“The hypocritical valet is fatal to the tranquillity of a great establishment; he is vain, proud, paltry, crawling, lazy, and gluttonous; he is a tale-bearer for the purpose of gaining his master’s confidence, which he afterwards abuses; he is the Tartuffe of domestic life.
“The upstart valet is self-sufficient and scented.
“The doctor speaks ill of the cook, in order that he may not lose his influence over the mind of the rich man; but the talent of a good cook tends more to the preservation of his master’s health than the factitious science of certain doctors, whose medical advice is regulated by their own interests.
“The rich man who leads an irregular life ought rather to trust to the science of a cook to re-establish his health, if he feels the necessity of it, than to the discourses of the interested doctor.”
Such was Anthony Carème. He had gained the suffrages of emperors and kings, of princes royal and princes not royal, of noble ladies and rich banker Jews, when the climax of his felicity was capped by the friendship and good-will of Rossini, and a flattering notice of his work, in his usual sparkling style, from the facile pen of Jules Janin. This was too much for mortal man, and encumbered by the very splendour and vanity of his successes, and not a little worn out also, by thirty years of service, he sank into premature decay, and was taken from that world of bon-vivants and sensualists of whom he had formed the delight, somewhere about the year of grace 1835 or 1836. “He was,” says a celebrated gourmand, “lively, ardent, enthusiastic, of a rare patience, of an imperturbable sangfroid,” The last work of Carème, “’Art de Cuisine Française au XIXème Siècle,” was left in an unfinished state, but M. Plumeret, first cook of the Russian embassy, has finished it by the publication of the sixteenth and seventeenth parts. In the “aître d’Hôtel Français,” the “uisinier Parisien,”and “a Cuisine de Paris au XIXème Siècle,” will Carème live.
“Carème bestowed fine names on his soups:—Potages Condé, Boïeldieu, Broussais, Roques, Ségalas (the three last learned and agreeable doctors); Lamartine, Dumesnil (the historian); Buffon, Girodet; and to be just to all the world, that great practitioner in the culinary art which the world has lost, had not forgotten, before his death, to give also to one of his best soups the name of Victor Hugo. He called a matelote of fish after M. Delavigne, and a dish of perch after his physician, M. Gaubert.”
Here are M. Carème’s ideas on maigre sauces:—“It is in a lenten kitchen that the cleverness of a cook can shed a brilliant light. It was in the Elysée Imperial, and by the example of the famous Laguipierre and Robert, that I was initiated into this fine branch of the art, and it is inexpressible. The years ’93 and ’94, in their terrible and devastating course, respected these strong heads (ces fortes têtes). When our valiant First Consul appeared at the head of affairs our miseries and those of gastronomy finished.
“When the empire came, one heard of soups and entrées maigre. The splendid maigre first appeared at the table of the Princess Caroline Murat. This was the sanctuary of good cheer, and Murat was one of the first to do penitence. But what a penitence!”
One does not know whether to be indignant or to laugh at this. The old proverb, “Set a beggar on horseback and he will ride to the devil,” is undoubtedly true. A few years before the consulate the ambitious Caroline Buonaparte, afterwards wife of Murat, was, with her mother and the other female members of her family, in so destitute a situation at Marseilles, that they had not the means of buying wood to warm themselves; and as to Murat, her husband, it is well known that he rose from the very dregs of society, his father being a village innkeeper at Bastide Frontonière, in the department of Lot.