Jesuits Brunoy and Bougeant, who wrote a preface to a contemporary
treatise on cookery (1739), described the modern
art as “more simple, more appropriate, and more cunning,
than that of old days,” giving the ingredients the same union
as painters give to colours, and harmonizing all the tastes.
The very phrase “cordon bleu” (strictly applied only to a woman
cook) arose from an enthusiastic recognition of female merit
by the king himself. Madame du Barry, piqued at his opinion
that only a man could cook to perfection, had a dinner prepared
for him by a cuisinière with such success that the delighted
monarch demanded that the artist should be named, in order
that so precious a cuisinier might be engaged for the royal
household. “Allons donc, la France!” retorted the ex-grisette,
“have I caught you at last? It is no cuisinier at all, but a
cuisinière, and I demand a recompense for her worthy both of
her and of your majesty. Your royal bounty has made my
negro, Zamore, governor of Luciennes, and I cannot accept
less than a cordon bleu” (the Royal Order of the Saint Esprit)
“for my cuisinière.”
The French Revolution was temporarily a blow to Parisian cookery, as to everything else of the ancien régime. “Not a single turbot in the market,” was the lament of Grimod de la Reynière, the great gourmet, and author of the Manuel des amphitryons (1808). But while it fell heavily on the class of noble amphitryons it had one remarkable effect on the art which was epoch-making. It is from that time that we notice the rise of the Parisian restaurants. To 1770 is ascribed the first of these, the Champ d’oiseau in the rue des Poulies. In 1789 there were a hundred. In 1804 (when the Almanach des gourmands, the first sustained effort at investing gastronomy with the dignity of an art, was started) there were between 500 and 600. And in 1814, to such an extent had the restaurants attracted the culinary talent of Paris, that the allied monarchs, on arriving there, had to contract with the two brothers Véry for the supply of their table. Among the great gastronomic names of Napoleon’s day was that of his chancellor Cambacérès, of whose dinners many stories are told. Robert (the eponym of the sauce Robert), Rechaud and Mérillion were at this period esteemed the Raphael, Michelangelo and Rubens of cookery; while A. Beauvilliers (author of Art des cuisines) and Carême (author of the Maître d’hôtel français, and chef at different times to the Tsar Alexander I., Talleyrand, George IV. and Baron Rothschild) were no less celebrated.[1] Perhaps the greatest name of all in the history of the literature of cookery is that of Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826), the French judge and author of the Physiologie du goût (1825), the classic of gastronomy.
In England Louis Eustache Ude, Charles Elmé Francatelli, and Alexis Soyer carried on the tradition, all being not only cooks but authors of treatises on the art. The Original (1835) of Thomas Walker, the Lambeth police magistrate, is another work which has inspired later pens. Like the Physiologie du goût, it is no mere cookery-book, but a compound of observation and philosophy. Among simple hand-books, Mrs Glasse’s, Dr Kitchener’s and Mrs Rundell’s were standard English works in the 18th and early 19th centuries; and in France the Cuisinière de la campagne (1818) went through edition after edition. An interesting old English work is Dr Pegge’s Forme of Cury (1780), which includes some historical reflections on the subject. “We have some good families in England,” he says, “of the name of Cook or Coke.... Depend upon it, they all originally sprang from real professional cooks, and they need not be ashamed of their extraction any more than Porters, Butlers, &c.” He points out that cooks in early days were of some importance; William the Conqueror bestowed land on his coquorum praepositus and coquus regius; and Domesday Book records the bestowal of a manor on Robert Argyllon, by the service of a dish called “de la Groute” on the king’s coronation day.
At the present time, whatever the local varieties of cooking, and the difference of national custom, French cooking is admittedly the ideal of the culinary art, directly we leave the plain roast and boiled. And the spread of cosmopolitan hotels and restaurants over England, America and the European continent, has largely accustomed the whole civilized world to the Parisian type. The improvements in the appliances and appurtenances of the kitchen have made the whole world kin in the arts of dining, but the French chef remains the typical master of his craft. Schools of cookery have been added to the educational machine. The literature of the subject has passed beyond enumeration.
It is unnecessary here to pursue so vast a practical subject into detail; but the following notes on broiling, roasting, baking, boiling, stewing and frying may be useful.
Broiling.—The earliest method of cooking was probably burying seeds and flesh in hot ashes, a kind of broiling on all the surfaces at the same time, which when properly done is the most delicate kind of cooking. Broiling is now done over a clear fire extending at least 2 in. beyond the edges of the gridiron, which should slightly incline towards the cook. It is usual to rub the bars with a piece of suet for meat, and chalk for fish, to prevent the thing broiled from being marked with the bars of the gridiron. In this kind of cookery the object is to coagulate as quickly as possible all the albumen on the surface, and seal up the pores of the meat so as to keep in all the juices and flavour. It is, therefore, necessary thoroughly to warm the gridiron before putting on the meat, or the heat of the fire is conducted away while the juices and flavour of the meat run into the fire. Broiling is a simple kind of cookery, and one well suited to invalids and persons of delicate appetites. There is no other way in which small quantities of meat can be so well and so quickly cooked. Broiling cannot be well done in front of an open fire, because one side of the meat is exposed to a current of cold air. A pair of tongs should be used instead of a fork for turning all broiled meat and fish.
Roasting.—Two conditions are necessary for good roasting—a clear bright fire and frequent basting. Next to boiling or stewing it is the most economical method of cooking. The meat at first should be placed close to a brisk fire for five minutes to coagulate the albumen. It should then be drawn back a short distance and roasted slowly. If a meat screen be used, it should be placed before the fire to be moderately heated before the meat is put to roast. The centre of gravity of the fire should be a little above the centre of gravity of the joint. No kitchen can be complete without an open range, for it is almost impossible to have a properly roasted joint in closed kitcheners. The heat radiated from a good open fire quickly coagulates the albumen on the surface, and thus to a large extent prevents that which is fluid in the interior from solidifying. The connective tissue which unites the fibres is gradually converted into gelatin, and rendered easily soluble. The fibrin and albumen appear to undergo a higher oxidation and are more readily dissolved. The fat cells are gradually broken, and the liquid fat unites to a small extent with the chloride of sodium and the tribasic phosphate of sodium contained in the serum of the blood. It is easily seen that roasting by coagulating the external albumen keeps together the most valuable parts of the meat, till they have gradually and slowly undergone the desired change. This surface coagulation is not sufficient to prevent the free access of the oxygen of the surrounding air. The empyreumatic oils generated on the surface are neither wholesome nor agreeable, and these are perhaps better removed by roasting than any other method except broiling. The chief object is to retain as much as possible all the sapid juicy properties of the meat, so that at the first cut the gravy flows out of a rich reddish colour, and this can only be accomplished by a quick coagulation of the surface albumen. The time for roasting varies slightly with the kind of meat and the size of the joint. As a rule beef and mutton require a quarter of an hour to the pound; veal and pork about 17 minutes to the pound. To tell whether the joint is done, press the fleshy part with a spoon; if the meat yield easily it is done.
Baking meat is in many respects objectionable, and should never be done if any other method is available. The gradual disuse of open grates for roasting has led to a practice of first baking and then browning before the fire. This method completely reverses the true order of cooking by beginning with the lowest temperature and finishing with the highest. Baked meat has never the delicate flavour of roast meat, nor is it so digestible. The vapours given off by the charring of the surface cannot freely escape, and the meat is cooked in an atmosphere charged with empyreumatic oil. A brick or earthenware oven is preferable to iron, because the porous nature of the bricks absorbs a good deal of the vapour. When potatoes are baked with meat, they should always be first parboiled, because they take a longer time to bake, and the moisture rising from the potatoes retards the process of baking, and makes the meat sodden. A baked meat pie, though not always very digestible, is far less objectionable than plain baked meat. In the case of a meat pie the surfaces of the meat are protected by a bad conductor of heat from that charring of the surface which generates empyreumatic vapours, and the fat and gravy, gradually rising in temperature, assist the cooking, and such cooking more nearly resembles stewing than baking. The process may go on for a long time after the removal of the meat from the oven, if surrounded with flannel, or some
- ↑ See Lady S. O. Morgan’s France, 1829–1830, ii. 414, for an account of a dinner by Carême.
