Tea at Trianon: Cooking is Serious Business

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

Wednesday, May 8, 2024

Cooking is Serious Business

From Laura at The History Desk:

Let’s deep dive into number 1: A love of food is a requirement for anyone who would cook well. That means your mother or your wife, if they don’t have that basic love of food, they will not cook well. Roy loved to eat, so he learned to cook.

The majority of people know what they like to eat, but they do not know how to make it. Nor are they interested in the process. To think that every wife and mother, aka, “the women” should be interested in creating interesting meals, the analogy is this: a prospective ballet dancer without that magical arch in her feet, will not make it past the elementary classes of dance. And cooks without good smelling and tasting abilities, won’t cut it in the kitchen. Them’s the facts.

Just as dancers are few and far, so too are good cooks. Women are not born with a cooking gene. What women are born with is a proclivity to nurture. Duh, right? That is why I think they make better doctors. For a woman to be a doctor, she gets to be the mother with knowledge and authority. (Read more.)