Wednesday March 27—Sodexo chef Wilma Scotsman was able to sit down with me to talk about what goes into the meals prepared here at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Mitchell Cameron: So, what’s the first thing you guys do when preparing to cook a meal?
Wilma Scotsman: Well first we round about the cauldron go, then in the poisoned entrails through.
MC: What exactly are these “poisoned entrails?”
WS: Things like Toad, that under cold stone / Days and nights has thirty-one / Swelter’d venom sleeping got.
MC: And what are you thinking in the moment you’re tossing this poisoned frog into a cauldron?
WS: Boil thou first i’ th charmed pot.
MC: So then, once you’ve gotten everything set up, what are some of the ingredients that you find yourself using in many dishes?
WS: Eye of newt and toe of frog, / Wool of bat and tongue of dog, / Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting, / Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing.
MC: Now what kind of dish would you be making here, and what would it look like at this stage?
WS: For a charm of powerful trouble, / Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
MC: So is there anything else you’d yet add to this?
WS: Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, / Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf / Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark, / Root of hemlock digg’d i’ th dark, / Finger of birth-strangled babe / Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,
MC: And what do these new ingredients do for the meal?
WS: Make the gruel thick and slab:
MC: And what do you do next?
WS: Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron, / For the ingredients of our cauldron.
MC: So what’s the next step, then?
WS: Cool it with a baboon’s blood, / Then the charm is firm and good.
MC: It must be really exciting once you’ve finished a complex meal like this. What does the chief chef usually say when they see what you’ve done?
WS: O well done! I commend your pains; / And every one shall share i’ th gains; / And now about the cauldron sing, / Live elves and fairies in a ring, / Enchanting all that you put in.
MC: Well that all sounds very exciting. Is there anything you want to leave us with?
WS: Oh, just that by the pricking of my thumbs, / Something wicked this way comes.