Built palaces up, and threw whole cities down;
Made many good laws, many bad ones as well,
And merited richly both heaven and hell.”
The mention of Cardinal de Caraffa, by Montaigne, reminds me that, for a gastronome, the Cardinal was singularly sanguinary in spirit. I know no one to compare with him, except Dr. Cahill, who is not averse to good living, and who has earned so gloomy a notoriety by his terrible sentiment of the massacre of Protestants being “a glorious idea.” Caraffa was enabled to enjoy both his propensities, of swallowing good things and slaughtering heretics. “Having obtained leave from the Pope to establish the Inquisition at Rome, at a time when the resources of the State ran low, he turned his private property to the use of his zeal, and set up a small Inquisition at his own expense.” Thus he could dine within hearing of the groans of his victims; his cook could inform him that the hares and heretics had both been roasted; and he may have been occasionally puzzled to know whether that smell of burning came from the patties or the Protestants.
The Italian cooks were, for a season, fashionable in France; but they had a passion for poetry as well as for pies, and were given to let their sauces burn while they recited whole pages of “Orlando Furioso.” They were critics as well as cooks, and the kitchens resounded with their denunciations of all who objected to the merits of the divine Ariosto. But even the Papal ennobling of a cook could not compensate for an indifferent dinner; and though Leo X., in a fit of modest delight at a sauce made by his cook during Lent, named him from that circumstance “Jack o’ Lent,” or “Jean de Carême,” the French would not allow that such an event authorized the artiste to be dreaming over epics, when he should be wide awake to the working of his proper mystery. But the mystery itself was much obstructed by the political events of the times. There were the bloody wars of the Guises, the troubles of the League, the despotic reign of Richelieu, the cacochymical temperament (as the editor of the “Almanach des Gourmands” would call it) of Louis XIII., and the ridiculous war of the Fronde. The glory of the French kitchen rose with that of the Grand Monarque, and Vatel and Louis XIV. were contemporaries. Vatel slew himself to save his honour! The King had come to dine with Condé; but the cod had not arrived in time to be dressed for the King, and thereupon the heroic artist fell upon his sword, like an ancient Roman, and is immortalized for ever by his glorious folly!
But there was nothing really heroic in the death of Vatel, whose sword was pointed at his breast by wounded vanity. Far more heroic was the death of the cook of the Austrian Consul, in the late cruel massacre, by the cowardly Russian fleet, at Sinope. The Consul’s cook was a young woman of thirty years of age. The Muscovite murderers were at the very height of their bloody enjoyment, and sending shots into the town, when the cook attempted to cross a garden, to procure some herbs; for Consuls must dine, though half the world be dying. She had performed her mission, and was returning, when a thirty-six pounder shot cut her completely in two. Rather than give up the parsley for her master’s soup, she thus encountered death. What was Vatel and his bodkin, to this more modern cook and the thirty-six pounder, loaded by the Czar for her destruction?
The cooks “looked up” in the nights and suppers of the Regency, and the days and dinners of Louis XV. It would be difficult to say whether under the Regent, or under the King, the culinary art and its professors most flourished. I am inclined, however, to think, that, during the tranquil and voluptuous period of the reign of Louis XV., the cooks of France rose to that importance from which they have never descended. They became a recognised and esteemed class in society, whose spoiled children they were; and, in return, it was very like spoiled children that they behaved. But how could it be otherwise, when the noble, the brave, and the fair girded aprons to their loins, and stood over stew-pans, with the air of alchymists over alembics? It is to the nobility and other distinguished persons in high life, yet not noble, in France, that gastronomy owes many a dish, whose very name betrays to ecstasy. And here are a few of these droll benefactors of mankind.
The Marquis de Béchamel immortalized his name, in the reign of Louis XIV., by his invention of cream-sauce, for turbot and cod. Madame de Maintenon imagined the “cutlets in curl-papers” which go by her name, and which her ingenuity created in order to guard the sacred stomach of the Grand Monarque from the grease which he could not digest. The “Chartreuse à la Mauconseil” is the work, and the most innocent one, of the free and easy Marchioness of that name. A woman more free and easy still, the Duchess of Villeroy, (Maréchale de Luxembourg,) produced, in her hours of reflection, the dish known as the poulets à la Villeroy. They were eaten with bread à la Régent, of which the author was the roué Duke of Orleans. His too “well-beloved” daughter, the Duchess of Berry, had a gastronomic turn of mind, like her illustrious father. She was an epicurean lady, who tasted of all the pleasures of life without moderation, whose device was, “Short and sweet,” and who was contented to die young, seeing that she had exhausted all enjoyment, and had achieved a renown, that should embalm her name for ever, as the inventor of the filets de lapereau. The gigot à la Mailly was the result of much study, on the part of the first mistress of Louis XV., to rid herself of a sister who was a rival. Madame de Pompadour, another of the same King’s “ladies,” testified her gratitude for the present which the Monarch made her of the Château de Bellevue, by the production of the filets de volaille à la Bellevue. The Queen of Louis was more devout, but not less epicurean, than his mistresses; and the petites bouchées à la Reine, if they were not of her creating, were named in honour of Maria Leczinzka. Louis himself had a contempt for female cooks; but Madame Du Barry had one so well-trained, that with a charming dinner of coulis de faisans, croustades de la foie de lottes, salmis de bécassine, pain de volaille à la suprême, poularde au cresson, écrevisses au vin de Sauterne, bisquets de pêches au Noyau, and crème de cerneaux, the King was so overcome with ecstasy, that, after recovering from the temporary disgust he experienced at hearing that it was the handywork of a woman, he consented to ennoble her by conferring upon her the cordon bleu,—which phrase, from that time, has been accepted as signifying a skilled female cook.
With respect to other dishes and their authors, the vol au vent à la Nèsle owns a Marquis for its father; and the poularde à la Montmorency is the offspring of a Duke. The Bayonnoise, or the Mabonnoise rather, recalls one of the victories of the Duke de Richelieu; and veau à la Montgolfier, well inflated, was the tribute of a culinary artist to the hero who first rode the air at the tail of a balloon. The sorbet à la Donizetti was the masterpiece of the Italian confectioner of the late Duke of Beaufort. He had been to the Opera; and one of the composer’s charming airs having given him an idea, he brooded over it, till, an hour or so before dawn, it was hatched into reality, when he rushed to the Duke’s bed-chamber, and, “drawing Priam’s bed-curtains in the night,” announced to his startled Grace the achievement of a new sorbet.
The tendrons d’agneaux au soleil, and the filets de poulets à la Pompadour, were two of the dishes invented by the famous lady of that name. The carbonnade à la Soubise, and the carré de veau à la Guemenée, date—the first from the reign of Louis XV., the last from that of Louis XVI.,—periods when the people were famishing. The Pompadour was a great patron of the arts, and especially of the culinary art; and the cuisine des petits appartements, during her reign, was at the very height of its savoury reputation. The Prince of Soubise was a poor General, but a rich glutton; and his son-in-law, the Prince de Guemenée, was famous for his invention of various ragoûts, his inordinate extravagance, and his bankruptcy, with liabilities against him amounting to twenty-eight millions of francs. Madame la Maréchale de Mirepoix was the authoress of cailles à la Mirepoix; and her descendants live on the reputation acquired thereby by their epicurean ancestress. The Bourbons vied with the aristocracy in taxing their genius, and cudgelling their brains, in order to produce new dishes. Thus, the potage à la Xavier was the production of Louis XVIII., in the days of his early manhood; while the soupe à la Condé was a rival dish invented by his princely cousin,—a cousin, by the way, who, when a refugee in England, used to pass his evenings at Astley’s, with his pockets full of apples, which he gallantly presented to ladies as highly, but not as naturally, coloured as the fruit. Perhaps the reputation of the Maréchal de Richelieu rests more on his boudins à la carpe, than on his battles and billets-doux. Finally, a mysterious obscurity conceals from us the name of the inventor of the petites bouchées de foie gras. He is the Junius of gastronomic literature; but if he be guessed at in vain, he is blessed abundantly, as one who has concentrated paradise, (an Epicurean’s paradise,) and given an antepast thereof, in a single mouthful.