History Notes

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Living out our past through wine... ...we continue to live out our past by drinking wine made from a plant that has its origins in the ancient Near East... Fermented beverages have been preferred over water throughout the ages: they are safer, provide psychotropic effects, and are more nutritious. Some have even said alcohol was the primary agent for the development of Western civilization, since more healthy individuals (even if inebriated much of the time) lived longer and had greater reproductive success. When humans became "civilized," fermented beverages were right at the top of the list for other reasons as well: conspicuous display (the earliest Neolithic wine, which might be dubbed "Chateau Hajji Firuz," was like showing off a bottle of Pétrus today); a social lubricant (early cities were even more congested than those of today); economy (the grapevine and wine tend to take over cultures, whether Greece, Italy, Spain, or California); trade and cross-cultural interactions (special wine-drinking ceremonies and drinking vessels set the stage for the broader exchange of ideas and technologies between cultures); and religion (wine is right at the center of Christianity and Judaism; Islam also had its "Bacchic" poets like Omar Khayyam). Whatever the reason, we continue to live out our past civilization by drinking wine made from a plant that has its origins in the ancient Near East. Your next bottle may not be a 7000 year old vintage from Hajji Firuz, but the grape remains ever popular—cloned over and over again from those ancient beginnings.

Neolithic Period “Chateau Hajji Firuz” How did we know it was wine? If winemaking is best understood as an intentional human activity rather than a seasonal happenstance, then the Neolithic period (85004000 B.C.) is the first time in human prehistory when the necessary preconditions for this momentous innovation came together. Most importantly, Neolithic communities of the ancient Near East and Egypt were permanent, year-round settlements made possible by domesticated plants and animals.

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Overview of two Neolithic houses at Hajji Firuz Tepe, during excavation.

With a more secure food supply than nomadic groups and with a more stable base of operations, a Neolithic "cuisine" emerged. Using a variety of food processing techniques—fermentation, soaking, heating, spicing—Neolithic peoples are credited with first producing bread, beer, and an array of meat and grain entrées we continue to enjoy today. Crafts important in food preparation, storage, and serving advanced in tandem with the new cuisine. Of special significance is the appearance of pottery vessels around 6000 B.C. The plasticity of clay made it an ideal material for forming shapes such as narrow-mouthed vats and storage jars for producing and keeping wine.

Mary Voigt (white hat) excavates the "kitchen" of the Hajji Firuz Neolithic house that yielded the six wine jars, which had been set into the floor along one wall of the room.

After firing the clay to high temperatures, the resultant pottery is essentially indestructible, and its porous structure helps to absorb organics. A major step forward in our understanding of Neolithic winemaking came from the analysis of a yellowish residue inside a jar (see photo at top of page) excavated by Mary M. Voigt at the site of Hajji Firuz Tepe

3 in the northern Zagros Mountains of Iran. The jar, with a volume of about 9 liters (2.5 gallons) was found together with five similar jars embedded in the earthen floor along one wall of a "kitchen" of a Neolithic mudbrick building, dated to ca. 5400-5000 B.C. The structure, consisting of a large living room that may have doubled as a bedroom, the "kitchen," and two storage rooms, might have accommodated an extended family. That the room in which the jars were found functioned as a kitchen was supported by the finding of numerous pottery vessels, which were probably used to prepare and cook foods, together with a fireplace. Did you know...? Humans and most of what they surround themselves with (clothing, habitations, and cuisine), are primarily organic in chemical composition. Organics are easily destroyed and dispersed; only the application of microchemical techniques can reconstruct what existed originally. The methods and approaches that have been developed for ancient wine can be applied to other organic materials—whether DNA, dyes, woods, resins, drugs, honey, or whatever—as long as they have been well preserved enough (best in dry, desert regions or underwater, where oxygen is not available).

Egypt Wine for the Afterlife The wild grape never grew in ancient Egypt. Yet a thriving royal winemaking industry had been established in the Nile Delta—most likely due to Early Bronze Age trade between Egypt and Palestine, encompassing modern Israel,the West Bank and Gaza, and Jordan—by at least Dynasty 3 (ca. 2700 B.C.), the beginning of the Old Kingdom period. Winemaking scenes appear on tomb walls, and the accompanying offering lists include wine that was definitely produced at vineyards in the Delta. By the end of the Old Kingdom, five wines—all probably made in the Delta—constitute a canonical set of provisions, or fixed "menu," for the afterlife.

Early Dynastic "wine jar" and stopper from a royal tomb at Abydos, Egypt.

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Close up of the stopper. It bears the name of Den, a Dynasty 1 pharaoh.

The evidence for winemaking in the Delta during the preceding Early Dynastic Period (Dynasties 1 and 2) is more inferential. Rather than recording a large number of wine jars in an offering list, actual jars in large quantities were buried in the tombs of the pharoahs at Abydos and those of their families at Saqqara, the main religious centers. The jars are stoppered with a round pottery lid and a conical clay lump that was pressed over the lid and tightly around the rim. The clay stopper was generally impressed with multiple cylinder seal impressions giving the name of the pharoah. ...such seals have been interpreted as a primitive kind of wine label... While chemical tests have yet to verify that the Dynasty 1 and 2 jars contained wine, less common seal impressions on the jar stoppers do include hieroglyphic signs for "grapevine/vineyard" (see drawing at top of page) and possible geographic locations (e.g., Memphis, the northern capital, near Saqqara), in addition to the king's name. Such seals have been interpreted as a primitive kind of wine label, possibly giving the location of the winery and its owner. The impressions with only the king's name might then be an abbreviated form of registration for jars that generally contained wine. Viniculture in Egypt must have taken some time to develop, and the Early Dynastic "wine jars" may well represent the first "fruits" of the nascent industry.

Is it possible to know when the first grapevines were transplanted to the Nile Delta?

Drawing of a cylinder seal impression on a jar stopper bearing the name of

5 Khasekhemwy, a Dynasty 2 pharoah. It shows a grapevine trained to run along a trellis or arbor.

The answer is vital for understanding the prehistory of an industry that eventually spread over the entire Delta, to the large western oases, and even to towns on the upper Nile where the climate would seem to preclude viniculture. The domesticated grapevine could only have come from some region of the Levant that was already exploiting it, and many specialists—farmers, horticulturists, traders, and above all, vintners—would've been involved in the establishment and success of the developing industry. The grapevine hieroglyphic itself (pictured above), showing a grapevine trained to run along a trellis or arbor, indicates that the Early Dynastic viniculture was quite sophisticated. Did you know...? Many of the Museum's millon+ artifacts in its collections relate to fermented beverages or cuisine. (Think of Greek classical pottery and Dionysus cavorting with his satyrs and maenads!)

Mesopotamia Under the Grape Arbors... It has usually been argued that barley beer was the alcoholic beverage of choice in ancient Sumer, since the hot, dry climate of southern Iraq makes it difficult to grow grapevines, and the textual evidence for viniculture and winemaking in Mesopotamia is minimal before the 2nd millennium B.C. But based on chemical evidence for wine inside jars that could've been used to transport and serve it, wine was probably already being enjoyed by at least the upper classes in Late Uruk times (ca. 3500-3100 B.C.). Early Dynastic cylinder seals depict the royalty and their entourages drinking beer with tubes/straws from large jars and a second beverage—presumably wine—from hand-held cups. The wine imported into lowland Greater Mesopotamia could have been brought from the northern Zagros Mountains of Iran or other parts of the Near East, at least 600 kilometers away. The 5th century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus describes shipping wine down the Euphrates or Tigris from Armenia at a much later period: round skin boats were loaded with date-palm casks of wine and delivered to Babylon. River transport was also an option in the Late Uruk Period. But if the

6 demand for the beverage were great enough, transplantation of grapevines to closer locales in the central Zagros and possibly as far south as Susa would be anticipated. When the Late Uruk trade routes were suddenly cut off at the end of the period, the pressure to establish productive vineyards closer to the major urban centers would have intensified.

A "banquet" scene on an impression of a lapis cylinder seal from Queen Pu-abi's tomb. A male and female on either side of a wide-mouthed jar are shown imbibing barley beer through drinking tubes, while others below raise high their cups, probably containing wine, which is served from a spouted jar.

Future excavation will be decisive in tracing the prehistory of viniculture and winemaking in this region of the ancient Near East; already there is a strong indication that the domesticated grape plant had already been transplanted there as early as the mid-3rd millennium B.C. Elamite cylinder seals, foreshadowing similiar scenes on Assyrian reliefs some two millennia later, depict males and females seated under grape arbors, drinking what is most likely wine Did you know...? Queen Pu-abi, who was buried with her servants—who had all been ceremonially poisoned—was accompanied to the afterlife with hundreds of gold and silver goblets, drinking-tubes or straws of lapis lazuli, and a five-liter silver jar, which is thought to have been her daily allotment of barley beer!

Did you know...? Museum scientists have analyzed what participants ate and drank at the final funerary feast of King Midas at Gordion (ca. 700 B.C.) and discovered that it was lamb stew and a mixed fermented beverage of wine, barley beer, and honey mead!

Louis XIV & Modern French Cuisine

Louis XIV (1638-1715) encouraged and enjoyed the "new invention" of classic French cuisine. This food movement differed from Medieval/Renaissance cooking in that it stressed the natural flavors of foods rather than intense spices and sugars. Classic French cuisine was championed by chefs such as Pierre Francois de la Varenne. His book, Le

7 Cuisiner Francois (published in 1651), is still regarded as a turning point in culinary history. This was also the period of "New World" food introductions. Among the most significant: potatoes and tomatoes (These were not, however, assimilated until the next century). Salads of all sorts were also very popular, as as were a battery of new sauces, which would define classic French cuisine. Of course, not everyone was able to partake in this new food revolution. What were the peasants eating in the 17th century France? "In the reign of Louis XIV, cooking was spectacular rather than fine or delicate, and the festivities of the Prince of Conde at Chantilly, for example, were particularly sumptious. The famous Vatel was maitre d'hotel of Conde the Great, a very important position! A great number of dishes were served at each meal and there are many descriptions of the meals served at the table of Louis XIV, who ate too heavily for a true gourmet. The Palatine Princess wrote: "I have very often seen the king eat four plates of different soups, an entire pheasant, a partridge, a large plateful of salad, mutton cut up in its juice with garlic, two good pieces of ham, a plateful of cakes and fruits and jams.' However, Louis XIV established the habit of having dishes served separately. Before this time, everything was piled up together in a large pyramid. In his reign, the culinary utensils of the Middle Ages were replaced by a batterie de cuisine, which included many new pots and pans in tinplate and wrought iron, and, later, the introduction of silver utensils. Louis XIV had a passion for vegetables, which led La Quintinie to develp gardening: green peas were produced in March and strawberries in April. Oysters and lamb were particularly highly prized, and elaborate dishes were concocted. One sauce became famous: bechamel, named after the financier Louis de Bechameil, who drafted recipes and precepts in verse. Coffee, tea and chocolate were favoured by the aristocracy, and doctors debated about their advantages and drawbacks. Establishments were set up specializing in these exotic drinks. For example, in 1680 the cafe Procope opened in Paris. Here, fruit juices, ices and sorbets, exotic wines, hippocras, oregat pastes, crystallized (candied) fruits and fruits preserved in brandy were sold. In addition to the coffee houses, taverns, inns and cafes had multiplied in the city and were visited frequently by princes and their courtiers." ---Larousse Gastronomique, Completely revised and updated [Clarkson Potter:New York] 2001 (p. 519) "The decisive change in French cooking did not become apparent until the middle of the seventeenth century, although the new cuisine codified by Pierre Francois de la Varenne in Le cuisinier francois (1651) had been evolving for some time before that...La Varenne, squire of the kitchen to the Marquis d'Uxelles, seems to have been unable to abandon the court tradition completely, but the atmosphere of Le cuisinier francois suggests that his heart was not in it. The old recipes were there, but the new ones, harbingers of what is now thought as the classic French cuisine, were sharply contrasted. La Varenne began his book with a recipe for stock-in which most cookery writers have followed him ever since-gave sixty recipes for the formerly humble egg...treated vegetables as food in their own right, made much use of the globe artichoke and very little of spices, and recommended simple sauces based on meat juices and sharpened with vinegar, lemon juice, or verjuice..." ---Food in History, Reay Tannahill [Three Rivers Press:New York] 1988 (p. 237-8)

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"Common European cooking traditions endured until the seventeenth century, when national cuisines began to develop. It was only when French cookery became culturally stylized and was used to mark social differences that it also became a model for the courtly and aristocratic cuisines of Europe. This concious cultural creation of cookery and table manners shows itself most clearly in the fact that before the seventeenth century, cookbooks and recipe collections were rarely published. Then, suddenly, in the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries, many cookbooks appeared. The first of this series was Cusinier Francois, by Francois Pierre de la Varenne, published again and again from 1651 until 1738....In the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries...the haute cuisine served to express courtly aristocratic lifestyles. Only cooking and eating that demonstrated wealth, luxury, and pomp could accomplish this goal and distinguish the aristocracy in no uncertain terms from the rising middle class..." ---"The Dominance of the French Grande Cuisine," The Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas, Volume Two [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] 2000 (p. 1210-1216) [includes extensive bibliography] "The age of Louis XIV! The teachings of Olivier de Serres now bore fruit. Gastronomical customs and culinary recipes appeared in new forms that were very close to our own of today. Food supplies contined to increase. Market-gardens and kitchen-gardens under cultivation flourished. Vinyards produced the finest wine: people were now able to drink it without flavoring it. Good food became an art. More and more cookbooks appeared...M. de Bonnefons had an entre almost everywhere, among the great as well as those of lesser importance. He had a keen eye and his book is full of instructive information. In the chapter on arranging a formal dinner we read, for instance: "The great fashion is to place four fine soups at the four corners of the table with four dish stands between each two, with four salt cellars placed near the soup tureen. On the dish stands are placed four entrees, in low pie dishes, Guests' plates should be deep so that they can use them for the soup or for helping themselves to whatever they wish to eat without taking it spoonful by spoonful out of the serving dish as they might be disgusted at the sight of a spoon which had been in the mouth of a person, being dipped into the serving dish without being wiped. The second course will consist of four substantial dishes set in the corners, either a court-bouillon, a pice of beef or a large roast, and salad on the plates. The third course will consist of roast poultry and game, small roasts and all the rest. The middle of the table is left free as otherwise the head steward will have difficulty in reaching across it, because of its great size. If desired, fill the centre of the table with melons, various salads in bowls or on little plates to make serving them easier, oranges and lemons. Preserves in syrup on marzipan biscuits could also be put there."...The Sun King was a glutton. He ate without discernment, and he ate enourmously. He would think nothing of four huge plates of different kinds of soup, a whole pheasant, a partridge, vegetables, a large dish of salad, two big slices of ham, mutton with garlic, a plate of cakes and --to wind up a good meal--eggs prepared in various ways. Thanks to the Sun King, oysters regained the popularity they had lost since the days of the Romans...Families no longer ate in their bedrooms or in the halls of their dwellings. Every respectable household now boasted a dining room...The national dish was the pota-oie--it was to remain popular right up to the Revolution. The recipe is simple: take an

9 enormous goose and stuff it with various meats, especially feathered game...Place a few aromatic herbs inside the poultry as well. Put it in the oven to roast. The most refined person ate only the stuffing; they left the goose for the servants...Coffee apperaed in France under Louis XIV. The king drank it for the first time in 1644...From coffee to cafes was but a step. In 1672, an Armenian at the Saint-Germain fair opened the first shop where one could sample coffee...The man made a fortune." ---An Illustrated History of French Cuisine, Christian Guy, translated by Elisabeth Abbott [Bramhall House:New York] 1962 (p.63-66) Royal Tables/Versailles "The King's Meat...Three hundred and twenty-four people were exclusively employed on preparing the toothless monarch's food. This army was lodged in the Grand Commun, now the Hopital Militaire. At meal-times, the beat', that is to say, all the dishes shown on the menu, was borne in solemn procession, led by the First Maitre d'Hotel, himself accompanied by thirty-six serving gentlemen and twelve Masters bearing as a sign of seniority a silver-gilt baton, from the kitchens across the road into the palace, through a maze of galleries and corridors and finally to the King's table which was usually laid in his bedroom. Louis XIV generally ate alone, except when away from Versailles, he seldom if ever entertained another man and only admitted his family to his board on rare occasions when the Princes of the Blood wore their hats and he remained bareheaded, no doubt in order to convey that he was the host and at home, whereas th others were no more than transient guests. On rising, for his breakfast he took only a bouillon or a cup of sage tea, so that by the ten o'clock meal his appetite was keen and the matter serious; the following meal was prepared for one person. Soups Of the two old capons, four partridges with cabbage, six pigeons for a bisque, one of cocks' crests and beatilles Hors D'Oeuvre One of capons, partridges Entrees A quarter of veal with the rump, the whole of a 28 lb. 12 pigeons for pie Small Entrees Six fricasseed chickens, two minced partridges, three young partridges in gravy, six ember cooked pies, two young grilled turkeys, three fat chickens with truffles Roasts Two fat capons, 9 chickens, 9 pigeons, 2 petendeaux, 6 partridges, 4 tarts Desserts Two bowls of fruit, 2 of dried preserves, 4 of stewed fruit, or liquid hams.

10 ...The roast was also flanked by two small dishes; one of capon, two snipe and two teal, and the other consisting of five partridges. The hors d'oeuvre are not mentioned, but they were not tiny dainties by solid stuff: sausage, white boudin, truffled pasties and warmed up beef in gravy. However, during Lent, the King rested and allowed his royal stomach to benefit by abstinence. It much however be noted that a totally meatless meal, for fear that he might be too debilitated on fast-days, usually began with a soup made of capon, 4 lb. Beef, 4 leb. Veal and 4 lb. Mutton. This purely hygienic precaution taken, abstinence began: a carp, a hundred crayfish, a milk soup, a herb soup, two turtle soups, a sole, a large pike, four medium soles, two perch, a sole, a hundred oysters, six sting-fish, and as a roast half a salmon and six soles...And for supper: two foot-long carp, two soups, a pike a foot and a half long, three perch, three soles, a trout a foot and a half long, half a large salmon, a large carp. All the King had then to do was retire to bed, but for fear of his collpasing from night starvation a tiny snack was put at his door...a bottle of water, three loaves and two bottles of wine." ---Gastronomy of France, Raymond Oliver, translated from the French by Claude Durrell [Wine and Food Society:Cleveland OH] 1967 (p. 315) ABOUT 17TH CENTURY FRENCH SALADS The Sun King likely had several kinds of salads on his table. Popular salads of the day included mixed greens (lettuce, cress, chickory, purslane) with vinaigarette (vinegar, oil, salt & spices), pickled vegetable salads (cucumbers, asparagus, etc.), composed salads (chopped greens and salted meats), boiled salads (warm vegetables dressed in vinegar/spices), and fruit salads (lemon, pomergranite "dressed" in sugar). Food historians tell us salads (generally defined as mixed greens with dressing) were enjoyed by ancient Romans and Greeks. As time progressed, salads became more complicated. Recipes varied according to place and time. Dinner salads, as we know them today, were popular with Renaissance diners throughout Europe. Pickled salads (cucumbers, cabbage, etc. packed in vinegar, salt, & spices) and boiled salads were also regularly consumed by 16th and 17th century European diners. The 17th century marks the genesis of the classic French Cuisine (La Varenne, Massialot, etc.). One of the key concepts of this new cuisine was the perfection of the relationship between acid and salt. This taste combination was reflected in the sauces (including salad dressings) of the day. Louis XIV was said to have been fond of food in great excess. Presumably, his menu featured many salads in grand quantities. Sample period recipe: "Minor Herbs of All Kinds for Salads--a recipe of Niclas de Bonneons, 1654: Tarragon, saxifrage, garden cress, watercress, lamb's lettuce, pimpernel-all these and a thousand others, flowers as well as herbs, are useful in making salads to be served with oil or sugar. And, as a rule, the greater the diversity of ingredients in these salads, the more enjoyable they are. Pimpernel is also useful when placed in one's wine glass, for it gives its taste and fragrance to the winde. And the bud of the elder, when used in a salad, serves to relax the stomach."

11 ---The Grand Masters of French Cuisine: Five Centuries of Great Cooking, Celine Vence and Robert Courtine [G. Putnam's Sons:New York] 1978 (p. 260) "In the mid-seventeenth century La Varenne, like the Italians, continued to recommend salad platters, including salt meats, which he suggested should be kept on hand. He gave instructions for half-salt or marinated fish and chicken and directions for preserving lettuce, artichokes, cucumbers, purslane, aparagus, chickory, and cabbage. Salt products are prominent in his composed dishes. The melted anchovy, or garum, makes its debut, linking La Varenne closely with Apicius. In contrast to the Italians, he gave no salt meat any prominence in composed dishes. The mid-seventeenth French twist on Roman food is the caper, which now makes its appearance in dishes of every sort." ---Acquired Taste: The French Origins of Modern Cooking, T. Sarah Peterson [Cornell University Press:Ithaca] 1994 (p. 152) "The French took the salad--that is, food seasoned with salt and acid--as the framework of their new, stimulating cuisine. They derived the notion of extending the salad throughout the meal--that is, of making the salt-acid taste a kind of umbrella--from the ancients and the Renaissance Italians, both whom had served salads at various points throughout their banquets...The French idea of engulfing the meal in the salad came principally from [the] Italian practice of making salads of various kinds available throughout dinner. In their radical revision of food, the French took the idea of the salad and reshaped the whole meal up to the sweet course so that it would stimulate the appetitie. Every dish was to become saladlike, whether it was called a salad or not...Salt coupled with acid became the signature of many a sauce, just as it had become the stamp of salad. The acid might be vinegar, wine, verjuice (juice of unripe fruit), lemon, or orange (or much later the tomato)...Of the two crucial parts of a salad, the French gave the palm to salt. The touch of acid was important, but not so critical as salt." ---ibid (p. 185-6) Sallets/Dr. Alice Ross About vinaigrette ("French" dressing) Need to make something for class? We suggest pumpkin pie! What were the peasants eating during the Sun King's reign? "...we need to look at the documents closest to peasant life, drawn up by those who knew them well, to obtain the completest and most accurate information...The words which appear most often in these numerous and humble texts are 'bread' and 'corn'. Vorn, bled as they spelled it, was defined as any cereal which could be used to make bread. Not only bread, though...since barley, oats, millet, buckwheat, and maize (which was introduced at the beginning of the seventeenth century) were frequently used in different sorts of porridge, galette, or thick pancakes, which were not just for the toothless of all ages but in some provinces...were for general consumption. Nevertheless, bread remained symbolic both of basic religious and physical nourishment, even among well-off country people; and the breaking of bread was for long the solemn, almost sacred gesture with

12 which the paterfamilias signalled the start of each meal. For some time now it has been established that expenditure on bread and flour absorbed easily half a poor or humble family's income. To this it should be added that an adult consumbed three pounds of bread a day, or more. The reason for this was entirely obvious: bread was far and away the cheapest source of calories...Stale bread was always consumed, out of economy...hard bread was much better for pouring soup on to. Not everybody had soup, though....a porridge of improved maize, may have taken th e place of one made with millet when the American plant became established between 1630 and 1650...Its introduction enabled famine to be brought under control...A less striking food (with some salt pork, fortunately made possible by a plentiful supply of acorns for the pigs) was provided by rye and sweet chestnuts, usually boiled and mashed... "It seems that, in most places, soup was the main food a dejeuner (eaten in the morning, breaking the nocturnal fast), at diner (in the middle of the day), and at souper (in the evening). What we sould call stock cooked slowly in the hearth, over a fire of wood or cinders in a pot that was more likely to be earthenware than metal, hanging from the ineveitable chimney-hook...Into water fetched from the well...they put whatver they could find in the way of herbs and root vegetables from the garden or the open fields...These would not include potatoes (except in some mountainous areas in the east end at the end of the century), but there would be pelnty of radishes...a few carrots and turnips...sometimes a leek or two, not many of the green vegetables we use today, although there were twenty or so local kinds of cabbage which still survived at the begining of this century, and plenty of almost forgotten farinacious foods of the pea and bean variety...In those relatively rare parts of the country wehre pigs were kept, a piece of well-salted fat, old and therefore somewhat rancid, swam in the broth...On feast days in the regions wehre olive and...nut oil were produced, they added a few drops of the precious liquid...There was also a great variety of herbs...and very different in the south from in the country round the Loire: chives, spring-onions, tarragon, sage, savory, thyme, basil, shallots, onion stalks...garlic...When [the soup] was ready everybody brought their earthenware or wooden bowls to the hearth, or to the table if there was one, and the father or mother cut the bread into each receptacle and then poured over an amount of broth appropriate to everybody's age and needs. The soup would be rich in autumn, but considerably less so by the end of winter. Near the sea or large rivers, a fairly thick and highly spiced fish soup was less a culinary specialty than a mere utilisation of the fruits of fishing...After the soup the peasants did not usually have anything... "This very widespread absence of dairy products, fruit, and especially meat...can be explained by two simple facts which are seldom, ...noted...The majority of the poor in the countryside farmed only two or three acres, and tried to live off this land completely, which they were more or less able to do as long as the weather was kind and the harvests were good. But they were all forced to find money with which to pay the royal taxes...That is why they always had to take their eggs, young cocks, butter and cheese, and the best of the fruit and vegetables to market... "Meat was hardly ever seen except on feast days...If there were cows, then any calves would naturally be sold, as would any lambs; old beasts too were sold rather than eaten.

13 Which leaves the 'mystery' of the rabbit and the pig. Pigs...were kept in quite large numbers...The rabbit, which has been such an important element in the diet of the poor in the last two centuries, was seldom bred outside large towns like Paris...If they wanted to eat fish, there were rich, tempting stoks in pools, ponds, and rivers (and in the sea for those who lived by it)... "Food at feasts...Each house would have a store-room or cellar stocked with full with barrels and bareels waiting to be filled...in which were kept oil, wine, cider, fat pork, maybe some veal, preserves, and some fine hams woudl be hanging from the ceiling. In the main room, near the hearth, would be brass or cast-iron utensils, copper pans, plates of earthenware...and a set of pewter cutlery for important occasions. There the stews were redolent of fat pork or even ham, and butter, oil or lard, with cabbage, or peas (i.e. haricot beans...) or sun-ripened tomatoes or other vegetables, depending upon the region. There would be dried sausage, or smoked pork, a hen or capon, a fat goose at Christmas, a lamb at Easter, sometimes a stewed chicken on a Sunday. All the regional differences can bee seen roughly symbolised in what ethnologistslike to call the 'foundations' of a cuisine: in the west, this was butter, tin the south-west goose-fat, int he Mediterranean south olive oil; in some places they used lard, and in a few they made to with nut oil or rapeseed oil. Then, to round off these feasts or disners of the rich, there would be all sorts of crepes, fritters, bugnes, mervielles, pets de nonnes..., tartes, clafoutis, with spice-breads and brioches for the pre-Lenten feasts of Candlemas and Shrove Tuesday, and of other special festivals...It was th town cooks, in fact, who improved, enriched, and sometimes refined the simple, plentiful, and tasty dishes and the elast ppor pcountry peiople took these over in the following centuries... Drinks...it is obvious that both great feasts and poor gruel must have been washed down with something. In the big houses and the larger share-cropping farms, the master would have had local wine...But except in times of extravagant generosity, servants would not have been entitled to any. Ordinarily they mande do with buvande, boisson or demi-vin: this would be made of water poured on to the well-pressed grape stalks...the most universal...drink...was water...When the feast days came round, the poor threw themselves on the wine, as well as the food, in a kind of frenzy... "Hunger...in the seventeenth century was always a social phenonemnon...The lavish feasts were also social and provinical phenomenon, but only happened on rare occasions." ---French Peasantry in the Seventeeth Century,, Pierre Goubert [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] 1989(p. 82-96) Louis XV Louis XV of France reigned from 1723-1774. His reign bridged the brilliant opulence of his predecessor to the disastrous excesses of his successor. The culinary offerings of Louis VX reflected this period of change.

14 "The reign of Louis XV was no less happy for gastronomy. Eighteen years of peace healed painlessly the wounds made by more than sixty years of war; wealth created by industry, and either spread out by commerce or acquired by its tradesmen, made former financial inequalities disappear, and the spirit of convivality invaded every class of society. It is during this period that there was generally established more orderliness in the meals, more cleanliness and elegance, and those various refinements of service which, having increased steadily until our own time, threaten now to overstep all limits and lead us to the point of ridicule." ---The Physiology of Taste, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, originally published in Paris 1825, translated by M.F.K. Fisher [Counterpoint:Washington DC] 1999 (p. 298-9) Sample menu, circa 1740, for ten persons, provided by Brillat-Savarin 1st course: the bouilli (meat and its broth); an entree of veal cooked in its own juice; an hors d'oeuvre. 2nd course: a turkey; a plate of vegetables; a salad; a creamy pudding (sometimes). Dessert: some cheese; some fruit; a jar of preserves. Plates wer exchanged only three tiems, after the soup, at the second course, and for dessert. Coffee was very rarely served, but quite often there was a cordial made from cherries or garden pink, still something of a novelty then." ---ibid (p. 298-9) "...let us consider courses which have varied in number at different periods, rising to a maximum under Louis XIV and Louis XV when there were eight coruses of eight dishes each...In a ceremonial meal tow ouf to the eight courses consisted of entremets and two of desserts. There would be a soup course consisting of several soups, a fish course of several fishes, and entree course, a roast course and a game course. Rather surprisingly, the compositon of the courses could be optiona, the entremets mainly consisted of vegetables, and the entrees (poultry or classical) could appear in the same course as the fish, shellfish, roasts or game." ---Gastronomy of France, Raymond Oliver, translated from the French by Claude Durrell [World Publishing Company:Cleveland OH] 1967(p. 207-7) Supper eaten by Louis XV at the Chateau on 29 September 1755 [NOTE: "supper" was a meal taken late in the evening, not the main meal of the day.] The Soups Two oilles: One of large onions, One a l'espagnole Two potages: One de sante, One of turnip puree The Entrees Small pies a la balaquine, Rabbit fillets a la genevoise, Filet mignon of mutton with sauce piquant, Fillets of pheasant en matelote, Quails with bay leaves, Turtle doves a la vinitienne, Partridges a l'ancient salmy, Small garnished pigeons, Blanquette of fowls with truffles, Marinade of campines, Fowl wings en hatelets, Leg of veal glazed with its own juice, Minced game a la turque, Sweetbreads Ste. Menehould, Rouen ducklings with orange, Halicot with dark veloute sauce. Four Releves

15 Roast mutton of Choisy, Rump of beef a l'ecarlate, Sirloin, the fillet minced with chicory, Caux fowls with raw onion Four Main Entremets Pheasant pie, Jambon de perdrouillet, Brioche, Croquante Two Medium Entremets--Roasts Small chickens, Campines, Ortolans, Thrushes, Guignards, Red-leg partridges, Pheasants, Rouen duckling Sixteen Small Entremets A coffee cream, Artichokes a la galigoure, Cardoons a l'essence, Cauliflower with Parmesan, Eggs with partridge gravy, Truffles a la cendre, Spinach with gravy, Cocks' crests, Animelles, Green beans with verjuice, Ham omelette, Turkey legs a la duxelles, Mixed ragout, Chocolate profiterolles, Small jalousies, Creme a la genest." ---ibid (p. 297-300) A Souper, Vendredi 4, Novem. 1757 (en Francais). A "souper" was the light meal evening meal. The Main meal of the day was Dinner, served sometime between noon and three. Royal tables, summary from the Palace of Versailles. Dinner menu for six to eight diners, 1748, Massialot (scroll down about half way) Need modernized recipes??! Ask your librarian to help you find The Grand Masters of French Cuisine: Five Centuries of Great Cooking, Celine Vence and Robert Courtine. Here you will find dishes from La Chapelle [1733], Marin [1739], Cuisinier Gascon [1740], Menon [1746], Dictonnaire Portatif [1765], and Buc'hoz [1771]. French Revolution foods The years immediately preceding the French Revolution were a time of great excess and terrible poverty. Royalty feasted on rich confections and huge roasts; the starving peasants ate anything they could find, including stale bread and scraps. In 18th century France, new world foods, most notably potatoes, played a pivotal role in feeding the starving country. The Revolution was a great culinary equalizer. The fall of the Royal regime created (by necessity) a more egalitarian cuisine. Food, and the concept of how it was eaten changed radically. During the revolution another notable French "invention" happened. The restaurant. The first restaurants were quite different from what we know today. Their initial purpose was to serve healthy restoratifs (soup!) to anybody who could pay. "The eighteenth century was a great century for cooking, but the progress made and the refinements added to the art of cooking were briefly interrupted by the French Revolution. In 1789 the French Revolution broke out, and according to one observer at the time, it "served the soverign people a dish of lentils, seasoned with nothing but the love of their country, which did very little to improve their blandness." The interest in cooking and gastronomy was temporarily interrupted, but when things had calmed down

16 enough in 1795, a little book entitled La Cuisiniere Republicaine was published. It was written by a Mme. Merigot, who gives recipes for potatoes (unnacceptable until then as a food by the French.)" ---The Grand Masters of French Cuisine: Five Centuries of Great Cooking, Celine Vence and Robert Courtine [G.P. Putnam:New York] 1978 (p. 55) [NOTE: This books has much more information/recipes than can be paraphrased here. Ask your librarian to help you find this book. The bread question "Let them eat cake," Marie Antoinette allegedly pronounced. What was this cake and why is this phrase so important? Parisians were indeed starving in the years preceding the French Revolution. Bread, while commonly employed for its symbolic connection as the "staff of life," was not the only commodity in short supply. There were several reasons for these food shortages, number one being a population explosion. Other key factors included war (farmers pressed into service meant neglected fields), weather conditions (severe drought), and economics (inadequate distribution systems). "A shortage of bread has been suggested as the cause of the fall of Rome, the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution of 1917." ---The Story of Bread, Ronald Sheppard and Edward Newton [Charles T. Branford:Boston MA] 1957 (p. 58) "Bread was the staple food of the masses and it was poverty which caused the [French Revolution] rebellion. The more naive than caustic comments of Marie Antoinette, 'Let them eat cake,' was explosive in an already tense atmosphere. What the people wanted was bread, with all its symbolic implications." ---Gastronomy of France, Raymond Oliver, translated from the French by Claude Durrell [Wolrd Publishing Co.:Cleveland OH] 1967 (p. 107-108) "'The people was all roaring out Voila le boulanger et la boulangere et let petit mitron, saing that now they should have bread as they now had got the baker and his wife and boy.' The year was 1789, the place Paris, the 'baker' Louis XVI and the 'bakers wife', Marie Antoinette. The French Revolution had not...been sparked off by hunger or high prices, and Marie Antoineette's relentlessy mistranslated remark that if there was not dread, the people whould eat 'cake' was no more than one of those minor but eminently quotable political gaffes that their perpetrators are never allowed to forget. Bread shortages had always been a fact of Parisian life, productive of nothing more serious than an occasional riot. It was only after the middle classes made the first breach in the defences of the privileged elite that the ordinary people of France began to take a hand in the game. While the Constitutent Assembly discussed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the abolition of aristocratic privileges, the market women of Paris took the opportunitiy of demonstrating their disapproval of the fact that, after a series of disastrious harvests, a four-pound loaf now cost 14 1/2 sous. The effective daily wage of a builder's labourer at the time was 18 sous. Throughout the 1790s far more serious food

17 crises and riots were to bedevil the plans of the revolutionaries and their successors--and to sound a warning to the governments of other countries confronted with the problem of expanding towns and an unprecedented increase in population. The problem was more one of distribution than production since agricultural developments were taking place that promised to make shortages a thing of the past." ---Food in History, Reay Tannahill [Three Rivers Press:New York] 1988 (p. 283) "...in France...there was a new investment by the state in solving problems of food distribution that had previously been the responsibility of individual cities...French monarchs int eh eighteetnh century became increasingly concerned with the possibility of popular uprisings due to bread shortages. To forestall that possibiltiy, they stocked wheat and promulgated new laws governing the sale of grain. Both responses appear to have improved the situation, but not everyone agreeed that this was the case. In The Bakers of Paris and the Bread Question, 1700-1775, Steven Kaplan has shown that when merchants followed the king's orders to stockpile grain, their actions were often interpreted as attempts to corner the market in order to drive up prices. Large-scale wheat purchases did in fact raise prices on local markets and force some people to go hungry, and critics saw this as evidence of a "famine conspiracy." Furthermore, laws promoting free trade in grain, which ultimately stimulated new cereal production, had to be withdrawn or modified on several accasions in the face of vehement protests by various groups: the best known of these episodes was the "flour war" of 1775...Was the French government right to intervene in the food distribution system rather tahn lieave it, as in the past and as in some other coutnries, in the hands of municipal governments and private interests? It would have been difficult to have acted differently: whereas popular protest in the seventeenth century had been directed mainly against taxes, int eh eighteenth century it was directed maily against shortages of bread. Although these disturbances were not as severe as in previous centuries, they could not be neglected. Thus the bread question became the paramount political issue of the day, just as wheat came to dominate agriculture and the popular diet...Antoine Parmentier, suggested making bread with flour from potatoes, which could be grown in fallow fields between grain harvests and with helds tow to three times greater than that for wheat. But in many parts of Europe people did not yet feel miserable enough to accept such fare, which was considreed fit only for hogs, eveni if it could be turned into bread." ---Food: A Culinary History, Jean-Louis Flandrin & Massimo Montanari [Columbia University Press:New York] 1999 (p. 354-355) "In the months before the storming of the Bastille the people of Paris commenced once more to greet each other with the forbidden greeting of the Jacquerie: "Le pain se leve..." What bread? There was none...most Frenchmen believed that the lack of grain was due to a conspiracy...There is no doubt that the grain speculators were making a great deal of money at the time...The unique factor was the mass delusion that the purpose of their speculation as to "exterminate the French nation."..It was said that Louis XV had already earned ten millions pounds as a result of this murderous conspiracy. The society was alleged to be buying cheaply all the grain in France, secretly exporting it, buying it again from abroad, and importing it back to France at tenfold the original price...The fact was that all export of grain from France had been prohibited for the past hundred

18 years...Revolt was...raging in the provinces...The Bastille had been stormed--but the people of Paris did not yet have their bread...In fact, in the days after the storming of the Bastille there was an unusual shortage of flour. The people could not feed on the glory of the Revolution. Why did a four-pound bread still cost 12 1/2 sous and a white bread 14 1/2? The government provided subsidies so that the bakers would lower their price. But this did not increase the supply of bread. The angy populace lost precious hours waiting in front of the bakeries. To be sure, Parmentier's potato bread was much cheaper. But who was interested in Parmentier and his bakers' college? That was...nonsense. Parmentier's experiments--it was unjustly said--were donducted only so that the rich could cram something into the mouths of the poor. Let him eat his potates himself. "We want bread!" the people shouted...[in] August 1789...a drought had come upon France worse than any the nation remembered. The streams dried up. The result was that the mills could not run. There were windmills only in the provinces of northern France. In central and southern France all milling was done in water mills. Now the little grain there was could not be ground! The Minister of Agriculture at once ordered the erection of horse-driven mills. But this took time. In September the supply of bread in Paris dwindled away again, and the price rose shamelessly. The seething masses became convinced that the Court still had bread...In the early morning of October 5, 1789, Paris spewed her torrents of human beings out into the misty roads. They marched with pikes and scythes, barefood and in rags...The masses were obsessed with hallucinations. "Did you see the bread wagons?" "Yes, bread wagons on the horizon!"...King Louis XVI had turned off the water in the park--it was needed to run the mill. Because the water no long splashed in the fountains, the villages around Versialles had bread--though there was not enough for Paris. All at once it occurred to the marchers that perhaps the king himself had not much bread...The women's cries from bread died down...When they returned, there was general disappointment. Paris had though it would now begin to rain bread...but...Louis XVI could not conjure up bread...Fourteen hungry days passed..."Watch out for the bakers" became the watchword. "The bakers have hidden flour. They want to wait until we can pay more."...Both the National Assembly and the administrators knew that whether the nation were kingdom or republic, the people would hang all authorities who did not solve the bread problem. But the bread problem could not be solved. The National Assembly set aside 400,000 pounds for agricultural aid, but this still not solve the problem...Where was the bread? The flow of grain dwindled to a trickle, as it had when the despots reigned, and the bakers' ovens remained empty...Grain had to be procured--but how? Trade was unpopular...Traders must be speculators, therefore cheats...At great cost the city of Paris bought grain abroad...What monsters there were among the people; such individuals as those who on August 7, 1793, spirited away 7,5000 pounds of bread out of starving Paris becasue they hoped to obtain higher prices in the provinces...All the guilty men were executed...In Ocober 1793 Paris once more received flour...The Commune of Paris decreed that from then on only a single type of bread could be baked in the city--the pain d'egalite. The flour sieves of millers and bakers were confiscated, for they were a symbol of fine berads. All, poor and rich, would have bread of equally poor quality... On Decmeber 2, 1793, the bread card was introduced; and eighteen months later the Commune decided upon free distribution of bread: one and a half pounds daily to workers and the heads of families, one pound to all others. Before long all there was of bread were the cards. In 1794 the harvest was pitifully small...Men killed one another for

19 bread...France saw no bread until peace came. The Revolution had not been able to produce it, and the war made it impossible to distrubute it. It was until the period of the Directory, from 1796 on, that the soldiers were furloughed; they returned to the fields which now no longer belonged to landowners but to themselves and their families, and they began to till these fields. Such was the role of bread in the French Revolution." ---Six Thousand Years of Bread, H.E. Jacob [Lyons Press:New York] 1997 (p. 246-254) "For a time, food prices rose dramatically; crops planted by farmers, who were then drafted into the Republic's armies, went unharvested...Attempting to impose fraternal solidarity by means of food distribution programs, more than one revolutionary demanded that bakers stop preparing their typical range of breadstuffs and combine brown, white, and rye flours together to make one single "Bread of Equality." In the capitol, in Feburary 1792, shortages led to the outbreak of popular street protests, but, as William Sewell has noted, the men and women of Paris were rioting not for bread, the totemic staff of life, but for sugar, soap, and candles. Sewell's point is particualrly well take, for the radical revolutionary rhetoric of "subsistence" has long led historians to believe that the danger of famine was the driving force behind many of the National Convention's economic policies. True, the Convention passed "the Maximum" in September 1793, putting it in effect a broad series of...price-fixing regulations... That these "necessities" included not only bread and wine, but cheeses, butter, honey, and sausages as well..."Subsistence" was certainly at the heart of much revolutionary rhetoric; but revolutions do not subsist on bread alone." ---The Invention of the Restaurant, Rebecca L. Spang [Harvard University Press:Cambridge MA] 2000 (p. 106-107) Noble food The 17th century marked the genesis of classic French Cuisine. Food historians tell us the nobles of this period followed this new trend, supporting the chefs and their ideas wll into the 18th century. By the 18th century, the noble and wealthy classes were dining in the manner of "Grand Cuisine." Multi-course meals and elaborate service were the hallmarks of this style. Notable chefs/cookbook authors included Massialot, La Chappelle, Marin, and Menon. "Louis XVI did not inherit Louis XV's delicate taste in food. Like the Sun King, he was a glutton...During their reign Louis and Marie-Antoinette dined every Sunday in public. But the queen only pretended to eat...She dined afterwards in her apartments, among her intimates." ---An Illustrated History of French Cuisine, Christian Guy [Bramhall House:New York] 196 (p. 86) Supper given...for Marie Antoinette ...menu of this supper from the imperial archives quoted by L'Almanach des Gourmands pour 1862, by Charles Monselet. Her Majesty's Dinner, Thursday 24 July 1788 at Trianon: Four Soups

20 Rice soup, Scheiber, Croutons with lettuce, Croutons unis pour Madame Two Main Entrees Rump of beef with cabbage, Loin of veal on the spit Sixteen Entrees Spanish pates, Grilled mutton cutlets, Rabbits on the skewer, Fowl wings a la marechale, Turkey giblets in consomme, Larded breats of mutton with chicory, Fried turkey a la ravigote, Sweetbreads en papillot, Calves' heads sauce pointue, Chickens a la tartare, Spitted sucking pig, Caux fowl with consomme, Rouen duckling with orange, Fowl fillets en casserole with rice, Cold chicken, Chicken blanquette with cucumber Four Hors D'Oeuvre Fillets of rabbit, Breast of veal on the spit, Shin of veal in consomme, Cold turkey Six dishes of roasts Chickens, Capon fried with eggs and breadcrumbs, Leveret, Young turkey, Partridges, Rabbit Sixteen small entremets (menu stops here) ---Gastronomy of France, Raymond Oliver, translated from the French by Claude Durrell [Wine and Food Society:Cleveland OH] 1967 (p. 300-1) Middle class food "The difference that existed, up to the end of the seventeenth century, between ordinary, everyday bourgeois cooking and aristocratic cooking was a difference in quantity and in elaborateness of presentation. Beginning in about 1750, the cuisine of ordinary days and that of special occasions were separated by a difference in kind, quality, and method. Ordinary cuisine naturally remained closer to old-style cuisine, for reasons of cost and convenience. According to Brillat-Savarin who, who had gathered his information from the inhabitants of several departments, a dinner for ten persons around the year 1740 was composed of the following: First service...boiled meat an entree of veal cooked in its own juice; an hors-d'oeuvre. Second service...a turkey; a vegetable dish; a salad; a cream (sometimes) Dessert...cheese; fruit A pot of jam This order, with the succession of the boiled and roasted as its prinicpal distinguising characteristic, was to remain practically the same in private homes down to the end of the nineteenth century. In Zola, it is the typical bourgeois menu."

21 ---Culture and Cuisine: A Journey Through the History of Food, Jean-Francois Revel [Doubleday:Garden City NY] 1982, English translation (p. 193-4) Peasant food Daily meals for the "average" person consisted of bread, pottage (gruel from ground beans or soup with vegetables and perhaps a little meat), fruit, berries & nuts (in season) and wine. If you need to make/take something to class to signify this particular period in French history we suggest basic a loaf of French bread and a simple dish of potatoes. These would have been foods consumed daily by most of the people at that time. Here is a recipe...with historic notes...for "Pommes de Terre a L'Econome," Cuisinier Republicaine 1795: "Although potatoes could have been grown in France earlier, it was not until the French Revolution in 1789 that this precious vegetable was accepted by the French. The French accepted it only because famine, and the economic exigencies of the Revolution, forced it on them. The potato had long been considered poisonous in France, but once the French tried it and survived, they showed a surprising amount of enthusiasm for this "new" food. The following recipe is taken from one of the first postrevolutionary French cookbooks and is one of the earliest French recipes using potatoes. Pommes de terre a l'econome Ingredients: (for 4 servings): 3 sprigs parsley, finely chopped. 1 scallion, finely chopped. 4 shallots, peeled and finely chopped. 2 cupps chopped cooked meat (leftover meat or poultry). 2 pounds potatoes. 3 1/2 tablespoons butter. 1 egg. 1 egg, separated. Salt. Pepper. Flour. Oil for frying. Chopped parsley (to garnish). The Herbs and the Meat: Mix the finely chopped parsely, scallion, and shallots with the chopped meat. The Potatoes: Boil the potatoes in their jackets (skins) for thirty minutes in lightly salted water. Peel while still hot; then mash with a fork. The Patties: Combine the mashed potatoes and the chopped ingredients. Add the butter, egg, and egg yolk. Salt and pepper to taste. Shape into medium patties. (If they are too small, they will be too crunchy, and if too large, the centers will not cook thoroughly.) Beat the egg white until it begins to stiffen. Dip the patties into the egg white; then roll them in flour. Cooking the Patties: Place the patties in a frying pan with very hot oil. Turn so that they will brown on all sides. To Serve: Drain well, and serve garnished with parsley." ---The Grand Masters of French Cuisine: Five Centuries of Great Cooking, Celine Vence and Robert Courtine [G.P. Putnam:New York] 1978 (p. 253) AFTER THE REVOLUTION "In July 1789, only a few days after the storming of the Bastille, the Marquis Charles de Villette proposed that the new ideal of fraternity could be achieved by common dining in the streets. The rich and poor could be united, and all ranks would mix...the capital, from one end to the other, would be one immense family, and you would see a million poeple all seated at the same table...' And then, standing on its head the ancien regime traditon of the royal family dining au grand couvert, Villette goes on to add: On that day, the nation will hold its grand covert'. Ironically, of course, the proposal would have represented just

22 as much a manipulation of the meal in service of the state as anything ever staged at Versailles. That flirtation with the communal meal as emblematic of a new age of equality and faternity was to continue to ebb and flow through the early, more extreme, years of the Revolution. On 14 July 1790, the first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, a Festival of Federation was staged, prefaced the previous day by two thousand spectators watching members of the National Assembly share an open-air patriotic meal' in the circus of the Palais Royal...The left-overs from this fraternal repast were distributed to the poor...All of this was to be as dust within a few years, yet what occurred in the priod after 1789 fundamentally shaped developments around the table down to our own day. A primary effect was to dissolve the equation of cuisine and class. Henceforward cuisine of a kind seen as the prerogative of royalty and nobility would be available to anyone who could afford to pay for it." ---Feast: A History of Grand Eating, Roy Strong [Harcourt:New York] 2002 (p. 274-6) "The French Revolution marks, in its first years, a certain slowing down in the "culinary" evolution of the coutnry...But not for long. Soon the arts of the gourmet and the pleasures of the table reclaimed their prestige; the new leaders of France quickly tired of Spartan virtues. People began to eat well again, not only in Paris, but also in the provinces. Cooks whos masters had emigrated were snapped up. Great houses reorganized. New restaurants were opened. The cuisine of France regained the grandeur it had enjoyed during the reign of Louis XV. However, what with wars and the gory horrors of the Terror, famine raged again for several years. In 1793 and ordinance prohibited more than one pound of meat a week per person...There was no bread and the potato crop was poor. But restrictions are never applied to all-under any regime. And while plain people...were rushed to the guillotine, there were feasting and carousing in the mansions of Barras and Fouche. The following is a menu of a dinner served by Barras in the winter of 1793: Soup With a little onions, a la ce-devant minime Second Course Steaks of sturgeon en brochette Six Entrees Turbot saute a l'homme de confiance formerly Maitre-d'hotel Cucumber stuffed with marrow Vol au vent of chicken breast in Bechemel sauce A ci-devant Sait-Pierre sauce with capers Fillets of partridge in rings (not to say in a crown) Two Roasts Gudgeons of the region A carp in court-bouillon Fifth Course Lentils a la ci-devant Reine Beets scalded and sauted in butter Artichoke bottoms a la ravigote Eggs a la neige

23 Cream fritters with orange water Salad Celery en remoulade Dessert Twenty-four different dishes" "The Revolution was not merely political: it also changed many customs of the French people. The four meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper) were reduced to two: breakfast and dinner. The latter was soon the more important of the two." ---An Illustrated History of French Cuisine, Christian Guy [Bramhall House:New York] 1962 (p. 95-7) The Cookbook in America: A History Talk given by Willis van Devanter to the Culinary Historians of Washington, DC October 3, 2004 As every schoolboy (and schoolgirl) knows, the English settled North America, and our early cuisine obviously owes a great debt to the mother country. Now England was not Europe's greatest contributor to la grande cuisine. It was Francesco Caracciolo, an eighteenth-century Neapolitan, who served in the British Admiralty, who remarked that the English have over fifty religious sects but only one sauce. During the first 150 years of American colonial history, there were no printed cookery books, and early pioneering families had to rely upon their collected hand- written recipes or oral tradition: recipes passed down from mother to daughter. This was a tradition that would continue well into the nineteenth century. Not until 1742 was a cookbook actually printed on American soil: The Compleat Housewife, by one Eliza Smith, who, in biographical and bibliographical records, is an obscure figure. No one seems to have known who she was but, nonetheless, the Williamsburg, Virginia, printing of this lady's work was from the fifth London edition, which was, in fact, a best seller of the time. Not it was, in reality, not the first American cookbook, in that it was only a reprint of an English work. From the standpoint of American cultural history, it is important as a landmark in printing and publishing history. Its printer, William Parks, had founded the Maryland Gazette in 1736. He also published a number of minor books and pamphlets of literary and historical importance; and considering that Williamsburg, as the capital of America's largest and wealthiest colony, had by then become a noted center of aristocratic life, a cookbook was certainly in order. It would be his major book publication. The earlier cookbooks, not having the advantage of dust wrapper blurbs extoling the virtues of the publication, nor a promotional press review, made up for the deficiency in the exaggerated and verbose form of the title page. Consider, for example, the title page of E. Smith's work: The compleat housewife; or, accomplish'd gentlewoman's companion: being a collection of several hundred of the most approved recipts, in cookery, pastry, confectionery, preserving, pickles, cakes, creams, jellies, made wines,

24 cordials. And also bills of fare for every month of the year. To which is added, a collection of nearly two hundred family receipts of medicines; viz. drinks, syrups, salves, ointments, and many other things of sovereign and approved efficacy in most distempers, pains, aches, wounds, sores, etc. never before made publick in these parts; fit either for private families, or such publick-spirited gentlewomen as would be beneficent to their poor neighbours. During the eighteenth century, the English cookbook was the American cookbook. In remarking upon Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery, first published in London in 1747 and reprinted many times, the noted food historian, Karen Hess, states in her introduction to the first American edition [in facsimile] (Alexandria, 1805) that "It was the most English of cookbooks. It was the most American of Cookbooks. George Washington owned a copy, as did Thomas Jefferson; indeed, recipes attributed to Mrs. Glasse are included in cookery manuscripts kept by Jefferson's granddaughters, for example." Hannah Glasse's work was widely used in the United States. Two American editions were printed in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1805 and 1812. These editions, adapted for use in Virginia, had a recipe: "Method of destroying the putrid Smell which Meat acquires during hot Weather." Mrs. Glasse's work, which boasts on its title page that it was a work "which far exceeds any Thing of the Kind ever yet published" is a boast well-founded, for the clarity of the recipes, the list of chapter headings, and an alphabetical index at the back, set it well above any previous publication of this type. It became an immediate and enduring best seller, reprinted as late as 1824. The first cookbook by an American was Amelia Simmons's American Cookery, published in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1796. Often referred to as a second American declaration of independence (according to Jan Longone), this was the first cookbook written for a strictly American audience. Mrs. Simmon's work, however, plagiarized English recipes for American readers, with a few concessions to the availability of ingredients in the New World. It was a step forward without being totally American. Simmons proclaimed that her work was "adapted to this country." It has the first printed recipes for corn meal -- an American contribution. It includes five receipts requiring the use of corn meal: three for Indian Pudding, one for "Johnny Cake or Hoe Cake," and one for "Indian Slapjacks." This was the first known appearance of any of those three in any cookbook. Mrs. Simmons's work would influence the contents of American culinary imprints for some years. Hers was the first cookbook to recommend the use of pearlash, a refined form of potash. Four recipes, two for cookies and two for gingerbread, specified this forerunner of baking powder. This substitute for yeasat or beaten eggs was an American innovation, not picked up elsewhere until 1799 in England. In eighteenth-century America only four cookbook titles were published: all derivatives of English works with the exception of Mrs. Simmons's work. These were E. Smith, The Conpleat Housewife (Williamsburg, 1742); Susannah Carter, The Frugal Housewife, or Complete Woman Cook (Boston, 1772); Robert Briggs, The New Art of Cookery (Philadelphia, 1792); and Amelia Simmons, American Cookery (Hartford, 1796).

25 In the early nineteenth century, Maria Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery was the cookbook of choice. The first American edition was published in Boston in 1807, soon after the first English edition, and reprinted sixteen times in the U.S. until 1844. In England, editions were published as late as 1893. This work, in the jargon of the trade, was the first "runaway" best seller. During Mrs. Rundell's lifetime or shortly after her death, it had already sold a half million copies. It was Lucy Emerson on Montpelier who put Vermont on the nation's culinary map in 1808 by writing what food historians consider America's first regional cookbook. It's a tiny volume, entitled The New-England Cookery, or The Art of Dressing All Kinds of Flesh, Fish and Vegetables and the Best Modes of Making Pastes, Puffs, Pies, Tarts, Puddings, Custards and Preserves and All Kinds of Cakes From the Imperial Plum to the Plain Cake. According to writers John and Karen Hess, Ms. Emerson apparently lifted most of her recipes from Amelia Simmons. "But she set the stage for countless Vermonters -- most of them women -- who contributed recipes to church and community cookbooks ...." Karen Hess declares that the most influential American cookbook of the nineteenth century was Mary Randolph's The Virginia Housewife, "and a case must be made for considering it to be the earliest full-blown American cookbook. Randolph's heyday was in the 1790s, so that her work may be said to document the cookery of the early days of our republic. It was one of the most cherished of kitchen manuals .... The author hailed from one of the noblest families of Virginia, and she recorded the productions of her contemporaries -- in Virginia as well as Maryland; she knew what her neighbors cooked, how they did it, and she produced what scholars of American history declare is the first American cookbook. In her preface she says, "The greater part of the following receipts have been written from memory, where they have been impressed by long practice." Cook's Choice ... compiled in 1982 by the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia, cites Lafcadio Hearn's La Cuisine Creole (New York, 1885) as the "first regional American cookbook, compiled by a famous short story writer." The first cookbook to include contributions from African Americans was Eliza Leslie's New Receipts for Cooking (Philadelphia 1854). In her preface, Leslie notes that "a large number [of the recipes] have been obtained from the South, and from ladies noted for their skill in housewifery. Many were dictated by colored cooks, of high reputation in the art, for which nature seems to have gifted that race with a peculiar capability...." The first cookbook to be printed in the American Middle West (according to Bitting) was H.L. Barnum's Family Receipts, or Practical Guide for the Husbandman and Housewife, Containing a Great Variety of Valuable Recipes (Cincinnati, 1837). The first cookbook printed in Illinois seems to be Mrs. Crawford's The Cake Baker (Chicago, 1857). The first French cookbook published in America: Louis Eustache Ude's The French Cook (Philadelphia: Carey, Lee and Carey, 1828). The first edition was published in London in 1813. There is no French-language edition. There is only one American edition.

26

The first French-language cookbook published in America: Mme. Utrecht-Friedel, La Petite Cuisiniere habile (New Orleans, 1840). A translation (see above) was published in 1846. The first book on French cookery by an American author was Eliza Leslie's Domestic French Cookery, chiefly translated from Sulpice Barue (Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1832). This appears to be the first book on French cookery by an American author, published in the U.S. A somewhat condescending work, emphasizing the importance of native American ingredients. "Many dishes have been left out, as useless in a country where provisions are abundant. On this side of the Atlantic, all persons in respectable life can obtain better articles of food than sheeps' tails, calves' ears, &c. and the preparation of those articles (according to the European receipts) is too tedious and complicated to be of any use to the indigent, or to those who can spare but little time for their cookery." The French author cited is not noted by Vicaire or any other source I have checked. He or she probably never existed. If we may judge from the old cookbooks, the first three decades of the nineteenth century, far from being a period of monotony and of limited resources, was one of varied foods, prepared with ingenuity, skill, and a willingness to experiment with flavors, including exotic ones. This seems to have been a time of solid, honest, grass-roots cooking, doomed to be choked off abruptly by the Civil War and smothered thereafter by the urbanization and industrialization which followed it.