Tavern Cook

The tavern feeds a houseful of hungry teamsters from noon to close, every day. You own the kitchen: what is cooked, what is bought, and whether the bread holds out.

The work

• Roast the goose and bake the rye-and-Indian bread daily.
• Keep the dough-nuts and crullers coming from noon to close.
• Provision weekly from the local farms on your own judgment and budget.
• Keep a kitchen clean enough to survive the dominie's inspection.

Context

• Reports to the innkeeper.
• Solo in the kitchen, cooking for thirty on a wood fire.
• Pay is £20–28 New York currency per annum (~$50–70 in silver dollars), with board and a bed at the house.
• In-person, six days, noon to close.

Recorded in the parish register of Sleepy Hollow, autumn of 1799.

• Can cook for thirty on a wood fire without a wasted scrap.
• Baking is a must: bread, crullers, olykoeks.
• Keeps a kitchen clean enough to survive the dominie's inspection.

Not a fit if you want a second pair of hands in the kitchen — for now, there is only the one.

A creaking roadside inn on the haunted post-road, pouring cider and small-beer since 1770.

Who we are

Staff of six: keeper, cook, two ostlers, a fiddler on frolic nights, and a yard boy. Trade is steady the year round — the legend of the Galloping Hessian is our best salesman, for nobody rides past after dusk without stopping for one more.

How we work

The fire is lit from first dark to last customer, the day-book is tallied nightly to the stiver, and the ghost stories are stock in trade rather than a distraction from it. Staff sleep in; nobody here is asked to walk home in the dark.

Who thrives here

People with a steady head at midnight, whatever the road outside sounds like, and no objection to crossing the yard after dusk — which is most of several jobs here.

Recorded in the parish register of Sleepy Hollow, autumn of 1799.