When I first knew Paris as a youth in 1822, the most famous place for a fish dinner was the Rocher de Cancale, in the Rue Montorguiel. It was then and had for eighteen or twenty years before been kept by M. Baleine, aided by Madame Beauvais.
In the sixth volume of the “Almanach des Gourmands,” published in 1808, it is stated that this famous restaurant was in that year frequented by Russian princes, German barons, and the élite of diplomatic society, who then ordered dinners at ten, fifteen, and eighteen francs per head, without wine. The cook at this period was said to be one of the best in Paris, and the reputation of the house continued till 1840, and even later. You were always sure to find the finest and freshest fish at the Rocher de Cancale; and the poultry, and meats, and game were also of the choicest. But the year 1848, which upset the Orleans dynasty, ruined this famous establishment, and it is now only numbered as a thing of the past.
I remember dining there with a party of six persons in the year 1828, the bill for our dinner amounted to 450 francs, or 75 francs per head, including wine. The dinner principally consisted of divers kinds of fish and game. From this dinner, composed of a bisque or French soup, with fillets of turbot and various entrées of fish and game, every one of the party rose hungry. On this occasion some Chateau Margaux was ordered, said to be in bottle from 1789, a period of thirty-nine years, for which a charge of fourteen francs per bottle was made. But this would now be considered a bagatelle, as at several of the restaurants in Paris there is Chateau Margaux charged at twenty and twenty-five francs per bottle, not a quarter so old as the wine of which I speak.
The most expensive part of the 1828 dinner was the fish, and not the wine. M. Ferdinand Fayot, in his “Treatise de la Table particulière de M. Talleyrand,” relates the following anecdote of an abbé who was wont to frequent the Rocher de Cancale for its fish:—
“A certain abbé, who was uncommonly fond of fish, often visited the Rocher de Cancale. Upon one occasion, having dined copiously of salmon, a heavy indigestion was the consequence. Three days afterwards, whilst saying mass, the idea of the fish came across his mind, and, instead of saying the mea culpa of the Confiteor, he was heard to repeat, in striking his breast, ‘Ah, le bon saumon! ah, le bon saumon!’”
CHAPTER IX.
THE ROAST.
The definition given of the word roast in the “Dictionnaire des termes du vieux François,”[15] is a very curious one. Here it is:—“Rost et raust du rosty. Ce mot vient de rusticus parceque le feu noirci, et brule la viande comme le soleil qui hâle le visage des paysans.” Anything more futile, trivial, and far-fetched than this it were impossible to conceive; yet a person daily accustomed to lexicographic studies will simply smile at meanings so forced and strained—meanings very common, however, with dictionary makers and lexicographers.