The French have reason to boast that the gastronomic center of the
world is in Paris, within a circle intersected by a line drawn from the
Place de l'Opéra to the Place Vendôme. In this region there are scores
of restaurants of the first rank in which one eats the best soups and
stews, the best veal, the best poultry, the best salads and sauces,
the best vegetables, the best entrées, the best bread and butter, the
best cheeses, to be found anywhere on this big planet of ours. Some
persons, for sufficient reasons, prefer English roast meats or German,
Swiss, or Austrian pastry, but in the preparation of the foods just
named French supremacy is unquestionable.
It takes months--and a big purse--to get an adequate idea of the good
things offered at the Paris restaurants. Each has its special dishes
and sauces, handed down in some cases from generation to generation.
Not to have a unique sauce for sole, or a monopoly in a special kind of
soup, would subject an establishment to the danger of being classed as
second-rate.
Paris is full of professional epicures--prominent among them are
authors and journalists--who frequent certain places for special famous
dishes and who quickly resent any deterioration or carelessness on the
part of the chef. It is these connoisseurs who are served best; they
are willing to give the cook time to prepare a dish scientifically,
and they take time to eat it hygienically, that is, with lingering
enjoyment of its appetizing flavors.
These gourmets appreciate epicurean subtleties like that practiced
by the late Frédéric of the Tour d'Argent, who held that "different
kinds of fuel should be used for the roasting of different kinds of
meat, believing that the spiced scents of some woods transmitted
in the cooking add to the pleasure of eating all kinds of game";--a
notion which was acted on by the ancient Romans as well as by Japanese
gourmets, and which is also justified by the fact that in the smoking
of ham and bacon it makes a decided difference what kind of wood is
burned.
[Illustration: Boeuf à la Mode]
One of the oldest Parisian restaurants is the Boeuf à la Mode which,
for more than a century, has owed its vogue in part to its special way
of preparing and serving the dish after which it is named.
A specialty of these restaurants is pancake. In our own country "French
pancake" is usually a thick, leathery griddle cake rolled round a
spoonful of jelly and served tepid on a tepid plate. In Paris the
head waiter himself attends to the important function of putting the
finishing touches on the cakes. They are brought in from the kitchen
thin, crisp, and hot; but that is not enough. The waiter has before him
a chafing dish into which he puts one of the cakes, with a hard sauce,
and some liqueur which is set on fire. He has also before him a pile
of hot plates for each of the diners; into one of these plates each
cake is transferred when ready and brought to you by another waiter, to
be eaten red-hot. It is worth a trip across the Atlantic to eat those
pancakes.
Mutton on the best Parisian menus is not simply mutton. It is mutton of
a particular "vintage," and in some cases the name of the breeder of
the sheep is printed on the bill of fare.
Fruit is brought to the table in large baskets. Cherries, and
particularly the fragrant wild strawberries, seem doubly appetizing
when served that way. A fragrant French melon sometimes perfumes a
whole dining-room. Those who have to count their francs, however, had
better inquire as to prices before indulging freely in fancy fruits.
Very expensive, though worth the money, are the _langoustes_, which are
as good as the American lobster. Better still are the _écrevisses_, or
crawfish, which are kept on sale alive in the great market place, and
are therefore always good, and safe to eat.
Some restaurants are favored for their lunches, others for their
dinners, still others for their late suppers. In this last class, it
is needless to say, vulgar extravagance prevails. Usually there is the
latest kind of dancing, or music, or some other kind of stupefying
noise, and gastronomy takes a back seat.
Warm weather brings into favor the summer restaurants, in which usually
one can lunch or dine in the garden or under a tree. That the breathing
of outdoor air while eating is as great an appetizer as the savory food
itself, is one of the many lessons we have yet to learn of the French
and other Europeans.
How did the restaurants of Paris get their culinary supremacy?
During the Revolution many of the nobles were ruined, and their
chefs--among them Méot, Robert, Roze, Véry, Leda, Legacque,
Beauvilliers, Naudet, Edon became caterers to gourmets at large.
"Beauvilliers, who established his restaurant about 1782, was for
fifteen years the most famous restaurateur of Paris, and provided
liberally such delicate and sublimated dishes as those which had
hitherto been found only on the tables of the king, of the nobles, and
of the farmers-general. The great restaurateurs of modern Paris are
nearly all successors of one or the other of the famous cooks above
mentioned," as Theodore Child pointed out.
In the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris I came across books giving
curious glimpses of the restaurants at earlier periods. In 1574 there
was published a "Discours sur les causes de l'extrême cherté qui est
aujourd'hui en France et sur les moyens d'y remédier." The author
complains that people are no longer satisfied with three courses
but must have meats in half-a-dozen styles, with sauces, _hachés_,
_pasticeries_, all sorts of _salmigondis_, etc. Every one he says, now
goes to dine at Le More, Sanson, Innocent, or Havart, "maistres de
volupté et despense, qui en une chose publique bien policée et reglée
seraient bannis et chassez comme corrupteurs des mœurs."
This diatribe against the providers of savory food as corruptors of
public morals who, if the police tended to its duty, would be chased
from the city, seems to indicate that Puritan ideas on the subject of
the enjoyment of food once prevailed even in France.
As late as 1842 there were only seventeen restaurants in Paris,
where now there are more than seventeen times seventeen. At the date
mentioned, most of them were near the Palais Royal, and one could
dine for two francs--forty cents!--while lunch was only a franc and
a quarter. There were places where a workman could get, for twenty
centimes (four cents), bread, wine, soup, and meat enough for a meal.
In Paris, as elsewhere, prices have soared since that time, but
correspondingly cheap eating places abound in all quarters. The
lowest-priced restaurants likely to be patronized by tourists and
resident foreigners are the Duval, and other "Bouillons," at which one
who knows may get good dishes. Well-to-do Parisians and foreigners may
often be seen in these eating places, and one of them actually has a
star of excellence in Baedeker.
At one of these establishments I had one of the best _petites marmites_
I have ever eaten. If you don't know what a petite marmite is I am
sorry for you. I have dined repeatedly with a Frenchman noted both as
artist and epicure, and each time he ordered petite marmite. If you ask
a French head waiter's advice in London or Paris, he is more likely
than not to suggest petite marmite. It is so good, and the making of
it gives such a deep insight into French methods that I will quote the
recipe by Escoffier in his "Le Guide Culinaire." It is for ten people.
_Nutritious elements_: 2 lbs. beef, one lb. lean, the other
well mixed with fat, as the end of a rib. 1 marrowbone wrapped
in cheese-cloth, 1 fowl--not too young and tender, giblets
from four fowls. _Liquid_: 3 litres (about three quarts) of
white consommé--recipe follows--the seasoning to be added just
before serving.
_Aromatic elements_: 2-5 lb. carrots (200 grammes), 2-5 lb.
nearly ripe turnips, 3-10 lb. leeks (150 grammes), 1 small
celery heart, ½ lb. cabbage, blanched, cooked separately
with bouillon and drippings.
"_Observations:_ The 'Petite Marmite' consommé is served
without clarifying, and owes its merit only to the materials
which it contains and the extreme care brought to its
preparation. It must be served slightly fat. Its special
savor, different from clarified consommé, must recall the
homely Pot-au-feu, and be recognized unmistakably in Croute
au pot, Consommé à la Bouchère, and others of which it is the
base, the only difference being that these consommés do not
need absolutely to have fowl in them, whereas it is rigorously
obligatory in the Petite Marmite.
"For 10 litres of white consommé 7 kilos of beef (between
14 and 15 lbs.) 4 kilos being lean meat, the other 3 soup
bone, 21-5 lbs. carrots (5 or 6), 900 grammes (nearly 2 lbs.)
turnips, 1 lb. leeks, 2-5 lb. parsnips, 2 medium-sized onions,
3 cloves, 3 cloves of garlic, 3 pieces celery, 14 litres (14
quarts approximately) cold water, 70 grammes brown salt (salt
that has not been purified). Cook five hours.
"_Observations_: Simple consommé is habitually cooked 5 hours,
which is quite sufficient to get all the nutritious elements
from the beef. On the other hand this is quite insufficient
for the bones and fails to extract their nutritive principles.
To obtain this result slow cooking from 12 to 15 hours is
necessary. In great kitchens it has become the habit to make
a first consommé with the bones (crushed) which will cook
at least 12 hours. This consommé is then used for a second
cooking of the meat alone which takes about 4 hours, that
is only the time necessary to cook the meat. This second
operation can be shortened by cutting meat and vegetables in
small pieces and clarifying them as usual."
As the American practice of bluffing--of charging a high price for
a poor thing, to make the consumer think it must be good--is not a
Parisian trait, the more expensive the restaurant, the better the food
is likely to be.
Next to the Bouillons, in the culinary hierarchy, are the Brasseries.
At these, one can get well prepared dishes at reasonable prices, which
are always marked on the bill of fare; and, as the name indicates, one
can take a glass of beer or a bottle of mineral water instead of the
expensive wine which the highest class restaurants expect every one to
order, on penalty of perhaps not being served with a meal prepared in
the chef's best mood.
These leading restaurants are at present in the throes of a serious
struggle for existence; pessimists go so far as to predict the
extinction of the whole species in the not very distant future. The
Maison Dorée and the Café Riche had to make way some years ago for
business houses that could better afford to pay the soaring rents, and
in 1912 the Durand was transformed into a tailoring establishment. Of
the old classical restaurants the Tour d'Argent, Lapérouse, Paillard,
Bœuf à la Mode, Voisin, hold their own, yet I have dined
in them on evenings when they were anything but crowded.
Doubtless the custom of some of these places of not affixing prices to
the viands offered on the bill of fare has had something to do with
bringing about this result. Even a well-to-do diner does not always
care to be entirely at the mercy of the head waiter in the making-up of
his bill. But it is the multiplying of the brasseries that is chiefly
responsible for the decline of the high-priced restaurants, and another
dangerous rival that has helped to bring it about is the palatial,
up-to-date hotel. Some of these hotels employ as good chefs as the
leading restaurants and offer as abundant opportunities for sumptuous
and savory repasts, at prices tall enough to please the most reckless
visitor from New York or Buenos Ayres.
Gourmets will doubtless continue to frequent the classical restaurants
as long as they maintain their high standard. It would be a historic
as well as a gastronomic calamity to have them disappear. If necessary
the Government should give them a subvention as it does to the Opéra
and the Théâtre Français; for these epicurean establishments have done
quite as much as the theaters to make France famous among the civilized
nations of the world.
It is owing to them that French long ago became the culinary
world-language. Go wherever you please, from Paris to Berlin,
to Lucerne, Milan, Vienna, Constantinople, Tokio; or, in the
other direction, to London, New York, Chicago, San Francisco,
Melbourne,--everywhere, at the leading restaurants, you will find the
menu printed in French, and, in case of a course dinner, the viands
offered in the order prescribed by French gourmets.
In Germany, after the Franco-Prussian war, chauvinistic attempts were
made to banish French words from the bill of fare. These attempts were,
as Hermann Dunger frankly admits in his _Verdeutschungswörterbuch_
(1882), a failure; in some cases the comic consequence was that Germans
who recognized a dish under its French name hadn't the remotest
idea what it was when translated into their own language. Like the
Italian forte, piano, adagio, diminuendo, and other musical expression
marks, French gastronomic words have become parts of a spontaneous
Esperanto--a world-language, which has come to stay; a perpetual
reminder of the most important contribution made by the great French
nation to modern civilization--the gradual substitution, everywhere,
and particularly in Germany and England, of refined methods of
preparing food in place of the barbarous mediæval ones prevalent until
two centuries ago.
We get an interesting glimpse of French gastronomic leadership by
glancing at the words successively adopted by the Germans. In 1715,
when the "Frauenzimmerlexicon" of Amaranthes appeared, the following
French words had already gained currency, among them: bouillon,
carbonade, champignon, côtelette, coulis, crème, à la daube, entremets,
farce, fricadelle, fricandeau, fricassé, gelée, hachis, marinieren,
omelette, pikant, potage, ragout, saucisse; and for most of these there
was no exact equivalent in German.
During the time of Louis XV Germany further imported the following:
dejeuner, diner, souper, dessert, entrée, fumet, haut-goût, poularde,
saucière, sorbet, table d'hôte, bonbon, champagne, limonade, liqueur.
To a later period belong braiser, bœuf à la mode, consommé, filet,
hors d'œuvre, konserve, roulade. These as well as the words
gastronome and gourmand were imported during the early decades of the
nineteenth century. To the second half of the century belong croquette,
entrecôte, flan, remoulade, meringue, purée, vol-au-vent. The word menu
was not adopted in Germany till after 1850.