Food historian Jean-Louis Flandrin may have been catholic in his culinary tastes, but his scholarship was single-minded: the ordnance ordonnance or proper ordering of dishes into courses in service a la francaise (with a glance at “English menu sequences” and “Polish Banquets”).
The roast took pride of place at the dinner table. Grimod de La Reyniere, a Napoleonic gourmand, comparing the courses of a meal to the rooms of a house, pronounced the roast as “the front parlor, the best room, in short the one where the owner’s pride resides.”
Soups were flagged more by function (served hot, at the jump-start of the meal) than by consistency (many, like the Italian risotto, were quite thick with rice or bread).
Though meat ruled the French table, the Catholic fasting calendar inspired a strong counter-menu of vegetarian alternatives. Not only was meat forbidden on fast days, but so was lard and butter. Flandrin surmises that the “aversion to oil cookery” among norther Europeans may have fueled the Reformation.
The most alluring category in the book is the entremets. Perhaps best translated as “side dish,” the entremets embraced a vast buffet of minor meat dishes (organs, aquatic life, and “large butcher cuts” unsuitable for roasting), plus eggs, vegetables, salads, fritters, pasties, and stews. Whereas the roast was supervised by the rotisserie master, and salads and desserts belonged to the pantry staff, the entremets were “true productions of the kitchen,” requiring the artful melding of ingredients, textures, and colors, and emphasizing skill in presentation over costliness of ingredients. (Rousing examples include fried cucumber pate, aspic of deer antler, or chard in fat).
Tired of tapas? Perhaps an entremets extravaganza awaits us in the frugal wings of the recession’s new year.
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In the spirit of Flandrin, a glance at what’s cooking at my house tonight:
— Julia Lupton · 2008-12-24
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THE BOOK