Previous to the Renaissance the higher cultivation of cookery was confined largely to the monasteries, which prided themselves upon their excellent cheer and the hospitality they extended to distinguished visitors. Indeed, numbers of food preparations may be traced to the monastic orders, especially forms of cooking fish, eggs, and various soups. The introduction of soup, which is mentioned for the first time in history at the beginning of the fifteenth century, is closely connected with the clergy. Then it was that, during the fêtes attendant on the marriage of Catherine de Valois to Henry V of England, the Archbishop of Sens, at the head of a procession of his priests, bore the soup and the wine to the royal chamber, accompanied by the blessing of the Papal See.
NON IN SOLO PANE VIVIT HOMO
From the original oil-painting by Klein
Around the art of larding is likewise shed the halo of sanctity, its discovery having occurred during the Council of Bâle in 1440, when Amadeus of Savoy, elected pope under the name of Félix V, was tendered a larded capon by his cook. Julienne, or a soup somewhat similar, it is more than probable, is an old monastic dish having special reference to days when meat was proscribed, the same observation applying to numerous fish and vegetable soups and ragoûts.
There is much reason to suppose that not a few treatises on cookery and on wines have appeared whose authors were dignitaries of the church, or at least connected with clericalism, but whose rôle forbade them attaching their names to works of this nature. Thus, during the year 1671 there was published at Molsheim, in southern Germany, an excellent cook-book which treated of the various branches of the science, by Bernardin Buchinger, Abbot of Lützel, having for its title "Koch-Buch so für Geistliche als auch Weltliche Grosse und Geringe Haushaltungen," etc.,—"Cook-Book for large and small Religious as well as Laical Establishments,"—a culinary grammar of much merit which has since passed into several editions. In this work the hierophant's name was omitted, the authorship being announced as "Durch Einen Geistlichen Küchen-Meister desz Gotteshauses Lützel beschrieben und practicirt,"—"described and practised by a religious Master-Cook of the Monastery of Lützel." An important volume of three hundred pages by Vittorio Lancellotti, published in Rome, appeared in 1627, in which is presented month by month a description of a large number of feasts given by various prelates in honour of eminent personages at the commencement of the seventeenth century. The volume was dedicated to Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandino, and is addressed chiefly to the clergy, whose good taste in the matter of good cheer and luxury in entertaining are minutely set forth.[35]
To the ancient ecclesiasts the vineyards producing the finest wines of the world owe their existence and their fame—the Johannisberg, Steinberg, Hochheim, Dom Dechanei, Rauenthal-Pfaffenberg, and numerous other growths of the Rheingau; the Forster Kirchenstück and Jesuitengarten of the Rheinpfalz; the Stein and Leisten wines of Franconia, the Liebfrauenmilch Enclos Klostergarten of Rhenish Hessia, and the Kloster Neuberg of Austria. No less celebrated in other lands are the rich endowments of the monastery—the Romanée, Chambertin, and Clos-Vougeot of the Côte d'Or; the Hermitage and Château-neuf-du-Pape of the Rhône; Saint-Emilion and Sainte-Croix-du-Mont of the Gironde, as well as many of the priceless growths of the Haut-Médoc. Like the odour of old arras, around the roseate and golden clusters of the vine clings the incense of prelacy and circles the aureole of the church.
One were more than ungrateful, too, to forget the invaluable services rendered by Dom Pérignon in contributing to the vinous delights of the table. Fancy, if one can, a world without champagne—not as a daily beverage, but as a talisman to loosen the tongues of the timid and a wand to evoke the joyous sally and brilliant repartee! With what other potable may one so appropriately pledge not only le beau sexe des deux hemisphères, mais les deux hemisphères du beau sexe?
Almost equally to be commended are the Carthusian friars of Dauphiné, who evolved the greens and golds of Chartreuse; the cenobites of La Grâce-Dieu, who produced Trappistine; the Trappists of l'Allier, in whose cloister originated the elixir of long life, de Sept-Fonds; and the holy fathers of Rouen, who invented the delicious balm of Bon-Secours.
The religious orders were early famed for their distillations. In the account of his travels in Italy the observant Seigneur de Montaigne mentions the Jesuits of Vicenza, who had a liqueur-shop in their monastery, as well as the monks of Verona, who were excellent distillers of eau de naffe, a liqueur made with the flower of citron. The famous Bénédictine, however, a rival of Chartreuse, though at present made by the monks of Fécamp in Normandy, and therefore possessing the stamp of monachism, was not of spiritual inspiration. Like the eau de vie des Carmes, Liqueur des Evèques, Eau Archiépiscopale, Liqueur des Chartreux, Plaisir des Dames, and Huile des Jeunes Mariés, it was worldly in its inception. Its history is interesting. In 1803 M. Le Grand, an enterprising wine-merchant of Fécamp, set about its manufacture, advertising it to the amount of eight hundred thousand francs,—his entire fortune,—the claim being made that the secret of its fabrication was consigned by a Benedictine brother to a manuscript in 1510 and opportunely discovered by the vender. The venture proved successful, as indeed the virtues of the liqueur merited, its annual sale now exceeding a million bottles. At first the clergy protested loudly against the bald appropriation of the name of an abbey, and Cardinal Bonnechose[36] petitioned Napoleon III to put an end to the scandal, the restored order eventually taking up the manufacture of the cordial and signing it with the name of the inventor, whose final Benedicite was recently pronounced. The present Archbishop of Rouen came to bless the most recent constructions of the abbey, among which is a superb Salle des Abbés, and, at the banquet following the ceremonial, during the dessert he compared the inventor of the liqueur to several of the heroes of Christianity. Benedictine (ad majorem Dei gloriam) is the only important liqueur thus far which has escaped analysis, although imitations of this and all others that have proved successful are freely placed upon the market.