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Living out our past through wine...

...we continue to live out our past by drinking wine made from
a plant that has its origins in the ancient Near East...

Fermented beverages have been preferred over water throughout the

ages: they are safer, provide psychotropic effects, and are more
nutritious. Some have even said alcohol was the primary agent for the
development of Western civilization, since more healthy individuals
(even if inebriated much of the time) lived longer and had greater
reproductive success. When humans became "civilized," fermented
beverages were right at the top of the list for other reasons as well:
conspicuous display (the earliest Neolithic wine, which might be
dubbed "Chateau Hajji Firuz," was like showing off a bottle of Pétrus
today); a social lubricant (early cities were even more congested
than those of today); economy (the grapevine and wine tend to take
over cultures, whether Greece, Italy, Spain, or California); trade and
cross-cultural interactions (special wine-drinking ceremonies and
drinking vessels set the stage for the broader exchange of ideas and
technologies between cultures); and religion (wine is right at the
center of Christianity and Judaism; Islam also had its "Bacchic" poets
like Omar Khayyam).

Whatever the reason, we continue to live out our past civilization by

drinking wine made from a plant that has its origins in the ancient
Near East. Your next bottle may not be a 7000 year old vintage from
Hajji Firuz, but the grape remains ever popular—cloned over and over
again from those ancient beginnings.

Neolithic Period
“Chateau Hajji Firuz”
How did we know it was wine?

If winemaking is best understood as an intentional human activity

rather than a seasonal happenstance, then the Neolithic period (8500-
4000 B.C.) is the first time in human prehistory when the necessary
preconditions for this momentous innovation came together.

Most importantly, Neolithic communities of the ancient Near East and

Egypt were permanent, year-round settlements made possible by
domesticated plants and animals.
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Overview of two Neolithic houses at Hajji Firuz Tepe, during excavation.

With a more secure food supply than nomadic groups and with a more
stable base of operations, a Neolithic "cuisine" emerged. Using a
variety of food processing techniques—fermentation, soaking, heating,
spicing—Neolithic peoples are credited with first producing bread, beer,
and an array of meat and grain entrées we continue to enjoy today.

Crafts important in food preparation, storage, and serving advanced in

tandem with the new cuisine. Of special significance is the appearance
of pottery vessels around 6000 B.C. The plasticity of clay made it an
ideal material for forming shapes such as narrow-mouthed vats and
storage jars for producing and keeping wine.

Mary Voigt (white hat) excavates the "kitchen" of the Hajji Firuz Neolithic house that
yielded the six wine jars, which had been set into the floor along one wall of the
room.

After firing the clay to high temperatures, the resultant pottery is

essentially indestructible, and its porous structure helps to absorb
organics.

A major step forward in our understanding of Neolithic winemaking

came from the analysis of a yellowish residue inside a jar (see photo at
top of page) excavated by Mary M. Voigt at the site of Hajji Firuz Tepe
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in the northern Zagros Mountains of Iran. The jar, with a volume of

about 9 liters (2.5 gallons) was found together with five similar jars
embedded in the earthen floor along one wall of a "kitchen" of a
Neolithic mudbrick building, dated to ca. 5400-5000 B.C. The
structure, consisting of a large living room that may have doubled as a
bedroom, the "kitchen," and two storage rooms, might have
accommodated an extended family. That the room in which the jars
were found functioned as a kitchen was supported by the finding of
numerous pottery vessels, which were probably used to prepare and
cook foods, together with a fireplace.

Did you know...?

Humans and most of what they surround themselves with (clothing, habitations, and
cuisine), are primarily organic in chemical composition. Organics are easily
destroyed and dispersed; only the application of microchemical techniques can
reconstruct what existed originally. The methods and approaches that have been
developed for ancient wine can be applied to other organic materials—whether DNA,
dyes, woods, resins, drugs, honey, or whatever—as long as they have been well
preserved enough (best in dry, desert regions or underwater, where oxygen is not
available).

Egypt
Wine for the Afterlife
The wild grape never grew in ancient Egypt.

Yet a thriving royal winemaking industry had been established in the

Nile Delta—most likely due to Early Bronze Age trade between Egypt
and Palestine, encompassing modern Israel,the West Bank and Gaza,
and Jordan—by at least Dynasty 3 (ca. 2700 B.C.), the beginning of
the Old Kingdom period. Winemaking scenes appear on tomb walls,
and the accompanying offering lists include wine that was definitely
produced at vineyards in the Delta. By the end of the Old Kingdom,
five wines—all probably made in the Delta—constitute a canonical set
of provisions, or fixed "menu," for the afterlife.

Early Dynastic "wine jar" and stopper from a royal tomb at Abydos, Egypt.
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Close up of the stopper. It bears the name of Den, a Dynasty 1 pharaoh.

The evidence for winemaking in the Delta during the preceding Early
Dynastic Period (Dynasties 1 and 2) is more inferential. Rather than
recording a large number of wine jars in an offering list, actual jars in
large quantities were buried in the tombs of the pharoahs at Abydos
and those of their families at Saqqara, the main religious centers. The
jars are stoppered with a round pottery lid and a conical clay lump that
was pressed over the lid and tightly around the rim. The clay stopper
was generally impressed with multiple cylinder seal impressions giving
the name of the pharoah.

...such seals have been interpreted as a primitive kind of wine

label...

While chemical tests have yet to verify that the Dynasty 1 and 2 jars
contained wine, less common seal impressions on the jar stoppers do
include hieroglyphic signs for "grapevine/vineyard" (see drawing at top
of page) and possible geographic locations (e.g., Memphis, the
northern capital, near Saqqara), in addition to the king's name. Such
seals have been interpreted as a primitive kind of wine label, possibly
giving the location of the winery and its owner. The impressions with
only the king's name might then be an abbreviated form of registration
for jars that generally contained wine. Viniculture in Egypt must have
taken some time to develop, and the Early Dynastic "wine jars" may
well represent the first "fruits" of the nascent industry.

Is it possible to know when the first grapevines were transplanted to

the Nile Delta?

Drawing of a cylinder seal impression on a jar stopper bearing the name of

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Khasekhemwy, a Dynasty 2 pharoah. It shows a grapevine trained to run along a

trellis or arbor.
The answer is vital for understanding the prehistory of an industry that
eventually spread over the entire Delta, to the large western oases,
and even to towns on the upper Nile where the climate would seem to
preclude viniculture. The domesticated grapevine could only have
come from some region of the Levant that was already exploiting it,
and many specialists—farmers, horticulturists, traders, and above all,
vintners—would've been involved in the establishment and success of
the developing industry.

The grapevine hieroglyphic itself (pictured above), showing a

grapevine trained to run along a trellis or arbor, indicates that the
Early Dynastic viniculture was quite sophisticated.

Did you know...?

Many of the Museum's millon+ artifacts in its collections relate to fermented
beverages or cuisine. (Think of Greek classical pottery and Dionysus cavorting with
his satyrs and maenads!)

Mesopotamia
Under the Grape Arbors...
It has usually been argued that barley beer was the alcoholic beverage
of choice in ancient Sumer, since the hot, dry climate of southern Iraq
makes it difficult to grow grapevines, and the textual evidence for
viniculture and winemaking in Mesopotamia is minimal before the 2nd
millennium B.C. But based on chemical evidence for wine inside jars
that could've been used to transport and serve it, wine was probably
already being enjoyed by at least the upper classes in Late Uruk times
(ca. 3500-3100 B.C.). Early Dynastic cylinder seals depict the royalty
and their entourages drinking beer with tubes/straws from large jars
and a second beverage—presumably wine—from hand-held cups.

The wine imported into lowland Greater Mesopotamia could have been
brought from the northern Zagros Mountains of Iran or other parts of
the Near East, at least 600 kilometers away. The 5th century B.C.
Greek historian Herodotus describes shipping wine down the Euphrates
or Tigris from Armenia at a much later period: round skin boats were
loaded with date-palm casks of wine and delivered to Babylon. River
transport was also an option in the Late Uruk Period. But if the
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demand for the beverage were great enough, transplantation of

grapevines to closer locales in the central Zagros and possibly as far
south as Susa would be anticipated. When the Late Uruk trade routes
were suddenly cut off at the end of the period, the pressure to
establish productive vineyards closer to the major urban centers would
have intensified.

A "banquet" scene on an impression of a lapis cylinder seal from Queen Pu-abi's

tomb. A male and female on either side of a wide-mouthed jar are shown imbibing
barley beer through drinking tubes, while others below raise high their cups,
probably containing wine, which is served from a spouted jar.

Future excavation will be decisive in tracing the prehistory of

viniculture and winemaking in this region of the ancient Near East;
already there is a strong indication that the domesticated grape plant
had already been transplanted there as early as the mid-3rd
millennium B.C. Elamite cylinder seals, foreshadowing similiar scenes
on Assyrian reliefs some two millennia later, depict males and females
seated under grape arbors, drinking what is most likely wine

Did you know...?

Queen Pu-abi, who was buried with her servants—who had all been ceremonially
poisoned—was accompanied to the afterlife with hundreds of gold and silver goblets,
drinking-tubes or straws of lapis lazuli, and a five-liter silver jar, which is thought to
have been her daily allotment of barley beer!
Did you know...?
Museum scientists have analyzed what participants ate and drank at the final
funerary feast of King Midas at Gordion (ca. 700 B.C.) and discovered that it was
lamb stew and a mixed fermented beverage of wine, barley beer, and honey mead!

Louis XIV & Modern French Cuisine

Louis XIV (1638-1715) encouraged and enjoyed the "new invention" of classic French
cuisine. This food movement differed from Medieval/Renaissance cooking in that it
stressed the natural flavors of foods rather than intense spices and sugars. Classic French
cuisine was championed by chefs such as Pierre Francois de la Varenne. His book, Le
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Cuisiner Francois (published in 1651), is still regarded as a turning point in culinary

history. This was also the period of "New World" food introductions. Among the most
significant: potatoes and tomatoes (These were not, however, assimilated until the next
century). Salads of all sorts were also very popular, as as were a battery of new sauces,
which would define classic French cuisine. Of course, not everyone was able to partake
in this new food revolution. What were the peasants eating in the 17th century France?

"In the reign of Louis XIV, cooking was spectacular rather than fine or delicate, and the
festivities of the Prince of Conde at Chantilly, for example, were particularly sumptious.
The famous Vatel was maitre d'hotel of Conde the Great, a very important position! A
great number of dishes were served at each meal and there are many descriptions of the
meals served at the table of Louis XIV, who ate too heavily for a true gourmet. The
Palatine Princess wrote: "I have very often seen the king eat four plates of different
soups, an entire pheasant, a partridge, a large plateful of salad, mutton cut up in its juice
with garlic, two good pieces of ham, a plateful of cakes and fruits and jams.' However,
Louis XIV established the habit of having dishes served separately. Before this time,
everything was piled up together in a large pyramid. In his reign, the culinary utensils of
the Middle Ages were replaced by a batterie de cuisine, which included many new pots
and pans in tinplate and wrought iron, and, later, the introduction of silver utensils. Louis
XIV had a passion for vegetables, which led La Quintinie to develp gardening: green peas
were produced in March and strawberries in April. Oysters and lamb were particularly
highly prized, and elaborate dishes were concocted. One sauce became famous:
bechamel, named after the financier Louis de Bechameil, who drafted recipes and
precepts in verse. Coffee, tea and chocolate were favoured by the aristocracy, and doctors
debated about their advantages and drawbacks. Establishments were set up specializing in
these exotic drinks. For example, in 1680 the cafe Procope opened in Paris. Here, fruit
juices, ices and sorbets, exotic wines, hippocras, oregat pastes, crystallized (candied)
fruits and fruits preserved in brandy were sold. In addition to the coffee houses, taverns,
inns and cafes had multiplied in the city and were visited frequently by princes and their
courtiers."
---Larousse Gastronomique, Completely revised and updated [Clarkson Potter:New York]
2001 (p. 519)

"The decisive change in French cooking did not become apparent until the middle of the
seventeenth century, although the new cuisine codified by Pierre Francois de la Varenne
in Le cuisinier francois (1651) had been evolving for some time before that...La Varenne,
squire of the kitchen to the Marquis d'Uxelles, seems to have been unable to abandon the
court tradition completely, but the atmosphere of Le cuisinier francois suggests that his
heart was not in it. The old recipes were there, but the new ones, harbingers of what is
now thought as the classic French cuisine, were sharply contrasted. La Varenne began his
book with a recipe for stock-in which most cookery writers have followed him ever
since-gave sixty recipes for the formerly humble egg...treated vegetables as food in their
own right, made much use of the globe artichoke and very little of spices, and
recommended simple sauces based on meat juices and sharpened with vinegar, lemon
juice, or verjuice..."
---Food in History, Reay Tannahill [Three Rivers Press:New York] 1988 (p. 237-8)
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"Common European cooking traditions endured until the seventeenth century, when
national cuisines began to develop. It was only when French cookery became culturally
stylized and was used to mark social differences that it also became a model for the
courtly and aristocratic cuisines of Europe. This concious cultural creation of cookery and
table manners shows itself most clearly in the fact that before the seventeenth century,
cookbooks and recipe collections were rarely published. Then, suddenly, in the
seventeeth and eighteenth centuries, many cookbooks appeared. The first of this series
was Cusinier Francois, by Francois Pierre de la Varenne, published again and again from
1651 until 1738....In the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries...the haute cuisine served to
express courtly aristocratic lifestyles. Only cooking and eating that demonstrated wealth,
luxury, and pomp could accomplish this goal and distinguish the aristocracy in no
uncertain terms from the rising middle class..."
---"The Dominance of the French Grande Cuisine," The Cambridge World History of
Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas, Volume Two [Cambridge
University Press:Cambridge] 2000 (p. 1210-1216) [includes extensive bibliography]

"The age of Louis XIV! The teachings of Olivier de Serres now bore fruit. Gastronomical
customs and culinary recipes appeared in new forms that were very close to our own of
today. Food supplies contined to increase. Market-gardens and kitchen-gardens under
cultivation flourished. Vinyards produced the finest wine: people were now able to drink
it without flavoring it. Good food became an art. More and more cookbooks
appeared...M. de Bonnefons had an entre almost everywhere, among the great as well as
those of lesser importance. He had a keen eye and his book is full of instructive
information. In the chapter on arranging a formal dinner we read, for instance: "The great
fashion is to place four fine soups at the four corners of the table with four dish stands
between each two, with four salt cellars placed near the soup tureen. On the dish stands
are placed four entrees, in low pie dishes, Guests' plates should be deep so that they can
use them for the soup or for helping themselves to whatever they wish to eat without
taking it spoonful by spoonful out of the serving dish as they might be disgusted at the
sight of a spoon which had been in the mouth of a person, being dipped into the serving
dish without being wiped. The second course will consist of four substantial dishes set in
the corners, either a court-bouillon, a pice of beef or a large roast, and salad on the plates.
The third course will consist of roast poultry and game, small roasts and all the rest. The
middle of the table is left free as otherwise the head steward will have difficulty in
reaching across it, because of its great size. If desired, fill the centre of the table with
melons, various salads in bowls or on little plates to make serving them easier, oranges
and lemons. Preserves in syrup on marzipan biscuits could also be put there."...The Sun
King was a glutton. He ate without discernment, and he ate enourmously. He would think
nothing of four huge plates of different kinds of soup, a whole pheasant, a partridge,
vegetables, a large dish of salad, two big slices of ham, mutton with garlic, a plate of
cakes and --to wind up a good meal--eggs prepared in various ways. Thanks to the Sun
King, oysters regained the popularity they had lost since the days of the
Romans...Families no longer ate in their bedrooms or in the halls of their dwellings.
Every respectable household now boasted a dining room...The national dish was the pot-
a-oie--it was to remain popular right up to the Revolution. The recipe is simple: take an
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enormous goose and stuff it with various meats, especially feathered game...Place a few
aromatic herbs inside the poultry as well. Put it in the oven to roast. The most refined
person ate only the stuffing; they left the goose for the servants...Coffee apperaed in
France under Louis XIV. The king drank it for the first time in 1644...From coffee to
cafes was but a step. In 1672, an Armenian at the Saint-Germain fair opened the first shop
where one could sample coffee...The man made a fortune."
---An Illustrated History of French Cuisine, Christian Guy, translated by Elisabeth Abbott
[Bramhall House:New York] 1962 (p.63-66)

Royal Tables/Versailles

"The King's Meat...Three hundred and twenty-four people were exclusively employed on
preparing the toothless monarch's food. This army was lodged in the Grand Commun,
now the Hopital Militaire. At meal-times, the beat', that is to say, all the dishes shown on
the menu, was borne in solemn procession, led by the First Maitre d'Hotel, himself
accompanied by thirty-six serving gentlemen and twelve Masters bearing as a sign of
seniority a silver-gilt baton, from the kitchens across the road into the palace, through a
maze of galleries and corridors and finally to the King's table which was usually laid in
his bedroom. Louis XIV generally ate alone, except when away from Versailles, he
seldom if ever entertained another man and only admitted his family to his board on rare
occasions when the Princes of the Blood wore their hats and he remained bareheaded, no
doubt in order to convey that he was the host and at home, whereas th others were no
more than transient guests. On rising, for his breakfast he took only a bouillon or a cup of
sage tea, so that by the ten o'clock meal his appetite was keen and the matter serious; the
following meal was prepared for one person.

Soups
Of the two old capons, four partridges with cabbage, six pigeons for a bisque, one of
cocks' crests and beatilles

Hors D'Oeuvre
One of capons, partridges

Entrees
A quarter of veal with the rump, the whole of a 28 lb. 12 pigeons for pie

Small Entrees
Six fricasseed chickens, two minced partridges, three young partridges in gravy, six
ember cooked pies, two young grilled turkeys, three fat chickens with truffles

Roasts
Two fat capons, 9 chickens, 9 pigeons, 2 petendeaux, 6 partridges, 4 tarts

Desserts
Two bowls of fruit, 2 of dried preserves, 4 of stewed fruit, or liquid hams.
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...The roast was also flanked by two small dishes; one of capon, two snipe and two teal,
and the other consisting of five partridges. The hors d'oeuvre are not mentioned, but they
were not tiny dainties by solid stuff: sausage, white boudin, truffled pasties and warmed
up beef in gravy. However, during Lent, the King rested and allowed his royal stomach to
benefit by abstinence. It much however be noted that a totally meatless meal, for fear that
he might be too debilitated on fast-days, usually began with a soup made of capon, 4 lb.
Beef, 4 leb. Veal and 4 lb. Mutton. This purely hygienic precaution taken, abstinence
began: a carp, a hundred crayfish, a milk soup, a herb soup, two turtle soups, a sole, a
large pike, four medium soles, two perch, a sole, a hundred oysters, six sting-fish, and as
a roast half a salmon and six soles...And for supper: two foot-long carp, two soups, a pike
a foot and a half long, three perch, three soles, a trout a foot and a half long, half a large
salmon, a large carp. All the King had then to do was retire to bed, but for fear of his
collpasing from night starvation a tiny snack was put at his door...a bottle of water, three
loaves and two bottles of wine."
---Gastronomy of France, Raymond Oliver, translated from the French by Claude Durrell
[Wine and Food Society:Cleveland OH] 1967 (p. 315)

ABOUT 17TH CENTURY FRENCH SALADS

The Sun King likely had several kinds of salads on his table. Popular salads of the day
included mixed greens (lettuce, cress, chickory, purslane) with vinaigarette (vinegar, oil,
salt & spices), pickled vegetable salads (cucumbers, asparagus, etc.), composed salads
(chopped greens and salted meats), boiled salads (warm vegetables dressed in
vinegar/spices), and fruit salads (lemon, pomergranite "dressed" in sugar).

Food historians tell us salads (generally defined as mixed greens with dressing) were
enjoyed by ancient Romans and Greeks. As time progressed, salads became more
complicated. Recipes varied according to place and time. Dinner salads, as we know
them today, were popular with Renaissance diners throughout Europe. Pickled salads
(cucumbers, cabbage, etc. packed in vinegar, salt, & spices) and boiled salads were also
regularly consumed by 16th and 17th century European diners. The 17th century marks
the genesis of the classic French Cuisine (La Varenne, Massialot, etc.). One of the key
concepts of this new cuisine was the perfection of the relationship between acid and salt.
This taste combination was reflected in the sauces (including salad dressings) of the day.
Louis XIV was said to have been fond of food in great excess. Presumably, his menu
featured many salads in grand quantities.

Sample period recipe:

"Minor Herbs of All Kinds for Salads--a recipe of Niclas de Bonneons, 1654:
Tarragon, saxifrage, garden cress, watercress, lamb's lettuce, pimpernel-all these and a
thousand others, flowers as well as herbs, are useful in making salads to be served with
oil or sugar. And, as a rule, the greater the diversity of ingredients in these salads, the
more enjoyable they are. Pimpernel is also useful when placed in one's wine glass, for it
gives its taste and fragrance to the winde. And the bud of the elder, when used in a salad,
serves to relax the stomach."
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---The Grand Masters of French Cuisine: Five Centuries of Great Cooking, Celine Vence
and Robert Courtine [G. Putnam's Sons:New York] 1978 (p. 260)

"In the mid-seventeenth century La Varenne, like the Italians, continued to recommend
salad platters, including salt meats, which he suggested should be kept on hand. He gave
instructions for half-salt or marinated fish and chicken and directions for preserving
lettuce, artichokes, cucumbers, purslane, aparagus, chickory, and cabbage. Salt products
are prominent in his composed dishes. The melted anchovy, or garum, makes its debut,
linking La Varenne closely with Apicius. In contrast to the Italians, he gave no salt meat
any prominence in composed dishes. The mid-seventeenth French twist on Roman food is
the caper, which now makes its appearance in dishes of every sort."
---Acquired Taste: The French Origins of Modern Cooking, T. Sarah Peterson [Cornell
University Press:Ithaca] 1994 (p. 152)

"The French took the salad--that is, food seasoned with salt and acid--as the framework
of their new, stimulating cuisine. They derived the notion of extending the salad
throughout the meal--that is, of making the salt-acid taste a kind of umbrella--from the
ancients and the Renaissance Italians, both whom had served salads at various points
throughout their banquets...The French idea of engulfing the meal in the salad came
principally from [the] Italian practice of making salads of various kinds available
throughout dinner. In their radical revision of food, the French took the idea of the salad
and reshaped the whole meal up to the sweet course so that it would stimulate the
appetitie. Every dish was to become saladlike, whether it was called a salad or not...Salt
coupled with acid became the signature of many a sauce, just as it had become the stamp
of salad. The acid might be vinegar, wine, verjuice (juice of unripe fruit), lemon, or
orange (or much later the tomato)...Of the two crucial parts of a salad, the French gave
the palm to salt. The touch of acid was important, but not so critical as salt."
---ibid (p. 185-6)

Sallets/Dr. Alice Ross

About vinaigrette ("French" dressing)

Need to make something for class? We suggest pumpkin pie!

What were the peasants eating during the Sun King's reign?

"...we need to look at the documents closest to peasant life, drawn up by those who knew
them well, to obtain the completest and most accurate information...The words which
appear most often in these numerous and humble texts are 'bread' and 'corn'. Vorn, bled as
they spelled it, was defined as any cereal which could be used to make bread. Not only
bread, though...since barley, oats, millet, buckwheat, and maize (which was introduced at
the beginning of the seventeenth century) were frequently used in different sorts of
porridge, galette, or thick pancakes, which were not just for the toothless of all ages but
in some provinces...were for general consumption. Nevertheless, bread remained
symbolic both of basic religious and physical nourishment, even among well-off country
people; and the breaking of bread was for long the solemn, almost sacred gesture with
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which the paterfamilias signalled the start of each meal. For some time now it has been
established that expenditure on bread and flour absorbed easily half a poor or humble
family's income. To this it should be added that an adult consumbed three pounds of
bread a day, or more. The reason for this was entirely obvious: bread was far and away
the cheapest source of calories...Stale bread was always consumed, out of economy...hard
bread was much better for pouring soup on to. Not everybody had soup, though....a
porridge of improved maize, may have taken th e place of one made with millet when the
American plant became established between 1630 and 1650...Its introduction enabled
famine to be brought under control...A less striking food (with some salt pork, fortunately
made possible by a plentiful supply of acorns for the pigs) was provided by rye and sweet
chestnuts, usually boiled and mashed...

"It seems that, in most places, soup was the main food a dejeuner (eaten in the morning,
breaking the nocturnal fast), at diner (in the middle of the day), and at souper (in the
evening). What we sould call stock cooked slowly in the hearth, over a fire of wood or
cinders in a pot that was more likely to be earthenware than metal, hanging from the
ineveitable chimney-hook...Into water fetched from the well...they put whatver they could
find in the way of herbs and root vegetables from the garden or the open fields...These
would not include potatoes (except in some mountainous areas in the east end at the end
of the century), but there would be pelnty of radishes...a few carrots and
turnips...sometimes a leek or two, not many of the green vegetables we use today,
although there were twenty or so local kinds of cabbage which still survived at the
begining of this century, and plenty of almost forgotten farinacious foods of the pea and
bean variety...In those relatively rare parts of the country wehre pigs were kept, a piece of
well-salted fat, old and therefore somewhat rancid, swam in the broth...On feast days in
the regions wehre olive and...nut oil were produced, they added a few drops of the
precious liquid...There was also a great variety of herbs...and very different in the south
from in the country round the Loire: chives, spring-onions, tarragon, sage, savory, thyme,
basil, shallots, onion stalks...garlic...When [the soup] was ready everybody brought their
earthenware or wooden bowls to the hearth, or to the table if there was one, and the father
or mother cut the bread into each receptacle and then poured over an amount of broth
appropriate to everybody's age and needs. The soup would be rich in autumn, but
considerably less so by the end of winter. Near the sea or large rivers, a fairly thick and
highly spiced fish soup was less a culinary specialty than a mere utilisation of the fruits of
fishing...After the soup the peasants did not usually have anything...

"This very widespread absence of dairy products, fruit, and especially meat...can be
explained by two simple facts which are seldom, ...noted...The majority of the poor in the
countryside farmed only two or three acres, and tried to live off this land completely,
which they were more or less able to do as long as the weather was kind and the harvests
were good. But they were all forced to find money with which to pay the royal
taxes...That is why they always had to take their eggs, young cocks, butter and cheese,
and the best of the fruit and vegetables to market...

"Meat was hardly ever seen except on feast days...If there were cows, then any calves
would naturally be sold, as would any lambs; old beasts too were sold rather than eaten.
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Which leaves the 'mystery' of the rabbit and the pig. Pigs...were kept in quite large
numbers...The rabbit, which has been such an important element in the diet of the poor in
the last two centuries, was seldom bred outside large towns like Paris...If they wanted to
eat fish, there were rich, tempting stoks in pools, ponds, and rivers (and in the sea for
those who lived by it)...

"Food at feasts...Each house would have a store-room or cellar stocked with full with
barrels and bareels waiting to be filled...in which were kept oil, wine, cider, fat pork,
maybe some veal, preserves, and some fine hams woudl be hanging from the ceiling. In
the main room, near the hearth, would be brass or cast-iron utensils, copper pans, plates
of earthenware...and a set of pewter cutlery for important occasions. There the stews were
redolent of fat pork or even ham, and butter, oil or lard, with cabbage, or peas (i.e. haricot
beans...) or sun-ripened tomatoes or other vegetables, depending upon the region. There
would be dried sausage, or smoked pork, a hen or capon, a fat goose at Christmas, a lamb
at Easter, sometimes a stewed chicken on a Sunday. All the regional differences can bee
seen roughly symbolised in what ethnologistslike to call the 'foundations' of a cuisine: in
the west, this was butter, tin the south-west goose-fat, int he Mediterranean south olive
oil; in some places they used lard, and in a few they made to with nut oil or rapeseed oil.
Then, to round off these feasts or disners of the rich, there would be all sorts of crepes,
fritters, bugnes, mervielles, pets de nonnes..., tartes, clafoutis, with spice-breads and
brioches for the pre-Lenten feasts of Candlemas and Shrove Tuesday, and of other special
festivals...It was th town cooks, in fact, who improved, enriched, and sometimes refined
the simple, plentiful, and tasty dishes and the elast ppor pcountry peiople took these over
in the following centuries...

Drinks...it is obvious that both great feasts and poor gruel must have been washed down
with something. In the big houses and the larger share-cropping farms, the master would
have had local wine...But except in times of extravagant generosity, servants would not
have been entitled to any. Ordinarily they mande do with buvande, boisson or demi-vin:
this would be made of water poured on to the well-pressed grape stalks...the most
universal...drink...was water...When the feast days came round, the poor threw
themselves on the wine, as well as the food, in a kind of frenzy...

"Hunger...in the seventeenth century was always a social phenonemnon...The lavish

feasts were also social and provinical phenomenon, but only happened on rare
occasions."
---French Peasantry in the Seventeeth Century,, Pierre Goubert [Cambridge University
Press:Cambridge] 1989(p. 82-96)

Louis XV

Louis XV of France reigned from 1723-1774. His reign bridged the brilliant opulence of
his predecessor to the disastrous excesses of his successor. The culinary offerings of
Louis VX reflected this period of change.
 14

"The reign of Louis XV was no less happy for gastronomy. Eighteen years of peace
healed painlessly the wounds made by more than sixty years of war; wealth created by
industry, and either spread out by commerce or acquired by its tradesmen, made former
financial inequalities disappear, and the spirit of convivality invaded every class of
society. It is during this period that there was generally established more orderliness in
the meals, more cleanliness and elegance, and those various refinements of service
which, having increased steadily until our own time, threaten now to overstep all limits
and lead us to the point of ridicule."
---The Physiology of Taste, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, originally published in Paris
1825, translated by M.F.K. Fisher [Counterpoint:Washington DC] 1999 (p. 298-9)

Sample menu, circa 1740, for ten persons, provided by Brillat-Savarin

1st course: the bouilli (meat and its broth); an entree of veal cooked in its own juice; an
hors d'oeuvre.
2nd course: a turkey; a plate of vegetables; a salad; a creamy pudding (sometimes).
Dessert: some cheese; some fruit; a jar of preserves.
Plates wer exchanged only three tiems, after the soup, at the second course, and for
dessert. Coffee was very rarely served, but quite often there was a cordial made from
cherries or garden pink, still something of a novelty then."
---ibid (p. 298-9)

"...let us consider courses which have varied in number at different periods, rising to a
maximum under Louis XIV and Louis XV when there were eight coruses of eight dishes
each...In a ceremonial meal tow ouf to the eight courses consisted of entremets and two
of desserts. There would be a soup course consisting of several soups, a fish course of
several fishes, and entree course, a roast course and a game course. Rather surprisingly,
the compositon of the courses could be optiona, the entremets mainly consisted of
vegetables, and the entrees (poultry or classical) could appear in the same course as the
fish, shellfish, roasts or game." ---Gastronomy of France, Raymond Oliver, translated
from the French by Claude Durrell [World Publishing Company:Cleveland OH] 1967(p.
207-7)

Supper eaten by Louis XV at the Chateau on 29 September 1755

[NOTE: "supper" was a meal taken late in the evening, not the main meal of the day.]
The Soups
Two oilles: One of large onions, One a l'espagnole
Two potages: One de sante, One of turnip puree
The Entrees
Small pies a la balaquine, Rabbit fillets a la genevoise, Filet mignon of mutton with sauce
piquant, Fillets of pheasant en matelote, Quails with bay leaves, Turtle doves a la
vinitienne, Partridges a l'ancient salmy, Small garnished pigeons, Blanquette of fowls
with truffles, Marinade of campines, Fowl wings en hatelets, Leg of veal glazed with its
own juice, Minced game a la turque, Sweetbreads Ste. Menehould, Rouen ducklings with
orange, Halicot with dark veloute sauce.
Four Releves
15

Roast mutton of Choisy, Rump of beef a l'ecarlate, Sirloin, the fillet minced with chicory,
Caux fowls with raw onion
Four Main Entremets
Pheasant pie, Jambon de perdrouillet, Brioche, Croquante
Two Medium Entremets--Roasts
Small chickens, Campines, Ortolans, Thrushes, Guignards, Red-leg partridges, Pheasants,
Rouen duckling
Sixteen Small Entremets
A coffee cream, Artichokes a la galigoure, Cardoons a l'essence, Cauliflower with
Parmesan, Eggs with partridge gravy, Truffles a la cendre, Spinach with gravy, Cocks'
crests, Animelles, Green beans with verjuice, Ham omelette, Turkey legs a la duxelles,
Mixed ragout, Chocolate profiterolles, Small jalousies, Creme a la genest." ---ibid (p.
297-300)

A Souper, Vendredi 4, Novem. 1757 (en Francais). A "souper" was the light meal evening
meal. The Main meal of the day was Dinner, served sometime between noon and three.
Royal tables, summary from the Palace of Versailles.
Dinner menu for six to eight diners, 1748, Massialot (scroll down about half way)

Need modernized recipes??!

Ask your librarian to help you find The Grand Masters of French Cuisine: Five Centuries
of Great Cooking, Celine Vence and Robert Courtine. Here you will find dishes from La
Chapelle [1733], Marin [1739], Cuisinier Gascon [1740], Menon [1746], Dictonnaire
Portatif [1765], and Buc'hoz [1771].

French Revolution foods

The years immediately preceding the French Revolution were a time of great excess and
terrible poverty. Royalty feasted on rich confections and huge roasts; the starving
peasants ate anything they could find, including stale bread and scraps. In 18th century
France, new world foods, most notably potatoes, played a pivotal role in feeding the
starving country.

The Revolution was a great culinary equalizer. The fall of the Royal regime created (by
necessity) a more egalitarian cuisine. Food, and the concept of how it was eaten changed
radically. During the revolution another notable French "invention" happened. The
restaurant. The first restaurants were quite different from what we know today. Their
initial purpose was to serve healthy restoratifs (soup!) to anybody who could pay.

"The eighteenth century was a great century for cooking, but the progress made and the
refinements added to the art of cooking were briefly interrupted by the French
Revolution. In 1789 the French Revolution broke out, and according to one observer at
the time, it "served the soverign people a dish of lentils, seasoned with nothing but the
love of their country, which did very little to improve their blandness." The interest in
cooking and gastronomy was temporarily interrupted, but when things had calmed down
 16

enough in 1795, a little book entitled La Cuisiniere Republicaine was published. It was
written by a Mme. Merigot, who gives recipes for potatoes (unnacceptable until then as a
food by the French.)"
---The Grand Masters of French Cuisine: Five Centuries of Great Cooking, Celine Vence
and Robert Courtine [G.P. Putnam:New York] 1978 (p. 55)
[NOTE: This books has much more information/recipes than can be paraphrased here.
Ask your librarian to help you find this book.

The bread question

"Let them eat cake," Marie Antoinette allegedly pronounced. What was this cake and why
is this phrase so important? Parisians were indeed starving in the years preceding the
French Revolution. Bread, while commonly employed for its symbolic connection as the
"staff of life," was not the only commodity in short supply. There were several reasons
for these food shortages, number one being a population explosion. Other key factors
included war (farmers pressed into service meant neglected fields), weather conditions
(severe drought), and economics (inadequate distribution systems).

"A shortage of bread has been suggested as the cause of the fall of Rome, the French
Revolution, and the Russian Revolution of 1917."
---The Story of Bread, Ronald Sheppard and Edward Newton [Charles T.
Branford:Boston MA] 1957 (p. 58)

"Bread was the staple food of the masses and it was poverty which caused the [French
Revolution] rebellion. The more naive than caustic comments of Marie Antoinette, 'Let
them eat cake,' was explosive in an already tense atmosphere. What the people wanted
was bread, with all its symbolic implications."
---Gastronomy of France, Raymond Oliver, translated from the French by Claude Durrell
[Wolrd Publishing Co.:Cleveland OH] 1967 (p. 107-108)

"'The people was all roaring out Voila le boulanger et la boulangere et let petit mitron,
saing that now they should have bread as they now had got the baker and his wife and
boy.' The year was 1789, the place Paris, the 'baker' Louis XVI and the 'bakers wife',
Marie Antoinette. The French Revolution had not...been sparked off by hunger or high
prices, and Marie Antoineette's relentlessy mistranslated remark that if there was not
dread, the people whould eat 'cake' was no more than one of those minor but eminently
quotable political gaffes that their perpetrators are never allowed to forget. Bread
shortages had always been a fact of Parisian life, productive of nothing more serious than
an occasional riot. It was only after the middle classes made the first breach in the
defences of the privileged elite that the ordinary people of France began to take a hand in
the game. While the Constitutent Assembly discussed the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and the abolition of aristocratic privileges, the market women of Paris took the
opportunitiy of demonstrating their disapproval of the fact that, after a series of
disastrious harvests, a four-pound loaf now cost 14 1/2 sous. The effective daily wage of
a builder's labourer at the time was 18 sous. Throughout the 1790s far more serious food
17

crises and riots were to bedevil the plans of the revolutionaries and their successors--and
to sound a warning to the governments of other countries confronted with the problem of
expanding towns and an unprecedented increase in population. The problem was more
one of distribution than production since agricultural developments were taking place that
promised to make shortages a thing of the past."
---Food in History, Reay Tannahill [Three Rivers Press:New York] 1988 (p. 283)

"...in France...there was a new investment by the state in solving problems of food
distribution that had previously been the responsibility of individual cities...French
monarchs int eh eighteetnh century became increasingly concerned with the possibility of
popular uprisings due to bread shortages. To forestall that possibiltiy, they stocked wheat
and promulgated new laws governing the sale of grain. Both responses appear to have
improved the situation, but not everyone agreeed that this was the case. In The Bakers of
Paris and the Bread Question, 1700-1775, Steven Kaplan has shown that when merchants
followed the king's orders to stockpile grain, their actions were often interpreted as
attempts to corner the market in order to drive up prices. Large-scale wheat purchases did
in fact raise prices on local markets and force some people to go hungry, and critics saw
this as evidence of a "famine conspiracy." Furthermore, laws promoting free trade in
grain, which ultimately stimulated new cereal production, had to be withdrawn or
modified on several accasions in the face of vehement protests by various groups: the
best known of these episodes was the "flour war" of 1775...Was the French government
right to intervene in the food distribution system rather tahn lieave it, as in the past and as
in some other coutnries, in the hands of municipal governments and private interests? It
would have been difficult to have acted differently: whereas popular protest in the
seventeenth century had been directed mainly against taxes, int eh eighteenth century it
was directed maily against shortages of bread. Although these disturbances were not as
severe as in previous centuries, they could not be neglected. Thus the bread question
became the paramount political issue of the day, just as wheat came to dominate
agriculture and the popular diet...Antoine Parmentier, suggested making bread with flour
from potatoes, which could be grown in fallow fields between grain harvests and with
helds tow to three times greater than that for wheat. But in many parts of Europe people
did not yet feel miserable enough to accept such fare, which was considreed fit only for
hogs, eveni if it could be turned into bread."
---Food: A Culinary History, Jean-Louis Flandrin & Massimo Montanari [Columbia
University Press:New York] 1999 (p. 354-355)

"In the months before the storming of the Bastille the people of Paris commenced once
more to greet each other with the forbidden greeting of the Jacquerie: "Le pain se leve..."
What bread? There was none...most Frenchmen believed that the lack of grain was due to
a conspiracy...There is no doubt that the grain speculators were making a great deal of
money at the time...The unique factor was the mass delusion that the purpose of their
speculation as to "exterminate the French nation."..It was said that Louis XV had already
earned ten millions pounds as a result of this murderous conspiracy. The society was
alleged to be buying cheaply all the grain in France, secretly exporting it, buying it again
from abroad, and importing it back to France at tenfold the original price...The fact was
that all export of grain from France had been prohibited for the past hundred
 18

years...Revolt was...raging in the provinces...The Bastille had been stormed--but the

people of Paris did not yet have their bread...In fact, in the days after the storming of the
Bastille there was an unusual shortage of flour. The people could not feed on the glory of
the Revolution. Why did a four-pound bread still cost 12 1/2 sous and a white bread 14
1/2? The government provided subsidies so that the bakers would lower their price. But
this did not increase the supply of bread. The angy populace lost precious hours waiting
in front of the bakeries. To be sure, Parmentier's potato bread was much cheaper. But who
was interested in Parmentier and his bakers' college? That was...nonsense. Parmentier's
experiments--it was unjustly said--were donducted only so that the rich could cram
something into the mouths of the poor. Let him eat his potates himself. "We want bread!"
the people shouted...[in] August 1789...a drought had come upon France worse than any
the nation remembered. The streams dried up. The result was that the mills could not run.
There were windmills only in the provinces of northern France. In central and southern
France all milling was done in water mills. Now the little grain there was could not be
ground! The Minister of Agriculture at once ordered the erection of horse-driven mills.
But this took time. In September the supply of bread in Paris dwindled away again, and
the price rose shamelessly. The seething masses became convinced that the Court still had
bread...In the early morning of October 5, 1789, Paris spewed her torrents of human
beings out into the misty roads. They marched with pikes and scythes, barefood and in
rags...The masses were obsessed with hallucinations. "Did you see the bread wagons?"
"Yes, bread wagons on the horizon!"...King Louis XVI had turned off the water in the
park--it was needed to run the mill. Because the water no long splashed in the fountains,
the villages around Versialles had bread--though there was not enough for Paris. All at
once it occurred to the marchers that perhaps the king himself had not much bread...The
women's cries from bread died down...When they returned, there was general
disappointment. Paris had though it would now begin to rain bread...but...Louis XVI
could not conjure up bread...Fourteen hungry days passed..."Watch out for the bakers"
became the watchword. "The bakers have hidden flour. They want to wait until we can
pay more."...Both the National Assembly and the administrators knew that whether the
nation were kingdom or republic, the people would hang all authorities who did not solve
the bread problem. But the bread problem could not be solved. The National Assembly
set aside 400,000 pounds for agricultural aid, but this still not solve the problem...Where
was the bread? The flow of grain dwindled to a trickle, as it had when the despots
reigned, and the bakers' ovens remained empty...Grain had to be procured--but how?
Trade was unpopular...Traders must be speculators, therefore cheats...At great cost the
city of Paris bought grain abroad...What monsters there were among the people; such
individuals as those who on August 7, 1793, spirited away 7,5000 pounds of bread out of
starving Paris becasue they hoped to obtain higher prices in the provinces...All the guilty
men were executed...In Ocober 1793 Paris once more received flour...The Commune of
Paris decreed that from then on only a single type of bread could be baked in the city--the
pain d'egalite. The flour sieves of millers and bakers were confiscated, for they were a
symbol of fine berads. All, poor and rich, would have bread of equally poor quality... On
Decmeber 2, 1793, the bread card was introduced; and eighteen months later the
Commune decided upon free distribution of bread: one and a half pounds daily to
workers and the heads of families, one pound to all others. Before long all there was of
bread were the cards. In 1794 the harvest was pitifully small...Men killed one another for
19

bread...France saw no bread until peace came. The Revolution had not been able to
produce it, and the war made it impossible to distrubute it. It was until the period of the
Directory, from 1796 on, that the soldiers were furloughed; they returned to the fields
which now no longer belonged to landowners but to themselves and their families, and
they began to till these fields. Such was the role of bread in the French Revolution."
---Six Thousand Years of Bread, H.E. Jacob [Lyons Press:New York] 1997 (p. 246-254)

"For a time, food prices rose dramatically; crops planted by farmers, who were then
drafted into the Republic's armies, went unharvested...Attempting to impose fraternal
solidarity by means of food distribution programs, more than one revolutionary
demanded that bakers stop preparing their typical range of breadstuffs and combine
brown, white, and rye flours together to make one single "Bread of Equality." In the
capitol, in Feburary 1792, shortages led to the outbreak of popular street protests, but, as
William Sewell has noted, the men and women of Paris were rioting not for bread, the
totemic staff of life, but for sugar, soap, and candles. Sewell's point is particualrly well
take, for the radical revolutionary rhetoric of "subsistence" has long led historians to
believe that the danger of famine was the driving force behind many of the National
Convention's economic policies. True, the Convention passed "the Maximum" in
September 1793, putting it in effect a broad series of...price-fixing regulations... That
these "necessities" included not only bread and wine, but cheeses, butter, honey, and
sausages as well..."Subsistence" was certainly at the heart of much revolutionary rhetoric;
but revolutions do not subsist on bread alone."
---The Invention of the Restaurant, Rebecca L. Spang [Harvard University
Press:Cambridge MA] 2000 (p. 106-107)

Noble food
The 17th century marked the genesis of classic French Cuisine. Food historians tell us the
nobles of this period followed this new trend, supporting the chefs and their ideas wll into
the 18th century. By the 18th century, the noble and wealthy classes were dining in the
manner of "Grand Cuisine." Multi-course meals and elaborate service were the hallmarks
of this style. Notable chefs/cookbook authors included Massialot, La Chappelle, Marin,
and Menon.

"Louis XVI did not inherit Louis XV's delicate taste in food. Like the Sun King, he was a
glutton...During their reign Louis and Marie-Antoinette dined every Sunday in public.
But the queen only pretended to eat...She dined afterwards in her apartments, among her
intimates."
---An Illustrated History of French Cuisine, Christian Guy [Bramhall House:New York]
196 (p. 86)

Supper given...for Marie Antoinette

...menu of this supper from the imperial archives quoted by L'Almanach des Gourmands
pour 1862, by Charles Monselet. Her Majesty's Dinner, Thursday 24 July 1788 at
Trianon:

Four Soups
 20

Rice soup, Scheiber, Croutons with lettuce, Croutons unis pour Madame
Two Main Entrees
Rump of beef with cabbage, Loin of veal on the spit
Sixteen Entrees
Spanish pates, Grilled mutton cutlets, Rabbits on the skewer, Fowl wings a la marechale,
Turkey giblets in consomme, Larded breats of mutton with chicory, Fried turkey a la
ravigote, Sweetbreads en papillot, Calves' heads sauce pointue, Chickens a la tartare,
Spitted sucking pig, Caux fowl with consomme, Rouen duckling with orange, Fowl fillets
en casserole with rice, Cold chicken, Chicken blanquette with cucumber
Four Hors D'Oeuvre
Fillets of rabbit, Breast of veal on the spit, Shin of veal in consomme, Cold turkey
Six dishes of roasts
Chickens, Capon fried with eggs and breadcrumbs, Leveret, Young turkey, Partridges,
Rabbit
Sixteen small entremets
(menu stops here)

---Gastronomy of France, Raymond Oliver, translated from the French by Claude Durrell
[Wine and Food Society:Cleveland OH] 1967 (p. 300-1)

Middle class food

"The difference that existed, up to the end of the seventeenth century, between ordinary,
everyday bourgeois cooking and aristocratic cooking was a difference in quantity and in
elaborateness of presentation. Beginning in about 1750, the cuisine of ordinary days and
that of special occasions were separated by a difference in kind, quality, and method.
Ordinary cuisine naturally remained closer to old-style cuisine, for reasons of cost and
convenience. According to Brillat-Savarin who, who had gathered his information from
the inhabitants of several departments, a dinner for ten persons around the year 1740 was
composed of the following:
First service...boiled meat
an entree of veal cooked in its own juice;
an hors-d'oeuvre.

Second service...a turkey;

a vegetable dish;
a salad;
a cream (sometimes)

Dessert...cheese;
fruit
A pot of jam
This order, with the succession of the boiled and roasted as its prinicpal distinguising
characteristic, was to remain practically the same in private homes down to the end of the
nineteenth century. In Zola, it is the typical bourgeois menu."
21

---Culture and Cuisine: A Journey Through the History of Food, Jean-Francois Revel
[Doubleday:Garden City NY] 1982, English translation (p. 193-4)

Peasant food
Daily meals for the "average" person consisted of bread, pottage (gruel from ground
beans or soup with vegetables and perhaps a little meat), fruit, berries & nuts (in season)
and wine. If you need to make/take something to class to signify this particular period in
French history we suggest basic a loaf of French bread and a simple dish of potatoes.
These would have been foods consumed daily by most of the people at that time.

Here is a recipe...with historic notes...for "Pommes de Terre a L'Econome," Cuisinier

Republicaine 1795:
"Although potatoes could have been grown in France earlier, it was not until the French
Revolution in 1789 that this precious vegetable was accepted by the French. The French
accepted it only because famine, and the economic exigencies of the Revolution, forced it
on them. The potato had long been considered poisonous in France, but once the French
tried it and survived, they showed a surprising amount of enthusiasm for this "new" food.
The following recipe is taken from one of the first postrevolutionary French cookbooks
and is one of the earliest French recipes using potatoes.

Pommes de terre a l'econome

Ingredients: (for 4 servings): 3 sprigs parsley, finely chopped. 1 scallion, finely chopped.
4 shallots, peeled and finely chopped. 2 cupps chopped cooked meat (leftover meat or
poultry). 2 pounds potatoes. 3 1/2 tablespoons butter. 1 egg. 1 egg, separated. Salt.
Pepper. Flour. Oil for frying. Chopped parsley (to garnish).

The Herbs and the Meat: Mix the finely chopped parsely, scallion, and shallots with the
chopped meat. The Potatoes: Boil the potatoes in their jackets (skins) for thirty minutes in
lightly salted water. Peel while still hot; then mash with a fork. The Patties: Combine the
mashed potatoes and the chopped ingredients. Add the butter, egg, and egg yolk. Salt and
pepper to taste. Shape into medium patties. (If they are too small, they will be too
crunchy, and if too large, the centers will not cook thoroughly.) Beat the egg white until it
begins to stiffen. Dip the patties into the egg white; then roll them in flour. Cooking the
Patties: Place the patties in a frying pan with very hot oil. Turn so that they will brown on
all sides. To Serve: Drain well, and serve garnished with parsley."
---The Grand Masters of French Cuisine: Five Centuries of Great Cooking, Celine Vence
and Robert Courtine [G.P. Putnam:New York] 1978 (p. 253)
AFTER THE REVOLUTION

"In July 1789, only a few days after the storming of the Bastille, the Marquis Charles de
Villette proposed that the new ideal of fraternity could be achieved by common dining in
the streets. The rich and poor could be united, and all ranks would mix...the capital, from
one end to the other, would be one immense family, and you would see a million poeple
all seated at the same table...' And then, standing on its head the ancien regime traditon of
the royal family dining au grand couvert, Villette goes on to add: On that day, the nation
will hold its grand covert'. Ironically, of course, the proposal would have represented just
 22

as much a manipulation of the meal in service of the state as anything ever staged at
Versailles. That flirtation with the communal meal as emblematic of a new age of equality
and faternity was to continue to ebb and flow through the early, more extreme, years of
the Revolution. On 14 July 1790, the first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, a Festival
of Federation was staged, prefaced the previous day by two thousand spectators watching
members of the National Assembly share an open-air patriotic meal' in the circus of the
Palais Royal...The left-overs from this fraternal repast were distributed to the poor...All of
this was to be as dust within a few years, yet what occurred in the priod after 1789
fundamentally shaped developments around the table down to our own day. A primary
effect was to dissolve the equation of cuisine and class. Henceforward cuisine of a kind
seen as the prerogative of royalty and nobility would be available to anyone who could
afford to pay for it."
---Feast: A History of Grand Eating, Roy Strong [Harcourt:New York] 2002 (p. 274-6)

"The French Revolution marks, in its first years, a certain slowing down in the "culinary"
evolution of the coutnry...But not for long. Soon the arts of the gourmet and the pleasures
of the table reclaimed their prestige; the new leaders of France quickly tired of Spartan
virtues. People began to eat well again, not only in Paris, but also in the provinces. Cooks
whos masters had emigrated were snapped up. Great houses reorganized. New restaurants
were opened. The cuisine of France regained the grandeur it had enjoyed during the reign
of Louis XV. However, what with wars and the gory horrors of the Terror, famine raged
again for several years. In 1793 and ordinance prohibited more than one pound of meat a
week per person...There was no bread and the potato crop was poor. But restrictions are
never applied to all-under any regime. And while plain people...were rushed to the
guillotine, there were feasting and carousing in the mansions of Barras and Fouche. The
following is a menu of a dinner served by Barras in the winter of 1793:

Soup
With a little onions, a la ce-devant minime
Second Course
Steaks of sturgeon en brochette
Six Entrees
Turbot saute a l'homme de confiance
formerly Maitre-d'hotel
Cucumber stuffed with marrow
Vol au vent of chicken breast in Bechemel sauce
A ci-devant Sait-Pierre sauce with capers
Fillets of partridge in rings (not to say in a crown)
Two Roasts
Gudgeons of the region
A carp in court-bouillon
Fifth Course
Lentils a la ci-devant Reine
Beets scalded and sauted in butter
Artichoke bottoms a la ravigote
Eggs a la neige
23

Cream fritters with orange water

Salad
Celery en remoulade
Dessert
Twenty-four different dishes"

"The Revolution was not merely political: it also changed many customs of the French
people. The four meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper) were reduced to two:
breakfast and dinner. The latter was soon the more important of the two."
---An Illustrated History of French Cuisine, Christian Guy [Bramhall House:New York]
1962 (p. 95-7)

The Cookbook in America: A History

Talk given by Willis van Devanter
to the Culinary Historians of Washington, DC October 3, 2004

As every schoolboy (and schoolgirl) knows, the English settled North America, and our
early cuisine obviously owes a great debt to the mother country. Now England was not
Europe's greatest contributor to la grande cuisine. It was Francesco Caracciolo, an
eighteenth-century Neapolitan, who served in the British Admiralty, who remarked that
the English have over fifty religious sects but only one sauce.

During the first 150 years of American colonial history, there were no printed cookery
books, and early pioneering families had to rely upon their collected hand- written recipes
or oral tradition: recipes passed down from mother to daughter. This was a tradition that
would continue well into the nineteenth century.

Not until 1742 was a cookbook actually printed on American soil: The Compleat
Housewife, by one Eliza Smith, who, in biographical and bibliographical records, is an
obscure figure. No one seems to have known who she was but, nonetheless, the
Williamsburg, Virginia, printing of this lady's work was from the fifth London edition,
which was, in fact, a best seller of the time. Not it was, in reality, not the first American
cookbook, in that it was only a reprint of an English work. From the standpoint of
American cultural history, it is important as a landmark in printing and publishing history.
Its printer, William Parks, had founded the Maryland Gazette in 1736. He also published
a number of minor books and pamphlets of literary and historical importance; and
considering that Williamsburg, as the capital of America's largest and wealthiest colony,
had by then become a noted center of aristocratic life, a cookbook was certainly in order.
It would be his major book publication.

The earlier cookbooks, not having the advantage of dust wrapper blurbs extoling the
virtues of the publication, nor a promotional press review, made up for the deficiency in
the exaggerated and verbose form of the title page. Consider, for example, the title page
of E. Smith's work: The compleat housewife; or, accomplish'd gentlewoman's
companion: being a collection of several hundred of the most approved recipts, in
cookery, pastry, confectionery, preserving, pickles, cakes, creams, jellies, made wines,
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cordials. And also bills of fare for every month of the year. To which is added, a
collection of nearly two hundred family receipts of medicines; viz. drinks, syrups, salves,
ointments, and many other things of sovereign and approved efficacy in most distempers,
pains, aches, wounds, sores, etc. never before made publick in these parts; fit either for
private families, or such publick-spirited gentlewomen as would be beneficent to their
poor neighbours.

During the eighteenth century, the English cookbook was the American cookbook. In
remarking upon Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery, first published in London in 1747
and reprinted many times, the noted food historian, Karen Hess, states in her introduction
to the first American edition [in facsimile] (Alexandria, 1805) that "It was the most
English of cookbooks. It was the most American of Cookbooks. George Washington
owned a copy, as did Thomas Jefferson; indeed, recipes attributed to Mrs. Glasse are
included in cookery manuscripts kept by Jefferson's granddaughters, for example."

Hannah Glasse's work was widely used in the United States. Two American editions were
printed in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1805 and 1812. These editions, adapted for use in
Virginia, had a recipe: "Method of destroying the putrid Smell which Meat acquires
during hot Weather." Mrs. Glasse's work, which boasts on its title page that it was a work
"which far exceeds any Thing of the Kind ever yet published" is a boast well-founded, for
the clarity of the recipes, the list of chapter headings, and an alphabetical index at the
back, set it well above any previous publication of this type. It became an immediate and
enduring best seller, reprinted as late as 1824.

The first cookbook by an American was Amelia Simmons's American Cookery, published
in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1796. Often referred to as a second American declaration of
independence (according to Jan Longone), this was the first cookbook written for a
strictly American audience. Mrs. Simmon's work, however, plagiarized English recipes
for American readers, with a few concessions to the availability of ingredients in the New
World. It was a step forward without being totally American. Simmons proclaimed that
her work was "adapted to this country." It has the first printed recipes for corn meal -- an
American contribution. It includes five receipts requiring the use of corn meal: three for
Indian Pudding, one for "Johnny Cake or Hoe Cake," and one for "Indian Slapjacks."
This was the first known appearance of any of those three in any cookbook. Mrs.
Simmons's work would influence the contents of American culinary imprints for some
years. Hers was the first cookbook to recommend the use of pearlash, a refined form of
potash. Four recipes, two for cookies and two for gingerbread, specified this forerunner
of baking powder. This substitute for yeasat or beaten eggs was an American innovation,
not picked up elsewhere until 1799 in England.

In eighteenth-century America only four cookbook titles were published: all derivatives
of English works with the exception of Mrs. Simmons's work. These were E. Smith, The
Conpleat Housewife (Williamsburg, 1742); Susannah Carter, The Frugal Housewife, or
Complete Woman Cook (Boston, 1772); Robert Briggs, The New Art of Cookery
(Philadelphia, 1792); and Amelia Simmons, American Cookery (Hartford, 1796).
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In the early nineteenth century, Maria Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery was
the cookbook of choice. The first American edition was published in Boston in 1807,
soon after the first English edition, and reprinted sixteen times in the U.S. until 1844. In
England, editions were published as late as 1893. This work, in the jargon of the trade,
was the first "runaway" best seller. During Mrs. Rundell's lifetime or shortly after her
death, it had already sold a half million copies.

It was Lucy Emerson on Montpelier who put Vermont on the nation's culinary map in
1808 by writing what food historians consider America's first regional cookbook. It's a
tiny volume, entitled The New-England Cookery, or The Art of Dressing All Kinds of
Flesh, Fish and Vegetables and the Best Modes of Making Pastes, Puffs, Pies, Tarts,
Puddings, Custards and Preserves and All Kinds of Cakes From the Imperial Plum to the
Plain Cake. According to writers John and Karen Hess, Ms. Emerson apparently lifted
most of her recipes from Amelia Simmons. "But she set the stage for countless
Vermonters -- most of them women -- who contributed recipes to church and community
cookbooks ...."

Karen Hess declares that the most influential American cookbook of the nineteenth
century was Mary Randolph's The Virginia Housewife, "and a case must be made for
considering it to be the earliest full-blown American cookbook. Randolph's heyday was
in the 1790s, so that her work may be said to document the cookery of the early days of
our republic. It was one of the most cherished of kitchen manuals .... The author hailed
from one of the noblest families of Virginia, and she recorded the productions of her
contemporaries -- in Virginia as well as Maryland; she knew what her neighbors cooked,
how they did it, and she produced what scholars of American history declare is the first
American cookbook. In her preface she says, "The greater part of the following receipts
have been written from memory, where they have been impressed by long practice."

Cook's Choice ... compiled in 1982 by the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia,
cites Lafcadio Hearn's La Cuisine Creole (New York, 1885) as the "first regional
American cookbook, compiled by a famous short story writer."

The first cookbook to include contributions from African Americans was Eliza Leslie's
New Receipts for Cooking (Philadelphia 1854). In her preface, Leslie notes that "a large
number [of the recipes] have been obtained from the South, and from ladies noted for
their skill in housewifery. Many were dictated by colored cooks, of high reputation in the
art, for which nature seems to have gifted that race with a peculiar capability...."

The first cookbook to be printed in the American Middle West (according to Bitting) was
H.L. Barnum's Family Receipts, or Practical Guide for the Husbandman and Housewife,
Containing a Great Variety of Valuable Recipes (Cincinnati, 1837). The first cookbook
printed in Illinois seems to be Mrs. Crawford's The Cake Baker (Chicago, 1857).

The first French cookbook published in America: Louis Eustache Ude's The French Cook
(Philadelphia: Carey, Lee and Carey, 1828). The first edition was published in London in
1813. There is no French-language edition. There is only one American edition.
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The first French-language cookbook published in America: Mme. Utrecht-Friedel, La

Petite Cuisiniere habile (New Orleans, 1840). A translation (see above) was published in
1846.

The first book on French cookery by an American author was Eliza Leslie's Domestic
French Cookery, chiefly translated from Sulpice Barue (Philadelphia: Carey & Hart,
1832). This appears to be the first book on French cookery by an American author,
published in the U.S. A somewhat condescending work, emphasizing the importance of
native American ingredients. "Many dishes have been left out, as useless in a country
where provisions are abundant. On this side of the Atlantic, all persons in respectable life
can obtain better articles of food than sheeps' tails, calves' ears, &c. and the preparation
of those articles (according to the European receipts) is too tedious and complicated to be
of any use to the indigent, or to those who can spare but little time for their cookery." The
French author cited is not noted by Vicaire or any other source I have checked. He or she
probably never existed.

If we may judge from the old cookbooks, the first three decades of the nineteenth century,
far from being a period of monotony and of limited resources, was one of varied foods,
prepared with ingenuity, skill, and a willingness to experiment with flavors, including
exotic ones. This seems to have been a time of solid, honest, grass-roots cooking, doomed
to be choked off abruptly by the Civil War and smothered thereafter by the urbanization
and industrialization which followed it.