⊙ RANGE Four-star French restaurants, executive dining rooms, diplomatic pieds-à-terre, country club kitchens, even The Average American Home— wherever pretentious food is being prepared (or attempted), these wicked imps can be found, and the more haute the cuisine, the higher the jinks they’re up to. They inhabit the oven, for extreme heat does not bother them as they perform ritual cake deflations inside. Nor do they mind the refrigerator’s cold, as they gnaw away at the cellophane, all the better to “freezer burn” those treasured filets. Chances are, your kitchen is full of them—n’est-ce pas?

◐ HABITS Like good chefs everywhere, the Saucier’s Apprentices know that preparation is so important. Thus, hours before the cooking is to begin, they are busy in the kitchen, blunting the knives, bending the spoons, jamming the blender, blowing out the pilot light, hiding the butter, and souring the cream. They are never happier than when a perfectly normal mortal decides to “really get into cooking,” and to that end acquires numerous, indecipherable recipe books and elaborate expensive utensils—preferably electric and dangerous. A classic Saucier’s Apprentice technique (or “true”) is to spill tomato sauce on a metric conversion table, which can result in some amazingly good concoctions accidentally being whipped up by the Apprentice’s victim, who thereafter must guess at the proportions, should he or she ever wish to make the dish again. Malfunctioning scales, timers and thermometers? Off-speed Cuisinarts, lukewarm ice cream makers, pasty pasta? If your gourmet meal looks slightly unreal, blame the Saucier’s Apprentice.

★ HISTORY Many believe that Saucier’s Apprentices are of French extraction, but anyone who has eaten in England knows better. They are, in fact, Hob Goblins, (first described in the Julia Childe Ballads) the legendary spirits of the British fireside, who burnt the cakes for King Alfred and whose hideous names have been given to so many British dishes: Bubble and Squeak, Banger, Toad in Hole, Pig in a Blanket, etc. An aristocratic member of the family is to this day responsible for all runny omelettes: Will o’ the Whisk. Confined at first to the kitchens of the very rich in America, the Saucier’s Apprentices have become dangerously active in recent years with the malevolent help of the Mind Boggles, through whose channels they introduced the blasphemous rites of foreign cooking into the hearts and kitchens of the formerly naive and hamburger-happy homemakers of the United States. Many a harmless Shake-and-Baker has thus been Bearded in her den, transformed into a veal-boning, Hollan-dazed, stir-crazy, woked-out, long order kook. SPOTTER’S

TIPS If you have shell fragments in the scrambled eggs, lumps in the gravy, charcoal toast, oil slicks in the soup, concrete croissants, silly millimeter-high soufflés, a julienned index finger and a well-done thumb, then you have Saucier’s Apprentices infesting your kitchen. Send out for Chinese.