Monsieur Ude, who is, unquestionably, the prince of gastronomers, has
just published the tenth edition of his _French Cook_, of which, line
upon line, we may say, _Decies repelita placebit_; and Jarrin, the
celebrated _artiste en sucre_, has also revised his _Italian
Confectioner_, in a fourth edition. We should think both these works
must be the literary furniture of every good kitchen, or they ought
to be; for there is just enough of the science in them to make them
extremely useful, whilst all must allow them to be entertaining.
A few years ago, Mrs. Glasse ruled the roast of cookery, and not a
stew was made without consulting her invaluable book. Whilst we were
embroiled in war, her instructions were standing orders, but with the
peace came a host of foreign luxuries and fashions, among these,
_Cookery from France_. Hence the French system became introduced into
the establishments of the wealthy of this country, to which may be
attributed the sale of nine editions of M. Ude's work; for it is
strictly what it professes to be, "A System of Fashionable and
Economical Cookery, adapted to the use of English Families." The tenth
edition, before us, is a bulky _tome_ of about 500 pages, with an
appendix of observations on the meals of the day; mode of giving suppers
at Routs and soirées, as practised when the author was in the employ of
Lord Sefton; and above all, a brief history of the rise and progress of
Cookery, from an admirable French treatise. This is literally the _sauce
piquante_ of the volume, and we serve a little to our readers:--
It appears that the science of Cookery was in a very inferior state
under the first and second race of the French kings. Gregory of Tours
has preserved the account of a repast of French warriors, at which,
in this refined age, we should be absolutely astounded. According to
Eginhard, Charlemagne lived poorly, and ate but little--however, this
trait of resemblance in Charlemagne and Napoleon, the modern Eginhards
have forgotten in their comparison of these two great men. Philippe le
Bel was hardly half an hour at table, and Francis I. thought more of
women than of eating and drinking; nevertheless, it was under this
gallant monarch that the science of gastronomy took rise in France.
Few have heard the name of Gonthier d'Andernach. What Bacon was to
philosophy, Dante and Petrarch to poetry, Michael Angelo and Raphael
to painting, Columbus and Gama to geography, Copernicus and Galileo to
astronomy, Gonthier was in France to the art of cookery. Before him,
their code of eating was formed only of loose scraps picked up here and
there; the names of dishes were strange and barbarous, like the dishes
themselves.
Gonthier is the father of cookery, as Descartes, of French philosophy.
It is said that Gonthier, in less than ten years, invented seven
cullises, nine ragoûts, thirty-one sauces, and twenty-one soups.
A woman opened the gates of an enlightened age; it was Catherine, the
daughter of the celebrated Lorenzo de Medici, niece of Leo the Tenth,
then in all the bloom of beauty. Accompanied by a troop of perfumers,
painters, astrologers, poets, and cooks, she crossed the Alps, and
whilst Bullan planned the Tuileries, Berini recovered from oblivion
those sauces which, for many ages, had been lost. Endowed with all the
gifts of fortune, the mother and the wife of kings, nature had also
gifted her with a palate, whose intuitive sensibility seldom falls to
the lot of sovereigns. In consequence of which, after having driven
before her this troop of male and female soothsayers, who pretended to
foretel the future, she consulted her _maître d'hôtel_, about some roast
meat brought from luxurious Florence; and dipped in a rich sauce the
same hand that held the reins of the empire, and which Roussard compared
to the rosy fingers of Aurora! Let the foolish vulgar laugh at the
importance which the queen-mother seems to place in the art of cooking;
but they have not considered that it is at table, in the midst of the
fumes of Burgundy, and the savoury odour of rich dishes, that she
meditated the means of quelling a dangerous faction, or the destruction
of a man, who disturbed her repose. It was during dinner she had an
interview with the Duke of Alba, with whom she resolved on the massacre
of St. Bartholomew.
Not long after the massacre of St. Bartholomew the throne was occupied
by Henry de Valois, brother to Charles the Ninth, and son of Catherine.
He was a prince of good appetite, a lover of wine and good cheer,
qualities which his mother had carefully fostered and cultivated, that
she alone might hold the reigns of government. Henry de Valois spent
whole days at table, and the constellations of the kitchen shone with
the greatest splendour under this gourmand king. We date from the
beginning of his reign the invention of the fricandeau, generally
attributed to a Swiss. Now the fricandeau having its Columbus, its
discovery appears not more wonderful than that of America, and yet
it required _une grande force de tête_.
Though we acknowledge the immense influence this monarch had over
cookery, we must not conceal that he brought in fashion aromatic sauces,
tough macaroni, cullises, and brown sauces calcined by a process like
that of roasted coffee. These sauces gave the dishes a corrosive
acidity, and as Jourdan le Cointe remarks, far from nourishing the body,
communicated to it a feverish sensation, which baffled all the skill of
physicians, in their attempts to cure it. They were positive poisons
which the Italians had introduced into France, a taste for which spread
through every class of society.
Under the reign of Henry III. a taste for warm drinks was joined to
that of spicy dishes. Hippocrates recommends hot water in fevers,
Avicenna in consumption, Trallien in phrensy, Plato in loathings, Aetius
in strangury,--whence we conclude that warm water, having so many
different qualities, must have been a very useful article at table, had
it only been to assist digestion, considering that people ate copiously
in the reign of the Valois. They made not one single repast without a
jug full of hot water, and even wine was drunk lukewarm.
If the poor have preserved the memory of Henry IV., we cannot say as
much of his cooks. That monarch did nothing for them;--either Nature
had not endowed him with a good appetite, (for what prince ever was
perfect,) or he looked upon them, as, in the last century, we looked
upon soups, as things of hardly any use; but in return they also did
nothing for him.
It is very remarkable, that in France, where there is but one religion,
the sauces are infinitely varied, whilst in England, where the different
sects are innumerable, there is, we may say, but one single sauce.
Melted butter, in English cookery, plays nearly the same part as the
Lord Mayor's coach at civic ceremonies, calomel in modern medicine, or
silver forks in the fashionable novels. Melted butter and anchovies,
melted butter and capers, melted butter and parsley, melted butter and
eggs, and melted butter for ever: this is a sample of the national
cookery of this country. We may date the art of making sauces from the
age of Louis XIV. Under Louis XIII. meat was either roasted or broiled:
every baker had a stove where the citizen, as well as the great lord,
sent his meat to be dressed; but, by degrees, they began to feel the
necessity of sauces.
It appears that the great wits of the age of Louis XIV. had not that
contempt for cookery which some idealists of our days affect to have.
Boileau has described a bad repast like a man who has often seen better;
he liked the pleasures of the table, which have never been incompatible
with the gifts of genius, or the investigations of the understanding. "I
cannot conceive," says Doctor Johnson, "the folly of those, who, when at
table, think of every thing but eating; for my part, when I am there I
think of nothing else; and whosoever does not trouble himself with this
important affair at dinner, or supper, will do no good at any other
time." Boswell affirms that he never knew a man who dispatched a dinner
better than the great moralist. But what avails it to defend cooks and
gourmands? It is an axiom in political economy, according to Malthus,
that _he who makes two blades of grass grow, where before there was but
one, ought to be considered as the benefactor of his country, and of
mankind_. Is not this a service which the epicure and the cook every day
do their country? Addison thought differently from Johnson on this
subject: "Every time," says he, "that I see a splendid dinner, I fancy
fever, gout, and dropsy, are lying in ambush for me, with the whole race
of maladies which attack mankind: in my opinion an epicure is a fool."
What does this blustering of Addison prove? Boswell also asserts, that
Addison often complained of indigestion. And in the present times, the
first chemist of the day, Sir Humphry Davy, passes for a finished
gourmand.
Roasting, boiling, frying, broiling, do not alone constitute the arc of
cooking, otherwise the savage of the Oronoco might be _maître d'hôtel_
with Prince Esterhazy.
The science of gastronomy made great progress under Louis XV., a
brilliant epoch for the literature of gastronomy: together with the
fashions, customs, freedom of opinion, and taste for equipages and
horses brought from Great Britain--some new dishes taken from the
culinary code of this country, such as puddings and beef-steaks, were
also introduced into France. Thanks to the increasing progress and
discoveries in chemistry, and to the genius of our artists, the art of
cookery rose to the greatest height towards the end of the last century.
What a famous age was that of Mezelier, l'Asne, Jouvent, Richaud, Chaud,
and Robert.
History will never forget that great man, who aspired to all kinds
of glory, and would have been, if he had wished, as great a cook as
he was a statesman--I mean the Prince de Talleyrand, who rekindled the
sacred flame in France. The first clouds of smoke, which announced the
resurrection of the science of cookery in the capital, appeared from
the kitchen of an ancient bishop.
A revolution like the French, which presented to their eyes such
terrible spectacles, must have left some traces in their physical or
intellectual constitution. At the end of this bloody drama, the mind,
bewildered by the late dreadful scenes, was unable to feel those sweet
and peaceable emotions, in which it had formerly delighted; as the
palate, having long been at rest, and now become blunted, must require
high-seasoned dishes, to excite an appetite. The reign of the Directory,
therefore is that of Romances à la Radcliffe, as well as of Sauces à la
Provençale. Fortunately, the eighth of Brumaire pulled down the five
Directors, together with their saucepans.
Under the Consulship, and during the empire, the art of cooking, thanks
to the labours of Beauvilliers, Balaine, and other artists, made new and
remarkable improvements. Among the promoters of the gastric science, the
name of a simple amateur makes a distinguished figure--it is Grisnod
de la Reynière, whose almanac the late Duke of York called the most
delightful book that ever issued from the press. We may affirm, that the
_Almanach des Gourmands_ made a complete revolution in the language and
usages of the country.
We are yet too near the restoration to determine the degree of influence
it had on cookery in France. The restoration has introduced into
monarchy the representative forms friendly to epicurism, and in this
respect it is a true blessing--a new era opened _to those_ who are
hungry.
M. Jarrin's fourth edition contains upwards of 500 receipts in Italian
confectionery, with plates of improvements, &c. like a cyclopaedian
treatise on mechanics; and when our readers know there are "seven
essential degrees of boiling sugar," they will pardon the details of the
business of this volume. The "degrees" are--1. _Le lissé_, or thread,
large or small; 2. _Le perlé_, or pearl, _le soufflet_, or blow; 4. _La
plume_, the feather; 5. _Le boulet_, the ball, large or small; 6. _Le
cassé_, the crack; and, 7. the _caramel_. So complete is M. Jarrin's
system of confectionery, that he is "independent of every other artist;"
for he even explains engraving on steel and on wood. What a host of
disappointments this must prevent!
If we look further into, or "drink deep" of the art of confectionery,
we shall find it to be a perfect Microcosm--a little creation; for our
artist talks familiarly of "producing picturesque scenery, with trees,
lakes, rocks, &c.; gum paste, and modelling flowers, animals, figures,
&c." with astonishing mimic strife. We must abridge one of these
receipts for a "_Rock Piece Montée_ in a lake."
"Roll out confectionery paste, the size of the dish intended to receive
it; put into a mould representing your _pond_ a lining of almond paste,
coloured pale pink, and place in the centre a sort of pedestal of almond
paste, supported by lumps of the same paste baked; when dry put it into
the stove. Prepare _syrup_ to fill the hollow of the _lake_, to
represent the _water_; having previously modelled in gum paste little
_swans_, place them in various parts of the _syrup_; put it into the
stove for three hours, then make a small hole through the paste, under
your _lake_, to drain off the syrup; a crust will remain with the
_swans_ fixed in it, representing the _water_. Next build the _rock_ on
the pedestal with rock sugar, biscuits, and other appropriate articles
in sugar, fixed to one another, supported by the confectionery paste you
have put in the middle, the whole being cemented together with caramel,
and ornamented. The moulding and heads should then be pushed in almond
paste, coloured red; the _cascades_ and other ornaments must be _spun in
sugar_."
These are, indeed, romantic secrets. Spinning nets and cages with sugar
is another fine display of confectionery skill--we say nothing of the
nets and cages which our fair friends are sometimes spinning--for the
sugar compared with their bonds--are weak as the cords of the
Philistines.
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