From the etching by Rajon
FROM CARÊME TO DUMAS
"Les écrivains-cuisiniers sont aussi nécessaires que les autres littérateurs: il vous faut connaître la théorie du plus ancien des arts."—Charles Gerard.
Among the great professional cooks who were not alone notable practitioners, but who have written understandingly on the art, the names of Beauvilliers, Carême, Ude, Francatelli, Soyer, Urbain-Dubois, and Gouffé are preëminent. We have already considered the important rôle enacted by Beauvilliers as chef, restaurateur, and author. The unctuous name of Carême, however, is more often uttered with reverence, and even yet evokes visions of all that is most delectable in sauces and entremêts de douceur.
Indeed, were one to wish that he might turn an Aladdin's ring and summon some genius of the range who would be most gladly welcomed, surely on Carême the choice would fall. As for the dinner one might wish to command, what better than the feast at the Château de Boulogne, so eloquently described by Lady Morgan, when he presided at the Baron Rothschild's villa—that dinner of an estival eventide when the landscape lay sweltering in the heat, without, but where all was deliciously cool within the vast pavilion which stood apart from the mansion in the midst of orange trees: "where distillations of the most delicate viands, extracted in silver dews, with chemical precision,
"'On tepid clouds of rising steam,'
formed the base of all; where every meat presented its own natural aroma, and every vegetable its own shade of verdure; where the mayonnaise was fried in ice (like Ninon's description of Sévigné's heart); and the tempered chill of the plombière anticipated the stronger shock, and broke it, of the exquisite avalanche, which, with the hue and odour of fresh gathered nectarines, satisfied every sense and dissipated every coarser flavour."