “You haven’t chosen to make your living in the kitchen before now… You have worked instead as a footman for the Earl of Grantham.” He then asks, “And this has made you… unhappy?” to which Alfred replies, “I’ll not say that… But I want to do more with my life.” The sous-chef’s apprehension about Alfred’s attitude towards being a footman would seem reasonable during the Edwardian period, of course, where a stable career in a great house like Downton Abbey for a respectable aristocrat like the Earl of Grantham was something to be aspired to and revered; to be “unhappy” in such a position of service would appear both ridiculous and extremely ungrateful. In post-war 1922, however, the sous-chef only nods and says “I see” when Alfred declares that “I want to do more with my life.” With the financial failure and physical destruction of many of the greatest estates and properties in the country, and with the rise of restaurant or hotel chef as a prominent professional career, Alfred’s attempt to move on from being a footman does not strike the sous-chef as “getting above his station” but as a wise, sensible, and practical decision.

The concept of self-progress and the realization of a desire for personal self-fulfillment displayed by Alfred’s experience at the Ritz is a theme repeated in variation throughout all four current seasons of Downton Abbey, both amongst the lower staff as well as amongst the members of the aristocracy. For servants, breaking away and seeking alternative options of employment better suited to one’s interests or abilities was a risk that many dared not take once settled into a comfortable spot in service; as Alfred tells the sous-chef, his “mother was keen” for him to remain a footman for the Earl of Grantham, despite his interest in cooking due, to the position’s relative safeness. As early as Episode 3 of Season 1, however, housemaid Gwen Dawson dreams of leaving service, secretly acquiring a typewriter and training to be a secretary. Her initial failure to land a job, however, nearly causes Gwen to give up on her desire, but with Sybil Crawley’s continued support and assistance, she obtains a position with a telephone company and is able to escape the life of a housemaid just as she wanted.

For those living upstairs, achieving self-fulfillment also often meant finding work outside of the home in the public sphere, and though the risks were usually more social rather than financial, the internal rewards were quite the same. Encouraged by her political ideas and the war effort on the home front, Sybil becomes a nurse at the village hospital and comes to the life-changing discovery that her hard work tending to the wounded soldiers provides her with a sense of emotional self-satisfaction that she had known herself to be lacking as a mere lady of society. Feeling similarly trapped and unfulfilled, Edith Crawley begins to write a regular newspaper column for a major paper – despite the disapproval of her family – and, through her editorials on women’s suffrage and other contemporary social concerns, develops an individual identity, interests, and life for herself beyond the cloistering walls of Downton. Isobel Crawley, with her work for the hospital and a variety of charities, and Mary Crawley, with her businesswoman management of the estate in Season 4, also demonstrate that, far from being contented with parties and picnics, members of the upper class were as capable as the servants of feeling the desire to do something fulfilling and of risking social displeasure to accomplish it.

Although not centered on a professional occupation or on altruistic work, even Rose MacClare’s unending schemes towards frivolity display the same sort of spirit of independence and craving for self-satisfaction. Throughout Season 4, Rose consistently concocts and executes plans to escape back to London to enjoy the jazz clubs, the wild parties, and similarly-minded society, despite the wishes of her mother and her erstwhile Crawley guardians. She even pursues a romance with off-limits jazz singer Jack Ross, and while this as well as many of Rose’s subversive deeds could be taken as mere acts of youthful rebellion against her repressive upbringing, Rose’s active seeking of pleasure in its many forms demonstrates her emotional discontent with her current state and a risky but rewarding move towards fulfilling those desires.

Bacchus and Cordon Bleu. New Guide for the Hotel, Bar Restaurant, Butler, and Chef. Being a Hand Book  for the Management of Hotel and American Bars, and the Manufacture of the Principle New and Fashionable Drinks. London: W. Nicholson & Sons, 1885. Print.

Downton Abbey. PBS. Video.

Escoffier, Auguste. Auguste Escoffier: Memories of My Life. Trans. Laurence Escoffier. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1997. Print.

Holland, Evangeline. Edwardian England: A Guide to Everyday Life, 1900-1914. Google Books. Plum Bun Publishing, 2014. Web. 1 April 2014.

Knight, James. Food and Its Functions: A Text-Book for Students of Cookery. London: Blackie & Son, 1898. Print.

Lessons in Cookery: Hand-Book of the National Training School for Cookery (South Kensington, London). Ed. Eliza A. Youmans. New York, D. Appleton and Co., 1879. Print.

Mann, E. E. Liverpool School of Cookery Recipe Book. London: Longmans, 1900. Print.

Montagomery-Massingberd, Hugh and David Watkin. The London Ritz: A Social and Architectural History. London: Aurum Press, 1980. Print.