During the regency of Philippe d'Orléans, attention became directed to the chemistry of cooking, the dinners of the regent being celebrated for their combination of refinement and art—"for splendidly larded viands, matelotes of the most tempting quality, and turkeys superbly stuffed."
Louis XV, who was himself a practitioner of remarkable skill, continued, with the aid of his cooks—Moustier and Vincent de la Chapelle—to foster the development which his predecessors had promoted. "Who could enumerate," says Mercier, "all the dishes of the new cuisine? It is an absolutely new idiom. I have tasted viands prepared in so many ways and fashioned with such art that I could not imagine what they were." "Louis XV ate astoundingly," says Barbier; "although his stomach was extremely elastic, he forced it to such an extent that his indigestions were of great frequency, and called for constant medication. Already at an early age he became a great drinker of champagne, and set the mode for cold pâtés of larks. The table was the only serious occupation of his life." On hunting-days it was a frequent practice of the king to give a dinner for his courtiers at which each was called upon to prepare a dish. De la Gorse mentions a dinner given at St. Hubert where all the dishes were prepared by the Prince de Beaufremont, the Marquis de Polignac, and the Ducs de Gontaut, d'Ayen, de Coigny, and de la Vallière, the king on his part contributing the poulets au basilic.
At this period there appeared, among innumerable cook-books, a work of four volumes entitled, "Suppers of the Court," a treatise which has been pronounced one of the best and most complete of its kind.[11] To Louis XV belongs the invention of tables volantes, or, to speak more truly, the revival of tables à la Trimalchio—like those devised during the times of the old Romans—which descended after each course through the floor, to appear reladen with new surprises. It was to this monarch, who insisted that women could not rise to the sublime heights of the cuisine, that Madame du Barry gave the successful supper from which, it was said, originated the order of the cordon bleu for accomplished artisans of her sex. This was the menu, as elaborated by the best cuisinière that the reigning favourite could procure: Coulis de faisan, petites croustades de foie de lottes, salmis de bécassines, pain de volaille à la suprème, poularde au cresson, écrevisses au vin de sauterne, biscuits de pêches au noyau, crême de cerneaux, and fraises au marasquin. Lady Morgan asserts, however, that this title was first given to Marie, a celebrated cuisinière of the tax-gatherer who built the palace of l'Elysée Bourbon. Still another explanation of the term is that it originated with Madame de Maintenon, who established a school at St. Cyr for the education of the orphan daughters of ennobled officers. The pupils were carefully instructed in the culinary art, and to those who excelled a blue ribbon was presented as a badge of reward.
Again, if we accept a reference of Albert Glatigny in one of his two airy poems on old Versailles, the term would appear to concern the Marquise de Montespan, who, as has already been stated, was a cook of no little merit:
"Parfois le soir, au bras d'un militaire
Vêtu d'azur, arrogant comme un paon,
Un cordon-bleu passait avec mystère,
Et l'on disait, 'Louis et Montespan!'"
(Sometimes at eve, on arm of cavalier
Bedight in blue, like some proud peacock's van,