Tea at Trianon: The Artistry of Pastry

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

Monday, September 14, 2020

The Artistry of Pastry

From Resy:

Finding solace in his home kitchen, he traded stock pots of hearty savory fare, made in the tradition of his great-grandmother, Luella, for cake pans. This shift might sound familiar: Baking has been a dependable friend for many people throughout COVID and its various shutdowns. A welcome distraction, one that offers nourishment — physical, mental, even spiritual. A link to the memories and traditions that we hold dear. But of course Reed took on baking with his mastery of professional cooking, and a fervency that only a restaurateur might have.

Even so, a newfound appreciation for pastry, and the desire to learn its process, could not erase a sense of uncertainty on his part. The face of baking and pastry is primarily white and largely female. Rarely, do we see Black pastry chefs and bakers with lucrative cookbook and television deals. That lack of representation gave Reed pause. “I did at one point feel like it wasn’t for me,” noting that he didn’t see anyone like himself in any medium, including popular baking instructional videos on YouTube. “In my entire career, I only met one Black pastry chef,” he continues. “I know I even said it on a few occasions, ‘It’s just not for me,’ until I actually started to do it.”

At the same time, the act of baking can both be grounding to a cook — and simultaneously call them to new possibilities. Reed realized that pastry could be a vehicle to not only round out his experience, but to deepen it, while brightening his mood along the way. He signed up for The Butter Book, a digital baking and pastry course from Chicago’s French Pastry School — and immediately took to the program, a comprehensive online baking and pastry curriculum created by the school’s founders, pastry chefs Sébastien Canonne and Jacquy Pfeiffer. As Pfeiffer describes it, their course offers deep technical knowledge to match with students’ affinity for pastry. (Read more.)