Tea at Trianon: 5 Ways French Culture has Influenced Our Cuisine

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

5 Ways French Culture has Influenced Our Cuisine

From SBS:

According to Dr Haden, the roots of degustation (the French term for tasting) menus can be traced back to France during the long reign of the many King Louis's from the House of Bourbon. “French royal society invested a lot of wealth in the culinary arts prior to the revolution,” says Dr Haden. “Gastronomy became very much a part of the royal household and court life.” He explains that regularly feasting on extravagant royal buffets, made with rich local produce, quickly became a thing in France’s upper classes prior to the revolution in 1789. “But the sophisticated cuisine that was in France around the end of the 18th century hadn’t really developed in the same way anywhere else in the world because France was in a unique situation – it had a very powerful royal family with a lot of money [invested in gastronomy] who had been running the country for a long time.”

Restaurants (a French word) were first developed in Paris after the overthrow of King Louis XVI and family when the power of France’s food guilds began to crumble. Prior to the revolution, members of the charcutiers guild were the only people in the country allowed to sell prepared cooked meats to the public. “But in the period after the revolution, those laws governing the guilds started to weaken. Basically, chefs earned the right to be able to run their own businesses,” Dr Haden explains. (Read more.)