Croissants

They were introduced into France by Marie-Antoinette. According to Catherine Delors:

The etiquette required the King and Queen to take some of their meals in public, in front of the courtiers and visitors. Anyone decently dressed was admitted in Versailles, and many came to the Palace to watch the royal couple eat.

The Marquise de La Tour du Pin, who was a lady-in-waiting to Marie-Antoinette, attended those occasions. She notes in her Memoirs that “the King ate with a hearty appetite, but the Queen did not remove her gloves, nor did she unfold her napkin, in which she was very ill-advised.”

Marie-Antoinette literally did not touch her food. This attitude was construed as a mark of contempt for the assembly. The Queen thus unwittingly reinforced her image as a distant, haughty woman.

But those were the meals she took - or rather did not take - in public. Did Marie-Antoinette enjoy food in a more private setting? Let us listen to what Madame Campan, her First Chambermaid, says in this regard:

“[Marie-Antoinette] usually ate nothing but roast or boiled poultry and drank nothing but water. The only things of which she was particularly fond were her morning coffee and a sort of bread to which she had grown accustomed during her childhood in Vienna.”

So Marie-Antoinette, for breakfast, her most intimate, pleasurable food moment, preferred coffee. And what is Madame Campan referring to when she speaks of that sort of bread? Well, croissants, of course!

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