Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 150.djvu/177
venison cutlets, and a space in the centre wet, alas! by a gentle tear from Chaubert’s eye, where should have been the soupe aux écrivinges.”
In France, cookery took a new departure under Louis XIV., who had (in his younger days at least) a prodigious appetite. “I have often,” writes Madame de Bavière, “seen the king eat four plates of different soups, a whole pheasant, a partridge, a large plate of salad, two good slices of ham, a plate of pastry, and then be helped more than once to fruits and sweet-meats.” The expenses of the royal kitchen in those days were almost fabulous, and the courtiers seem to have vied with the king in the extravagance of their banquets. Some of the most famous sauces, such as Béchamel and Soubise, date from this reign; and one of Madame de Sévigné’s most eloquent letters describes how Vatel, the Prince of Condé’s cook, killed himself in despair at the non-arrival of the fish on which he had been depending—a contretemps which a modern female cook would probably be more likely to accentuate by first going into hysterics, and then spoiling the rest of the dinner.
Louis XV. inherited his grandfather’s taste, if not his appetite; and his petits soupers, tables volantes, and silver kitchen apparatus are all historical. It was he, too, who first gave the distinction of cordon bleu to a female cook,—for this title, the blue ribbon of the kitchen, is never properly applied to a chef. It was on the occasion of a dinner of superlative excellence being served up by an unknown artist. “Come now, France!” said Madame Dubarry; “I demand a reward worthy of your Majesty. You have made my negro a governor, and I cannot accept less than a cordon bleu for my cuisinière.”
In the next reign came the Revolution, and there seemed some danger of the science of cookery being swept away with the nobles and chefs of the old régime; but it survived the storm, and gained fresh life and vitality under the Republic and the First Empire. Napoleon himself was no great epicure, eating hurriedly at all times, and whenever his appetite prompted him; but his Chancellor, Cambacérès, kept a splendid table, and was fortunate in having the illustrious Caréme as his chef de cuisine.
Like others of his class, Caréme has left his memoirs behind him—an amusing record of his vanity and caprices. In one passage he complains bitterly of the meanness of Cambacérès, who took careful notes during dinner of such entrées as had not been touched by his guests, and insisted on their reappearance in the menu of the following day. “Quel diner! juste ciel!” writes the indignant chef. “Je ne veux pas dire que la déserte ” (i.e., the remains of the dinner) “ne puisse être utilisée, mais qu’elle ne peut pas donner un diner de prince et de gastronome éminent. Quel parcimonie! Quel pitié! Quel maison!” And he contrasts such conduct with that of M. de Talleyrand,—“un grand seigneur dans la plus belle accepte,”—who was on the most cordial terms with his cook, and devoted more time to the consideration of entrées and soufflés than to the affairs of Europe.
It is to be feared that such base economies as those on which Caréme is so justly severe are not unknown in modern kitchens, especially where the pâtés and jellies are supplied by a neighbouring pastry-cook, and probably (if un-