THE PARIS COOK.
Brillat-Savarin on the Art of Cooking--The Cook and the Roaster--Cooking
in the Seventeenth Century--Louis XV.--Mme de Maintenon.
From the Paris waiter to the Paris cook the transition is, in literary
phrase, "easy and natural." There is probably no prouder personage in
the world than this artist, who knows that mankind cannot dispense with
him, and who, if one were to ask him whether the revolution of his spit
or of the earth on its axis were the more important, might hesitate to
decide.
In that excellent comedy from the combined pens of Émile Augier
and Jules Sandeau, entitled _Le Gendre de M. Poirier_, we see an
illustration of the solemn importance which is attached by the French
cook to a well-ordered menu. M. Poirier, an aspirant for social
position, has married his daughter to a ruined marquis, Gaston de Nesle,
whom he soon finds to be a magnificently expensive son-in-law. One day,
determined to retrench, he sends for his chef and asks what he intends
to prepare for dinner that day. The chef enumerates a list of some
twenty costly and exquisite dishes; to which M. Poirier replies: "You
will replace all that by soup, roast meat, salad, and a fruit tart."
The cook feels like a soldier required to chop wood with the sword with
which he has been accustomed to cut his way to glory, and who prefers to
snap that sword in two. "I resign!" exclaims the cuisinier. "No man will
cook for you!" "Then I will engage a woman," is the economist's base
rejoinder.
To pass from fiction to fact we find a very much stronger instance of
the spirit of the French cook in the famous Vatel, who was so delicate
on the "point of honour" that he ran a sword through his own body
because the fish which should have arrived for an important dinner he
was cooking did not turn up in time. This artist was first attached to
the intendant Foquet, afterwards to the Prince de Condé; and he could
not endure the shame of letting the king go short of one particular
course in the dinner which the prince offered him at the Castle of
Chantilly.
Some of the loftiest functions of the Parisian chef can be performed by
no one who is not endowed with absolute genius. Training, experience,
industry, will go some distance in the French culinary art; but,
according to Brillat-Savarin, in his _Physiologie du Goût_, they would
apparently never qualify a man for the sublimer functions of roasting a
joint or a fowl.
"_On devient cuisinier mais on naît rotisseur_," exclaims this excellent
writer, who raised the art of the kitchen to the dignity of a science,
and who propounds the maxims of cooking with the same gravity, the same
sincerity, the same ardour as if he were laying the bases of a grand
moral philosophy. "A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman
with but one eye," he declared in a neat sentence which admits of only a
lumbering translation.
Why a roasting-cook should require greater talent than one of his
kitchen colleagues, who, for instance, like the chef spoken of by
Macaulay, could make ten different dishes out of a poppy-head, is not
at first sight apparent. One might imagine that the roaster required
nothing but care and patience; but after the dictum of so high an
authority as Brillat-Savarin, it must by the uninitiated be supposed
that for the seemingly simple operation of roasting a bird or joint as
it ought to be roasted, a combination of subtle qualities are requisite,
just as the mere two hands of a watch need, for their due regulation, a
complex system of machinery.
[Illustration: THE BIRD MARKET.]
As roaster, or in no matter what capacity, the Paris cook had his poetic
eulogist. One gastronomic versifier was wont, whilst sitting at dinner,
to regard the genius who was furnishing his stomach as a divinity--
_Un cuisinier, quand je aîne,_
_Me semble un être divin._
Another regarded his cook as a present from the sky--
_Que je puisse toujours, après avoir diné,_
_Bénir le cuisinier que le ciel m'a donné!_
The science of cooking in France was in a languid condition when Francis
I. ascended the throne. The presence of ladies at his court, and the
fêtes and banquets which were given, reanimated the cuisinier. It was
the renaissance of the kitchen as well as of the arts; and Francis I.
imported from Italy cooks as well as painters and sculptors. The Italian
cooks viewed their art in a very serious light. Montaigne well portrays
a typical member of their order.
"Just now," he writes, "I was mentioning an Italian I have recently
entertained, who acted as _maître d'hôtel_ to the late Cardinal Caraffe
until his death. I made him describe his duties, and he gave me a
discourse on this science of the jaws with a gravity and countenance
quite magisterial, precisely as if he had been engaged on some subject
in theology. He indicated the different stages of appetite: that which
exists after fasting, and that which remains when the first or second
course has been served; the methods employed, now simply to gratify it,
now to awaken and spur it; the policy with which he prepares his dishes,
adorning and embellishing them so as to fascinate the eye. After that
he entered upon the order of the service, full of fine and important
considerations; the whole inflated with a magnificence of words such as
characterises a treatise on the government of an empire."
The luxury of gastronomy was carried to such a point in France
that edicts were issued by several French kings for the purpose of
restraining it; but the Italian cooks whom Catherine de Medici brought
to the court of Henri II. easily contrived to vanquish the law. They
formed a school and produced pupils who were destined to surpass their
preceptors. Until the Revolution the profession of cook was regulated
by a succession of statutes. So far back as 1260 the corporation of
"goose-cooks" (geese being their most important commodity) received
statutes from the provost of the merchants. Later on the name of
"roasters" was given to them; and anyone not of their order who ventured
to cook for the public was termed a traitor. The cooks of Paris had
already been made the subject of many enactments when Louis XIV., in
1663, gave them new statutes which were registered in parliament the
following year; nor was it until the Revolution that their profession
became free.
In the seventeenth century the culinary art had reached a high pitch
of perfection, and epicures abounded in high life, amongst princes,
seigneurs, and even bishops--indeed bishops in particular. One day when
a certain archbishop famed for good living, in a sense otherwise than
ecclesiastical, had dined at the palace of his episcopal brother in the
capital, he called his servants around him and said: "I have been dining
with the archbishop of Paris; there was this and that dish, and such
and such defects. Now I tell you, so that you may fall into the danger,
that if you were to treat me in that fashion, you would be wishing to
throw away your lives." At the end of dinner he was accustomed to send
for Maître Nicholas, his cook, and say: "Maître Nicholas, what shall we
have for supper?" After supper his inquiry was: "Maître Nicholas, what
shall we have for to-morrow's dinner?" Another bishop having returned
home very hungry and demanded his dinner, the episcopal cook made his
appearance empty-handed. "As a bishop," he said, "I forgive you; but
if you fail to produce my supper, I shall talk to you like a man, and
flatten your nose for you."
Louis XIV. was a great gastronomist, but in the refinements of the
culinary art Louis XV. eclipsed his predecessor. The artists of the
kitchen were not yet in his reign paid twenty thousand francs a year,
as they have since been paid in Paris; but they were petted, yielded
to, and stroked down when out of temper. The cooks from Languedoc were
chiefly in demand at Paris; they received very large salaries and
exercised domestic despotism, the other servants of the household having
to bow to their authority.
Expense was nothing when it became a question of stimulating the jaded
appetite of a count or a wealthy merchant. Mercie in his "Picture of
Paris" shows us a _maître d'hôtel_ presenting the bill of fare to his
aristocratic master, who throws it down disdainfully, exclaiming:
"Always the same dishes! You have no imagination. These are nothing but
nauseating repetitions." "But, monseigneur, the sauces are varied."
"I tell you the whole thing is detestable, and I can no longer eat
it." "Well, monseigneur, I will prepare you a grilled boar." "When?"
"To-morrow. I will make him drink sixty bottles of champagne first. And
after that I want you to eat a Jamaica turtle." "Bravo! And when? Where
is the turtle?" "In London." "Send a courier at once: let him fetch it
post-haste." The courier is despatched, and returns with the turtle.
There is a solemn conference as to the most effective way of preparing
the animal; and after all kinds of processes, it appears on the table.
That dish has cost a thousand crowns. Seven or eight gourmands devour
it, and while they are drinking costly wines discuss the question as to
how much a peasant can live on. They decide that three sous a day are
enough for him, and that the inhabitants of the towns are well off if
they have seventeen. Beyond these figures all is superfluity, according
to the turtle-devouring economists.
The whole court of Louis XV. consisted of gourmands, loyal imitators
of their sovereign. Marshal de Richelieu attached his name to various
dishes, prepared for the purpose of making an epicure's mouth water. The
gay and ingenious Mme. de Pompadour invented three or four recipes which
have become famous. Gastronomy, however, did not flourish at the court
of Louis XVI., who was by no means fastidious in the choice of his food,
and for whose robust appetite rude joints of meat amply sufficed. Coming
to the Revolution, we find the culinary art injured a good deal by the
arbitrary closing of the mansions of the great nobility.
Those thousand and one ruinous inventions without which courtiers,
financiers, and ecclesiastics found existence impossible, were
seductions for the severe Republicans. A celebrated gastronomist, Grimod
de la Reynière, paints, in what he doubtless intended for very black
tints, the calamity which marked the revolutionary period. "It is an
unquestionable fact," he writes, "that during the disastrous years of
the Revolution not one fine turbot entered the market"; and he has
thus exposed himself to Republican reproaches as to the seat of his
patriotism and political sentiment being his stomach.
All the celebrities of the eighteenth century sat at the table of the
la Reynières, which was more sumptuously kept than Scarron's. There was
first the grandfather, la Reynière, who died in 1754 with a napkin under
his chin, suffocated by a _pâté-de-foie-gras_; then the father, whose
dinners were better than his society, if we are to judge from the remark
passed upon him by one of his guests, namely: "You can eat him; but
digest him you cannot"; and finally the son, who has exercised by his
pen and his stomach a considerable influence on gastronomy, and rescued
French cookery from the indifference of the Revolution.
[Illustration: MADAME DE MAINTENON.
(_From an old Print._)]
We have just mentioned the exquisite table which was kept by the
inimitable Scarron. The time came, however, when his resources dwindled
and the dishes laid before his distinguished guests were less numerous
and less varied. The conversation of Scarron's vivacious wife, however,
the future Mme. de Maintenon, did much to atone for a poor menu. On
one occasion, whilst dinner was proceeding, Scarron received a secret
message from his cook--who had to prepare the meal with very spare
materials--to the effect that a certain dish, usually regarded as
essential, was wanting. Turning his head aside from the guests, Scarron
whispered to his wife: "My dear, give them another of those charming
little stories. There is no roast."
So much for the ingenuity of a French host. The ingenuity of a French
cook was perhaps never better exemplified than under the following
circumstances. A rich financier was once dining at an aristocratic
table where one of the courses consisted of some preparation of veal,
highly gratifying to the palate. Whilst this course was being eaten
one of the guests happened to say to the host: "Your epigrams, you
know, are excellent." When the financier got home he summoned his cook,
told him he had just dined at a house where a ravishing dish of veal,
mysteriously prepared, had been served, and directed the cuisinier to
manufacture something like it, adding that he could not describe the
precise nature of the dish, but that he knew it was called an "epigram."
For a moment the cook was staggered. Then a sudden inspiration came upon
him, and he declared that he clearly perceived how epigrams should be
prepared. Next day he invented an exquisite dish, which was destined to
become famous--to his own and his master's glory--as the "_Epigramme de
veau á la financière_."
It was a maxim of Brillat-Savarin's that "the discovery of a new dish
is more precious for the universe than the discovery of a new star";
and there have been plenty of illustrious diners and cooks in Paris who
lived up to this lofty idea. The greatest chef who ever turned a spit
was doubtless the immortal Carême, who commenced his career as _maître
d'hôtel_ to the Prince de Talleyrand. Having broken with his first
master on some question of politics, he was successively employed by
the Prince Regent of England, whom he quitted because George IV. did
not sufficently understand the refinements of the culinary art; by the
Emperor Alexander I. of Russia, whose dominions he found too cold; by
Prince Bagration, who was a fine connoisseur but whose stomach was out
of order; by the Prince of Wurtemberg, who had vulgar culinary tastes;
and finally by an English lord, said to have been a glutton, and who
was in any case choked to death with a bone. Carême was a friend of the
illustrious Villeroux, famed partly as Mirabeau's cook, but chiefly
for his courage and adventures. Having sailed to the Indies, he fell
into the midst of a savage race with strong gastronomic instincts,
and prepared for them such delicious sauces and ragouts that they
enthusiastically proclaimed him king. For several years, with a frying
pan in his hand and the crown on his head, he played the dual part of
cook and king. When he died he left his subjects a very precious legacy,
a recipe, that is to say, for a bacon-omelette.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
boulevard Saint-Denis=> Boulevard Saint-Denis {pg 95}
It vain will despotism dread=> In vain will despotism dread {pg 188}
THE PALMIER FOUNTAIN, PLACE DU CHÀTELET=> THE PALMIER FOUNTAIN, PLACE DU
CHÂTELET {pg 298}
The Boheman consoles himself=> The Bohemian consoles himself {pg 367}