The traditions of classic cookery may be said to be nearly effaced; but sufficient remains recorded to afford grounds for comparison, and he must be prejudiced who hesitates for an instant to award the palm to the moderns. An impartial person need but to glance over the ten books left us under the name of Apicius,[1] to come to the conclusion of the ingenious Jean le Clerc, who says that “the work contains receipts for extraordinary dishes and strange ragouts, which would ruin the stomach, and burn up the blood.” One of the most nauseous of the condiments which entered into the Roman ragouts was the garum, by some supposed to be the expressed brine of the anchovy: while others contend it was an acrid decoction of the mackerel. This abominable sauce has now been banished Christendom, yet has found a refuge in the congenial cookery of “our most ancient ally,” the Turk. Travellers who have visited Turkey and Constantinople, will recur, as I do, with no pleasurable sensations to the pilau seasoned with this acrid and ill-savoured preparation.

Though the feast of Trimalchio, so graphically told in the pages of Petronius, is somewhat overcharged, and too Asiatic in style and taste to be true to the letter, yet it gives an idea of the domestic economy of the Romans, and supports the opinion as to the superiority of modern cookery; but if more positive evidence were wanting in support of these views, it might be found in a passage of Macrobius, the description of a supper given by Lentulus. For the first course, says the officer of the household of Theodosius, there were sea hedge hogs, raw oysters, and asparagus; for the second, a fat fowl, with another plate of oysters and shell fish, several species of dates, fig-peckers, roebuck, and wild boar, fowls encrusted with paste, and the purple shell fish, then esteemed so great a delicacy. The third course was composed of a wild boar’s head, of ducks, of a compôte of river birds, of leverets, roast fowl, and Ancona cakes, called panes picences, which must have somewhat resembled Yorkshire pudding. There is one secret, however, which we may well desire to learn from the Romans, namely, the manner of preserving oysters alive, in any journey however long or however distant. The possession of this secret is the more extraordinary, as it is well known that a shower of rain will kill oysters subjected to its influence, or the smallest grain of quick lime destroy their vitality.[2] It will be seen from what I have stated, that epicurism is an ancient vice; but all the French authorities, nevertheless, agree in thinking that the Greeks and Romans, notwithstanding their luxury and civilization, were mere children in the preparation of their viands. The reason of this, says Carème, is, that they sacrificed too much to sugars, fruits and flowers, and that they had not the colonial spices and learned sauces of mediæval and modern cookery. It is true that the “officers of the mouth” of Lucullus and Pompey were possessed of secrets to stimulate the jaded appetite, and give tone to the debilitated stomach: but notwithstanding all their profusion, I am inclined to think that Carème and the corps of French cooks are right in their disparaging observations touching ancient cookery.

Cookery is eminently an experimental and a practical art. Each day, while it adds to our experience, increases also our knowledge, and as we have come long after the Romans, and have had the benefit of their experience, it is no marvel that we should have greatly surpassed them. The characteristic of ancient cookery was profusion; the characteristic of modern is delicacy and refinement. In the fifth century all trace of the Roman cookery had already disappeared. The barbarians from afar had savoured the scent of the Roman ragouts. The eternal city was invested, and her kitchen destroyed. The consecutive incursions of hordes of barbarous tribes and nations had put out at once the light of science and the fire of cookery. Darkness was now abroad, and the “glory” of the culinary art was, for a time, “extinguished,” but, happily, not for ever. “Lorsque il n’y a plus de cuisine dans le monde, il n’y a plus de lettres, il n’y a plus d’unité sociale,” says the enlightened and ingenious Carème.

But the darkness of the world was not of long duration. The monks—the much-abused and much mistaken monks—fanned the embers of a nascent literature, and cherished the flame of a new cookery. The free cities of Italy, Genoa, Venice, Pisa, Florence, the common mothers of poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture, contemporaneously revived the gastronomic taste. The Mediterranean and the Adriatic offered their fish, and the taste for table luxuries extended itself to the maritime towns and other cities of the Peninsula, to Cadiz, to Barcelona, to St. Sebastian, and to Seville.

Spain had the high honour of having furnished the first cookery book in any modern tongue. It is entitled—“Libro de Cozina, compuesto por Ruberto de Nola.” I also possess an edition of the “Arte de Cocina compuesto por Francisco Martinez Montiño,” printed in Madrid in 1623, and presented by His Royal Highness the late Duke of Sussex to Lady Augusta Murray. This work is exceedingly rare. The cookery professed at this epoch was no longer an imitation of the Greek or Roman kitchen, or of the insipid dishes and thick sauces of the Byzantine cooks. It was a new and improved and extended science. It recognised the palate, stomach, and digestion of man. The opulent nobles of Italy, the rich merchant princes, charged with the affairs and commissions of Europe and Asia, the heads of the church—bishops, cardinals, and popes, now cultivated and encouraged the culinary art. Arts, letters, and cookery revived together, and among the gourmands of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, some of the most celebrated pontiffs and artists of the time may be named, as Leo X., Raphael, Guido, Baccio Bandinelli, and John of Bologna. Raphael, the divine Raphael, did not think it beneath him to design plates and dishes for his great patron the most holy father. While Italy had made this progress, France, the nurse of modern, if not the mother of mediæval cooks, was in a state of barbarism, from which she was raised by the Italian wars under Charles VIII. and Louis XII. The Gauls learned a more refined cookery at the siege of Naples, as the Cossacks did some hundreds of years later in the Champs Elysées of Paris. Here ends the parallel, however; for while the people of France, like most apt pupils, surpassed their masters, we have yet to wait for the least glimmering of culinary art at Moscow, Kieff or Novogorod, or even at that fag end of Finland (which is not Russia) called St. Petersburgh. An attempt was made a couple of years ago by Mr. Money to get up a sensation in favour of Russian cookery, but the attempt was a failure.

It was under Henry III., about 1580, that the delicacies of the Italian tables were introduced at Paris. The sister arts of design and drawing were now called into requisition to decorate dishes and dinner-tables. How great was the progress in the short space of 150 years, may be inferred from an edict of Charles VI., which forbad to his liege subjects a dinner consisting of more than two dishes with the soup: “Nemo audeat dare præter duo fercula cum potagio.” At this period the dinner hour was ten o’clock in the morning, while the supper was served at four. The social, friendly, and agreeable humour of Henry IV., in a succeeding reign, contributed to the spread of a more kindly spirit, and a better cookery. This monarch was eminently of a frank and cordial nature, and his personal qualities contributed to the security of his throne, to his successes both in negotiation and war, and to the social comforts and material prosperity of his subjects. His benevolent wish that every peasant in his dominions might have a fowl in the pot for his Sunday dinner, discloses a warm and affectionate heart, and was not lost on a nation combining the greatest share of intellect with sensuality. The cabaret then was what the café is now, and was the rendezvous of marquis and chevalier, and people of condition. Men learned to pursue the pleasures and enjoyments of life in the cabaret, and their wants become multiplied, and their desires extended. It was Henry IV. who first permitted the traiteurs to form a community, with the title of “Maître queux cuisiniers porte-chapes,” in 1599.

The first regular cookery book published in France was, I believe, printed at Rouen in 1692, the very year in which Sir George Rooke struck so signal and successful a blow against the marine of our neighbours. It was the production of the Sieur de la Varranne, esquire of the kitchen of M. d’Uxelles. It is dedicated to MM. Louis Châlon du Bled, Marquis d’Uxelles and of Cormartin. The first sentence of the dedication is a curiosity in its way, and sufficiently indicates the immense distance which feudalism then interposed between an esquire of the kitchen and a French marquis and lieutenant-general, holding the rank of governor of the citadel of Châlons-sur-Saone. “Monseigneur,” says the book, “bien que ma condition ne me rende pas capable d’un cœur heroïque, elle me donne cependant assez de ressentiment pour ne pas oublier mon devoir. J’ai trouvé dans votre maison, par un emploi de dix ans entiers, le secret d’apprester delicatement les viandes.” The preface is not less curious than the dedication. The author begins by stating that, as it is the first book of the kind which has been published, he hopes it will not be found altogether useless. A number of books, says he, have been published containing remedies and cures at small cost; but no book has yet been printed with a view of preserving and maintaining the health in a good state, and a perfect disposition, teaching how to separate the ill quantity of viands by good and diversified seasonings, which tend only to give substantial nourishment, being well dressed. These are things conformable to the appetite, which regulate corpulency, and ought to be no less considered, &c. He expatiates on the thousand-and-one vegetables and other “victual,” which people know not how to dress with honour and contentment (“avec honneur et contentement”), and then exclaims that, as France has borne off the bell from all other nations in courtesy and bienséance, it is only right and proper that she should be no less esteemed for her polite and delicate manner of living (“pour la façon de vivre honneste et delicate”). Many of the receipts are curious, and some of them useful. The frequency with which he introduces capers into his cookery, an article for which we are indebted to Barbary, and rarely introduced into the cookery of modern France, except in sauces for turbot and salmon, and in a few entrées, liaisons, and ragouts, is extraordinary.

La Varranne, after having given hundreds of other receipts, consoles himself, at the conclusion of his labours, with the reflection, “That as all other books, as well ancient as modern, were composed for the aliment of the mind, it was but just that the body should be a little considered,” and therefore it was, says he, that I meddled with a subject so necessary to its conservation. Enjoy, then, my receipts, dear reader, he exclaims, “Jouissez en, cher lecteur, pendant que je m’étudierai à vous exposer en vente quelque chose qui méritera vos emplois plus relevez et plus solides.”

The first edition of that remarkable cookery book, the “Dons de Comus,” appeared about 1740, and is in every respect a superior work to the droll production just mentioned. It was composed by M. Marin, cook of the Duchesse de Chaulnes. The very learned and ingenious preface, signed de Querlon, is by Father Brumoy, the Jesuit, the translator of the “Théâtre des Grecs.” An Italian author calls a preface the sauce of a book, “La Salsa del Libro;” and certainly never was there a more piquant and spicy sauce than that of the erudite Father. He has brought ancient and modern literature to bear on the matter in hand. Not content with citing orators, poets and historians, he has also summoned the doctors, in the persons of the Frenchman Hecquet and the Englishman Cheyne. His comparison between ancient and modern cookery is ingenious.

“Modern cookery,” says he, “established on the foundations of the ancient, possesses more variety, simplicity and cleanliness, with infinitely less of labour and elaboration, and it is withal more sçavante. The ancient cuisine was complicated and full of details. But the modern cuisine is a perfect system of chemistry. The science of the cook consists in decomposing, in rendering easy of digestion, in quintessencing (so to speak) the viands, in extracting from them light and nourishing juices, and in so mixing them together, that no one flavour shall predominate, but that all shall be harmonised and blended. This is the high aim and great effort of art. The harmony which strikes the eye in a picture should in a sauce cause in the palate as agreeable a sensation.” There is nothing new under the sun. A friend has recently lent me a copy of St. Augustine, in which is the very same thought, “Omina pulchritudinis formæ unitas est,” says the learned father. The following is Father Brumoy’s idea of a perfect cook: “A perfect cook should exactly understand the properties of the substances he employs, that he may correct or render more perfect (corriger ou perfectionner) such aliments as nature presents in a raw state. He should have a sound head (la tête saine), a sure taste, and a delicate palate, that he may cleverly combine the ingredients. Seasoning is the rock of indifferent cooks (l’écueil des médiocres ouvriers). A cook should have a ready hand to operate promptly and should assiduously study the palate of his master, wholly conforming his own thereto.”[3] All this is excellent in its way. It is rare to find history, metaphysics and chemistry, the tone of a man of the world, the taste of an erudite classic, and the talent of a really good cook, so happily blended. Father Brumoy is the very opposite of that Greek cook, of whom Pausanias makes mention, whom all the world praised for his running, but whom no one praised for his ragouts: for in the three volumes now before me there are a variety of admirable receipts, which have made the stock in trade of many cookery books more vaunted and better known than Father Brumoy’s.

The “Dons de Comus” was followed by a spruce little satire, intituled “Lettre d’un Patissier Anglais au nouveau cuisinier Français,” in which the soi-disant pastry-cook deals some hard blows to the Jesuit.

In the “Dons de Comus” there had been much dissertation about quintessences, and the giving the largest portion of nutriment in the smallest possible compass. Hereupon the “Patissier Anglais” says, “Thus the more the nourishment of the body shall be subtilised and alembicated, the more will the qualities of the mind be rarefied and quintessenced too. From these principles, demonstrated in your work, great advantage may be reaped in all educational establishments. Children lose an infinity of time in learning the dead languages, and other trash of that kind, whereas, henceforward, it will only be necessary, according to your system, to give them an alimentary education, proper for the state for which they are destined. For example: for a young lad destined to live in the atmosphere of a court, whipped cream and calves’ trotters should be procured; for a sprig of fashion, linnets’ heads, quintessences of May bugs, butterfly broth, and other light trifles. For a lawyer, destined to the chicanery of the Palais or who would shine at the bar, sauces of mustard and vinegar and other condiments of a bitter and pungent nature would be required.” Appended to the “Patissier Anglais” was “Le Cuisinier Gascon,” an excellent and valuable little work, now extremely scarce. There are many admirable receipts in this little volume, to which Mrs. Rundell was deeply indebted. She has borrowed largely from it without acknowledgment.

“La Science du Maître d’Hôtel Cuisinier” was the next published in point of chronological order. This was an attempt to render cookery the handmaid of medicine, and had great success. The plan, though not new in the conception, for the germ of it may be found in Terence, “Coquina medicinæ famulatrix est,”[4] was undoubtedly so in the execution; and the associated booksellers reaped a profitable harvest.

The cookery of France at this epoch, and indeed from the time of Louis XIV., was distinguished by luxury and sumptuousness, but, according to Carème, was wanting in “delicate sensualism.” They ate well, indeed, at the court, says the professor of the culinary art, but the rich citizens, the men of letters, the artists, “were only in the course of learning to dine, drink, and laugh with convenance. Vatel, of whom so much has been said,” says Carème, “had only a mind deeply intent on his subject, you but see in him the conscientious man of duty and etiquette. His death astonishes but does not melt you (sa mort frappe mais ne touche pas), for he had not reached the highest elevation of his art.” You cannot think, you who read these lines, that any one of our cooks of the present day, brought up by Carème, could ever fall into his faults. For whatever may happen, a cook, like a commander, and, indeed, like the great masters of the art, Laguipière and Carème, “should always have splendid and imposing reserves.”

This dictum of Carème must be taken, like many of his dishes and sauces, cum grano salis. Molière lived and wrote at this period; and though it would be unfair not to concede that he was greatly in advance of his age, and, like Shakspeare, seemed to be universally informed, and by intuition, yet on the other hand there is scarcely a better description of a gourmand than is to be found in the “Bourgeois Gentilhomme,” act iv. sc. 1. The language of the art, too, is as much superior to the jargon of professional cooks, as Paques is (the pun was inevitable) to Carème. But here is the passage in extenso, from which all may judge:—“Si Damis s’en étoit mêlé, tout seroit dans les règles; il y auroit par-tout de l’élégance et de l’érudition, et il ne manqueroit pas de vous exagérer lui-même toutes les pièces du repas qu’il vous donneroit, et de vous faire tomber d’accord de sa haute capacité dans la science des tous morceaux; de vous parler d’un pain de rive à bizeau doré, relevé de croûte par-tout, croquant tendrement sous la dent; d’un vin à seve velouté, armé d’un vert qui n’est point trop commandant; d’un carré du mouton gourmandé de persil; d’une longe de veau de rivière, longue, blanche, délicate, et qui, sous les dents, est une vraie pâte d’amande; de perdrix relevées, d’un fumet surprenant; et pour son opéra, d’une soupe á bouillon perlé, soutenue d’un jeune gros dindon, cantonnée de pigeonneaux, et couronnée d’oignons blancs, mariés avec la chicorée.”[5] It should also be observed that St. Evremond, a man of letters as well as a soldier and a gentleman, rendered himself celebrated even in 1654, for the exquisiteness of his taste in cookery, and that the coterie in which he lived were equally famous for their good cheer. The dinners of the Commandeur de Souvré, of the Comte d’Oloure, and of the Marquis de Bois Dauphin, were celebrated for equal refinement and delicacy. Lavardin, Bishop of Mans, in speaking of the clique, says, “Ils ne sauroient manger que du veau de rivière: il faut que leurs perdrix viennent d’Auverge: que leurs lapins soit de la Roche Guyon.”[6] The same thought may be found in the fifth Satire of Juvenal, though somewhat differently expressed.

With the qualifying restrictions previously made, it may fairly be admitted that it is not to the Grand Monarque, but to the Regent Orleans, that the French of the present day owe the exquisite cuisine of the eighteenth century. The Pain à la d’Orleans was the invention of the regent himself; the filets de lapereau à la Berri were invented by his abandoned daughter, the Duchess de Berri, who plunged into every sensual excess, and whose motto was “Courte et bonne.” Her suppers were the best, and, it must be added, the most profligate in Paris.

As the Duchess de Berri, the daughter of the regent, was gourmande as well as galante, she is deified by the race of cooks and epicures, one of whom says that the alimentary art owes to her fertile genius a great number of receipts. Nor was she the only female who distinguished herself at this era in cookery, for it became à-la-mode to be the creator of a plat. The filets de volaille à la Bellevue were invented by the Marquise de Pompadour, in the château of Bellevue, for the petits soupers of the king. The poulets à la Villeroy owe their birth to the Maréchale de Luxembourg, then Duchess of Villeroy, one of the most sensual “gourmandes” of the court of Louis XV. The Chartreuse à la Mauconseil has been transmitted to us by the Marquise de Mauconseil, celebrated alike by her taste and her gallantries. The vol au vent à la Nesle proceeded from the fertile brain of the Marquis de Nesle, who refused the peerage to remain premier marquis of France, and the poularde à la Montmorency was the production of the duke of that name. Filets de veau à la Montgolfier, are so named because they are of the shape of balloons. The petites bouchées à la reine owe their origin to Maria Leczinska, wife of Louis XV., whose devotions, however self-denying in other respects, never prevented her from relishing a good dinner. All the entrées bearing the name of Bayonnaises were invented by the Maréchal Duke de Richelieu. The perdreaux à la Montglas acknowledge as their father a worthy magistrate of Montpelier, whilst the cailles à la Mirepoix were imagined by the marechal of that name, who in gourmandise, but in gourmandise only, rivalled the Marechal de Luxembourg; and last, though not least, the cotelettes à la Maintenon were the favourite dish of that frigid piece of pompous and demure hypocrisy, Madame de Maintenon herself.

It may be concluded, that the regency and the reign of Louis XV. were among the grand epochs of French cookery. The long peace which followed the treaty of Utrecht, the large fortunes made by the tribe of financiers, who, in ruining the state, enriched themselves—the tranquil and voluptuous life of a monarch who gave himself more concern about his personal pleasures and enjoyments than his royal renown—the character of the courtiers and public men of the day—all contributed to stamp an intensely sensual character on the age of Louis XV. A taste for English equipages and horses was now introduced, and our puddings and beef-steaks were also imitated. The example of the regent was refined on and extended in this reign. The petits soupers of the king were cited as models of delicacy and gourmandise. The kitchen in France, as in all the world over, requires “the cankers of a calm world and a long peace,” to sustain and support it; while the troubles of the League and the Fronde, the temperament of Louis XIV., and the despotic and tempestuous character of Richelieu, interfered with its progress in former reigns. There were great cooks as well as great captains in the reign of Louis XIV., notwithstanding the disparaging remarks which Carème casts on the memory of Vatel; but a witty author maintains that the only ineffaceable and immortal reputation of that time handed down to us in cookery, is that of the Marquis de Bechamel, who introduced into the sauce for turbot and cod fish an infusion of cream. The Bechamel de turbot et de cabillaud still maintain their popularity, though kings, dynasties, and empires have fallen, and half the globe has been revolutionized.

In the royal kitchen of Louis XVI., the art as an art declined; but the sacred fire of cookery (to use the inflated language of some of the craft) was preserved in many old houses, as, for instance, in the establishments of Marshals Richelieu and Duras, the Duke of La Vallière, the Marquis de Brancas, the Count de Tessé, and some others, who equalled in the delicacy of their tables the elegant sumptuosity of the reign of Louis XV. The excesses of some of the French nobility of this day would now appear incredible. One hundred and twenty pheasants were, at this period, weekly consumed in the kitchens of the Prince de Condé; and the Duke de Penthievre, in going to preside over the estates of Burgundy, was preceded by one hundred and fifty-two hommes de bouche! Can any, after this, wonder at the excesses of the Revolution? The unexpected death of Louis XV. (says a gourmand of the succeeding reign, and who survived the Revolution and the Consulate) struck a mortal blow at cookery. His successor, young and vigorous, ate with more voracity than delicacy, and did not pride himself on (the words are untranslateable) a “grand finesse de gout”—an exquisite delicacy of taste in the choice of his food. Large joints of butchers’ meat, and dishes essentially nutritive, represented his ideas of good living. His enormous appetite contented itself in satisfying hunger; learned efforts were not necessary to stimulate its vast cravings.

The French Revolution at length broke forth, and the historians of the kitchen speak with mournfulness of its effect on the science, which Montaigne quaintly calls l’art de la gueule. The kitchens of the faubourg of St. Germain and the Chaussée d’Antin no longer smoked, the perfumes of truffles were exhaled and vanished, the great and noble of the land were obliged to fly for their lives, and too often to dine with Duke Humphrey, or at best to dine frugally and sparingly. The financiers, who aped the luxuries and mimicked the extravagance of the court, were all ruined or denounced. The stoic’s fare—the radish and the egg, the Jus nigrum of the severe Spartans, and the black bread of the Germans of the middle ages, scarcely fit food for horses, were now revived. For three long years this spare Spartan régime continued. Had the Goths and Vandals gone on a little longer, says a witty epicure, who survived the Revolution, the receipt for a fricassee of chicken had been infallibly lost. The markets were no longer supplied. Beef, mutton, ham, and veal, had disappeared; as to fish, it was preposterous to think of it.[7] Not a good turbot, or salmon, or sturgeon, says Grimod, appeared during the Revolution. Fowls and game had become a “sick epicure’s dream,” not a solid reality. Nor were these miseries confined to Paris alone. “You might go into a country market,” says the same author, “with a ream of assignats in your hand, and not be able to buy a sack of flour.” A return to a gold currency produced a visible alteration in the Res Cibaria. The louis and five-franc pieces again peopled the markets with a populace of poultry and partridges. Cooks again began to talk in the language which the Italian maître d’hôtel of Cardinal Caraffa addressed to the pleasant and witty Montaigne, language which the laughing author has imperishably recorded in those inimitable volumes, which will be read and admired so long as the French language and literature endure. “Il m’a fait un discours de cette science de gueule avec une gravité et contenance magistrale, comme s’il m’eust parlé de quelque grand poinct de theologie. Il m’a dechiffré une difference d’appetits; la police de ses sauces; les qualités des ingredients et leurs effects, les differences des salades. Après cela il est entré sur l’ordre de service plein de belles et importantes considerations, et tout cela enflé de riches et magnifiques paroles; et celles mêmes qu’on employe à traiter du gouvernement d’un empire.”

The oxen of Auvergne and Normandy were now again marched slowly and gravely up from the provinces to be slaughtered in Paris. The sheep of Beauvais, of Cotentin and the Ardennes, were again, as under the old régime, cut up into cutlets, and the cooks soon appeared. Instead of serving as chefs de cuisine, butlers, intendants, and maîtres d’hôtel, they now were called citoyens, pensionnaires, and rentiers; for there were no grands seigneurs to employ them. For a while there was some inconvenience, but a Frenchman sooner accommodates himself to circumstances than any other human being, and such of the cuisiniers as had saved somewhat from the shipwreck of the Revolution formed eating-houses, taverns, and restaurants. These establishments have since become the temples of good cheer and gourmandise, in which wandering Englishmen spend and have spent millions upon millions of money; but it is an historical fact known to few, that the greater number of these restaurants owe their origin to the Revolution.[8]

The complete overthrow of the French kitchen, the work of three centuries, might have been effected at this season, had not its traditions been preserved. Happily there were Acolytes and Neophytes sufficient in existence, says one of the historians, to catch and perpetuate the scientific savour of the ancient “flesh pots.” In such a loss as this, weightier interests had been imperilled than mere cookery. More than half the intelligence, and nearly all of the French agreeability of the past age, had been in a great degree promoted by the French cuisine. The cook of the Condés and the Soubises contributed in no mean degree to give a zest and a vivacity to the dinners at which Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Helvetius, D’Alembert, Duclos, and Vauvenargues so often met; and this remark applies, in a great degree, to the suppers of Madame du Deffand, the dinners of the Baron D’Holbach, and the dinners, suppers, and pic-nics of the agreeable Crawford of Auchinames, whose “Tableau of French Literature” is not sufficiently known nor read in our day. It was at these social réunions that French conversation, then indeed a style parlé became animated and improved by the exquisite cheer which the “cunning hand” of the cook provided. A few hours of delightful, easy, unrestrained conversation between polite and well-informed men, did more to advance the progress of the human mind than the labours of a wilderness of speculative bookmaking academies. The solution of many great and grave questions—the propagation of new and enlarged views, the production of ingenious essays and instructive memoirs, are all owing to that elegant and agreeable body of men and women, kept together in a main degree by the exquisite attraction of petits soupers and luxurious dinners.

From the moment of the Executive Directory, 1795, to the period of the 18th Brumaire, all the historians among; the great cooks admit that their illustrious art was under the greatest obligations to Barras, that well-born tribune of the people, of whose family it was said, “noble comme les Barras, aussi anciens que les rochers de Provence.” Whether as Commissary of the government at Toulon—at whose siege, by the way, he first became acquainted with Bonaparte—or as Director, or as residing as a private gentleman at his château of Grosbois, Barras always exhibited those epicurean tastes which were either natural to him, or which he had acquired from a residence at the French settlement of Pondicherry.

During the most ferocious periods of the Revolution, there were but two splendid exceptions to the self-denying ordinances of the time. That desperate demagogue Danton loved and copiously indulged himself in morels, and is recorded to have given dinners at 400 francs a head; and Barras, when in the Directory, had his button mushrooms conveyed to him en poste from the Bouches du Rhone.

Napoleon, who may be said to have succeeded to power at the epoch of the 18th Brumaire, is falsely represented as an enemy of the pleasures of the table. It is true, a love of good cheer was not a dominant passion with him; he did not exhibit the crapulous gluttony of an over-fed sensualist, but he was not insensible to the pleasures of good eating. M. de Bausset,[9] the prefect of the Imperial palace, has handed down in his most interesting work some of the Emperor’s ordinary bills of fare. They are distinguished by simplicity and moderation, but there is also a pervading suitableness and taste very significant of the man, and of the nation over which he “reigned and governed.”

M. de Cussy, also attached to the kitchen and household of the Emperor, and who obtained from his patron, or assumed, the title of Marquis de Cussy, has also left us interesting details on the subject. One day at breakfast, says he (this was some time after his marriage), Napoleon, after having eaten, with his habitual haste, a wing of a chicken à la Tartare, turned towards M. de Cussy (who was always present at the Emperor’s meals), and the following dialogue took place between them: “The deuce! I have always hitherto found chicken-meat flat and insipid, but this is excellent.” “Sire, if your Majesty would permit, I would desire to have the honour of serving a fowl every day in a different fashion.” “What! M. de Cussy, you are then master of 365 different ways of dressing fowl?” “Yes, Sire, and perhaps your Majesty, after a trial, would take a pleasure à la science gastronomique. All great men have encouraged that science, and, without citing to your Majesty the example of the great Frederick, who had a special cook for each favourite dish, I might invoke, in support of my assertion, all the great names immortalized by glory.” “Well, then, M. de Cussy,” replied the Emperor, “we shall put your abilities to the test.” The case might be left to a jury of gourmands on this evidence, and the Emperor would be convicted, if not of gourmandise, at least of friandises. Who will, however, deny the gourmandise of his arch-chancellor, Cambacères, or of his minister of foreign affairs, Talleyrand? “The first clouds of smoke” (says Ude) “which announced the resurrection of cookery, appeared from the kitchen of a quondam bishop.” Napoleon himself was in the habit of saying that more fortunate treaties, more happy arrangements and reconciliations were due to the cook of Cambacères than to the crowds of diplomatic nonentities who thronged the ante-chambers of the Tuileries. On one occasion the town of Geneva sent to the arch-chancellor a monster trout, together with the sauce, the expense of which was verified by the Cour des Comptes as amounting to 6000 francs, or 240l. of our money.

A rare epoch in the history of cookery was the publication of the first number of the “Almanach des Gourmands,” which appeared in the beginning of the year 1803, and which the late Duke of York called the most delightful book that was ever printed. The sale of this work was prodigious. 22,000 copies of the four first years were speedily disposed of, and the work subsequently went through new editions. As the book is very scarce everywhere, and not to be found in England, I may be pardoned for dwelling on it. Gastronomy became the fashion of that day. Every one spoke on the subject; many wrote on it. Cookery passed from the kitchen to the shop, from the shop to the counting-house, from the counting-house to the studies of lawyers and physicians; thence to the salons and cabinets of ladies and statesmen. The object of life, according, at least, to our simple English notions, seemed reversed: people in England eat to live; in France, they appeared to live only to eat. This was in consonance with French character and practice.

To return, however, to the “Almanach des Gourmands.” Each volume contained an almanac for the year in which it was published, and a species of nutritive itinerary of the different traiteurs, rotisseurs, restaurateurs, pork-men, poulterers, butchers, bakers, provision, sauce, and spice shops, milkmen, oilmen, &c. Nor were the cafés, limonadiers, glaciers, nor wine and liqueur merchants neglected; for ample and amusing accounts of almost all the principal magasins de comestibles are given. The volumes are generally written in a playful, humorous style, and occasionally indicate originality and research. The first four numbers are by far the best, though there are passages in the seventh, eighth, and ninth equal to anything which appeared in the preceding numbers. The author and editor was Grimod de la Reyniere. His father, a fermier général was choked, in 1754, by attempting to swallow rather too voraciously a slice of a pâté de foies gras. The son inherited the hereditary passion for the pleasures of the table, joined to a sprightly yet quaint humour, which rendered him a general favourite. It must be admitted, that while he inspired a taste for cookery, he ennobled its language.

As a specimen of his manner, take a short extract from the second volume, under the head of the health of cooks. “The finger of a good cook should alternate perpetually between the stewpan and his mouth, and it is only thus in tasting every moment his ragouts, that he can hit upon the precise medium. His palate should therefore have an extreme delicacy, and be in some sort virgin, in order that the slightest trifle may stimulate it, and thus forewarn him of its faults. But the continual odour of ovens—the necessity under which a cook lies to drink often, and sometimes of bad wine, the vapour of charcoal, the accumulation of bile, and many other things, each and all contribute to interfere with his organs of sense, and most quickly to derange and alter his sense of taste. His palate becomes indurated; he has no longer that tact, that finesse, that exquisite sensibility, on which depends susceptibility of taste. His palate at length becomes case-hardened. The only means of restoring to him that flower which he has lost (cette fleur qu’il a perdue), and recruiting his strength, his suppleness, and his delicatesse, is to purge him, despite of any resistance he may be induced to make; for there are cooks deaf to the voice of glory, who see no need to take physic when they are in health. Oh, ye then who wish to enjoy at your daily board delicate and recherché fare, cause your cooks to be purged frequently (faites purger souvent vos cuisiniers), for there is no other means to accomplish your wishes.”

In another volume, published in 1806, the author says that in Riom, in Auvergne, there was an innkeeper named Simon, who had a special talent for dressing frogs. The process of feeding and dressing them is given in detail, admirably and graphically told, but at far too great a length to extract. “What proves the goodness of the dish, and the impossibility of counterfeiting it,” says Grimod, “is, that the author has gained 200,000 francs at this art, though he gives you for 24 sous a dish containing three dozen of frogs.”

The three “Frères Provenceaux,” we learn in the same volume, were even thus early renowned for Provençal ragouts, and, above all, for their Brandades de Merluche; and the veal of Pontoise was then, as now, fed on cream and biscuits, and carried to Paris in carriages made expressly for the purpose. It is in this year’s almanac also that the author speaks of the death of a celebrated gourmand and friend of his, Doctor Gastaldy, physician to the late Duke of Cumberland. The last dinner which he partook of was on Wednesday, the 20th December, at Cardinal Belloy’s, Archbishop of Paris, where, having eaten three times of the belly part of the salmon, he died of the effects of this invincible gluttony. The doctor would have gone to the salmon a fourth time, but that the prelate “tenderly upbraided him for his imprudence, and ordered the desired dish to be removed” (le reprit tendrement de son imprudence, et fit enlever ce sujet de convoitise). But alas, it was too late—the gulosity of Gastaldy caused his death, and he was hastily buried the day after his demise. Let this be a warning to priests in high places, whether Protestant, Popish, or Presbyterian, as to helping their guests too often to the richest part of a salmon.

In one of the volumes there is a long chapter on the opening of oysters, from which the concluding portion is extracted.

“It is not until the oyster is detached from the under shell that it ceases to live. The real lovers of oysters (such, for example, as the late M. Grimod de Verneuil), won’t allow the oyster-women to open their fish, reserving to themselves the important privilege of performing this operation on their own plate, in order that they may have the pleasure of swallowing this interesting fish alive.”

It is in this volume that the important secret is disclosed that the flesh of beasts, fowls, and game killed by electricity, is much more tender than if killed in the usual manner. “The discoverer of this important truth,” says Grimod, “was a Dr. Beyer, of the Rue de Clichy, who deserves to be ranked with the Rechaud, the Morillon, and the Robert, who had so worthily illustrated the culinary art, towards the end of the last century; and who, like the Raphaels, the Michael Angelos, and the Rubens, have been the founders of the three great schools of good living.”

Here also is a dissertation on asses’ flesh, wherein the author states that, during the blockade of Malta by the English and Neapolitans, the inhabitants, having had recourse to horseflesh, dogflesh, cats, rats, &c., at length tried asses’ flesh, and found it so excellent, that the gourmands of Valetta preferred this strange diet to the best beef and veal. When an ass was killed, there was great competition for the prime bits. “Your ass,” says Isouard, father of the musical composer of that name, “should not be more than three or four years old, and fat.”

There is also an account of a seasoning used by the gourmands of Terra Nova, a small town situated on the southern coast of Sicily, between Gergali and Scoglietti, on the sea-shore. This is a white grease, extracted from the fig-pecker, much sought after by the gourmands of Sicily and Naples. At Malta all respectable families use it in lieu of oil and butter. An immense number of birds, taken in nets, are necessary to produce so much grease. When killed they are thrown, in immense heaps, into an enormous oven, and the fat is thus melted out. It is bottled, and the carcasses of the birds thrown away.

The “Manuel des Amphytrions,” by the author of the almanac, is as curious and amusing, and a more succinct work than the “Almanach des Gourmands.”

The first work of any note, published in 1814, after the Restoration, was that of Beauvilliers. The author had been cook to the Count de Provence (Louis XVIII.), but at this period followed the business of a restaurateur in the Rue de Richelieu. Any eulogium on such a work would be supererogatory. The artist, who had been many years cook to the inventor of the soupe à la Xavier, that consummate and gouty gourmand, Louis XVIII., and who had often served and satisfied the Count d’Artois, afterwards Charles X., the inventor of the ris de veau à la d’Artois, must have been a cook of surpassing merit.

The “Physiologie du Goût” appeared in 1828. The author was M. Brillat Savarin, Conseillier en la Cour de Cassation. He had been bred to the bar, and was already in practice when the Revolution broke out. By the suffrages of his townsmen he was sent as a deputy to the Constituent Assembly. But in 1793, having resisted the progress of anarchy, he was forced to emigrate. He embarked for the United States, and established himself at New York, where he remained for two years, giving lessons in the French language, and filling nightly one of the first places in the orchestra of the theatre; for, among his other accomplishments, he was distinguished as a musician. During the Directory he returned, and the last twenty-five years of his life were spent in the Court of Cassation. It was in the leisure which this honourable retreat afforded him that he composed this work. It is, however, more a scientific essay, or a book of aphorisms, in the short and sententious style of the ancients, than a practical work on cookery.

Some of the statistics of this book are curious. It appears that, from the 1st of November to the end of February, there is a daily consumption of 300 turkeys, making, in all, but 36,000 turkeys. The work also contains a number of witty and curious anecdotes, from which I venture to extract one.

M. de Sanzai, Archbishop of Bordeaux, was an agreeable man and a respected prelate. He had won from one of his grand vicars a truffled turkey, which the loser seemed in no haste to pay. Towards the close of the carnival, the archbishop reminded his subordinate of the lost wager. “Monseigneur,” said the vicar, “the truffles are good for nothing this year.” “Bah, bah!” replied the archbishop, “that’s a report spread by the turkeys,” (c’est un bruit que les dindons font courir).

A vast number of editions of the “Cuisinière Bourgeoise” have appeared both in France and Switzerland, and, to speak truly, there is no more useful work. A greater number of copies have been sold, for the last seventy years, than even of the “Fables” of La Fontaine. The receipts are by no means expensive, and there is no better cookery for the middle classes of all countries. Even in England the dishes might be adopted among the better classes, occasionally abridging any undue portion of garlic or onion. This work was pirated at Neufchatel, in 1798, by the celebrated Fauche Borel, employed in many delicate negotiations by the emigrants, and he made a large sum by the piracy.

The “Cuisinier Royal,” published by Barba, is also a good work. It is of a more ostentatious character than the “Cuisinière Bourgeoise,” but the receipts are very numerous and varied, and there are no learned disquisitions on the art, which many would consider an advantage.

I have now gone through the chief culinary works of France, and it remains for me to speak of English cookery and cookery books. And first of the former. The traditions of English cookery are faint, few, and far between. In the earlier comedies there are few allusions to the art, and even in Shakespeare himself, though we find mention of barley-broth, of calf’s head and capon, of collops, cod’s head, soused gurnet, and salmon tail, of roasted pig and rashers, of beef and mustard, and “thick Tewkesbury mustard,” of hot venison pasty and hodge pudding, and lastly (in ridicule of foreign cookery), of “adders’ heads and toads carbonadoed;” yet still from these names no other inference can be drawn than that such dishes were in vogue. From the reign of Elizabeth to the Revolution, the style of cookery was undoubtedly heavy and substantial. Chines of beef and pork smoked on the early dinner tables, and the remains were eaten cold, and washed down with foaming tankards of ale on the following morning.

The age of Anne was distinguished by an extraordinary burst of intellectual vigour and great progress in the culinary art. Though the comedies of Congreve, Wycherly, and Vanbrugh, are fair specimens of the society of that day, still they throw little light on the social habits of the people. From the manner in which Lady Wishfort drinks, in the “Way of the World,” and the exhibition of Sir Wilful Witwold’s drunkenness, in the same piece, one would infer that immoderate inebriety was the characteristic of the time. Valentine, in “Love for Love,” calls for a bottle of sack and a toast; and Careless, in “The Double Dealer,” exclaims “I’m weary of guzzling.”

The pages of Pope throw an important light on the cookery of his time. His imitation of the second satire of the second book of Horace has a value which cannot always be affixed to his more important pieces. A light is not only thrown on the personal habits of the man, but on the social characteristics of the epoch.