Choice Cuts
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A man of good upbringing is content with little, and he is not short of breath when he goes to bed.
The moderate eater enjoys healthy sleep; he rises early, feeling refreshed.
But sleeplessness, indigestion, and colic are the lot of the glutton.
If you cannot avoid overeating at a feast, leave the table and find relief by vomiting.
—The Wisdom of Ben Sira,
second century B.C.,
translated from the Hebrew
LE MÉSNAGIER DE PARIS ON GLUTTONY
This sin of gluttony has two aspects and is divided into five types. The first type is when someone eats sooner than is appropriate, that is to say too early in the morning or before the hour of praying, or before going to church, before having heard the words and commandments of God. Every creature should have the good sense and discretion to know that you shouldn’t eat before the hour of tierce, except in cases of sickness, weakness, or some such constraint.
The second type of gluttony is eating more often than one should or when there is no need to eat. The Scriptures say, “To eat once a day is angelic, eating twice a day is human, eating three, four, or more times a day is living like an animal and not a human being.”
The third type of gluttony is eating and drinking so much during the course of a day that it makes one sick, so ill as to be bedridden.
The fourth type of gluttony is eating so greedily that one doesn’t stop to chew the food but swallows it whole and soon becomes, as the Scriptures say of Esau, the first born of his brothers, that he ate with such haste that he nearly choked.
The fifth type of gluttony is the search for delicacies, no matter what the price, when one could do with less and thereby afford to help one or a few people who are in need. We read of this sin in the Gospels—the evil rich man, dressed in purple, who ate copiously every day but had nothing to give to poor lepers. It is said that he was damned for having lived too delicately while refusing to share in the name of God as was his duty.
—from Le Mésnagier de Paris, 1393,
translated from the French by Mark Kurlansky
JEAN ANTHELME BRILLAT-SAVARIN ON GOURMETS
I have thumbed every dictionary for the word gourmandism, without ever being satisfied with the definitions I have found. There is a perpetual confusion of gourmandism in its proper connotation with gluttony and voracity: from which I have concluded that lexicographers, no matter how knowing otherwise, are not numbered among those agreeable scholars who can munch pleasurably at a partridge wing au suprême and then top it off, little finger quirked, with a glass of Lafitte or Clos Vougeot.
They have completely, utterly forgotten that social gourmandism which unites an Attic elegance with Roman luxury and French subtlety, the kind which chooses wisely, asks for an exacting and knowing preparation, savors with vigor, and sums up the whole with profundity: it is a rare quality, which might easily be named a virtue, and which is at least one of our surest sources of pure pleasure.
Definitions
Let us make a few definitions, for a clearer understanding of this subject.
Gourmandism is an impassioned, considered, and habitual preference for whatever pleases the taste.
It is the enemy of overindulgence; any man who eats too much or grows drunk risks being expelled from its army of disciples.
Gourmandism includes the love of delicacies, which is nothing more than a ramification of this passion for light elegant dishes of little real sustenance, such as jams, pastries, and so on. This is a modification introduced into the scheme of things for the benefit of the ladies, and of such men as are like them.
No matter how gourmandism is considered, it deserves praise and encouragement.
Physically, it is the result as well as the proof of the perfect state of health of our digestive organs.
Morally, it is an implicit obedience of the rules of the Creator, who, having ordered us to eat in order to live, invites us to do so with appetite, encourages us with flavor, and rewards us with pleasure.
Advantages of Gourmandism
Gourmandism, considered as a part of political economy, is a common tie which binds nations together by the reciprocal exchange of objects which are part of their daily food.
It is something which makes wines, brandies, sugars, spices, vinegars and pickles, and provisions of every kind, travel from one end of the world to the other.
It gives a corresponding price to mediocre or good or excellent supplies, whether these qualities come to them artificially or by nature.
It sustains the hopes and ambitions and performances of that mass of fishermen, hunters, gardeners and such, who each day fill the most luxurious pantries with the results of their labors and their discoveries.
It is, finally, the means of livelihood of an industrious multitude of cooks, bakers, candymakers and other preparers of food with varying titles who, in their own ways, employ still more workers of every kind to help them, all of which causes a flow of capital whose movement and volume could not be estimated by the keenest of calculators.
And note well that any industry which has gourmandism for its object is but the more fortunate since it both has the fattest fortunes behind it and depends on the commonest daily human needs.
In the social state to which we have come today, it is hard to imagine a nation which would live solely on bread and vegetables. This nation, if it existed, would inevitably be conquered by a meat-eating enemy, as with the Hindus, who have fallen time after time before any armies that wished to attack them; or on the other hand it would be subjugated by the cooking of its neighbors, like the Boeotians of long ago, who became gourmands after the battle of Leuctra.
More Advantages
Gourmandism offers great resources to the government: it adds to taxes, to duties, and to indirect fiscal returns. Everything that we swallow must be paid for, and there is not a single treasury which does not owe part of its real strength to our gourmandizing.
What shall we say of the hundreds of cooks who, for several centuries now, leave France every year to exploit the appetites of other lands? Most of them are successful men, and bring back to their own country the fruits of their labors, in obedience to an instinct which never dies in a true Frenchman’s heart. This importation of wealth is more than might be guessed, and its bearers will influence posterity.
What could be fairer, if nations honored their great men, than a temple with altars raised to gourmandism by the natives of our own France?
Powers of Gourmandism
In 1815, the treaty of the month of November imposed on France the condition of paying seven hundred and fifty million francs in three years to the Allies.
To this duty was added the one of making good the reclamations of inhabitants of the different countries, whose united rulers had set forth the amounts, coming altogether to more than three hundred million.
And finally to all this must be added the requisitions of every possible kind made by the enemy generals, who heaped wagons with goods which they headed for the frontiers, and which the public was later forced to pay for; all this came to more than fifteen hundred millions.
It was possible, and in fact rightful, to fear that such considerable payments, which moreover were made every day in bullion, would put a fearful strain on the treasury, and would cause a depreciation in all paper values and be followed by that misery which hovers over a penniless and helpless nation.
“Alas!” cried the moneyed fellows who watched the ominous wagon going to be loaded at the bank in the Rue Vivienne, “alas, there is our silver, flowing out of the country in a flood. By next year we’ll kneel before a crownpiece if we ever see one; we’ll be living like beggars; business will be dead; there will be nothing left to borrow; we’ll have famine, plague, a civil death.”
What actually happened gave the lie to all these fears, and to the great astonishment of everyone who was connected with finance, the national payments were easily met, credit increased, people borrowed ea
gerly, and during the whole period of this SUPERPURGATION the exchange, that infallible measure of the circulation of money, was in our favor: that is to say, we had the arithmetical proof that more money came in to France than left it.
What power is it that came to our aid? What godlike thing was it that caused this miracle? It was gourmandism.
When the Britons, Germans, Huns, Cimmerians, and Scythians poured into France, they brought with them a rare voracity, and stomachs of uncommon capacity.
They were not long satisfied with the official fare which was offered to them by an enforced hospitality; they hungered for rarer delicacies, and before long the Queen of Cities was no more than an immense mess hall. These invaders ate in the restaurants, in the cook shops, in the taverns and the bars, in the stores, and even in the streets.
They stuffed themselves with meat, fish, game, truffles, cakes, and above all with our fruits.
They drank with a thirst as abysmal as their hunger, and always demanded the best wines, hoping to discover unknown pleasures in them, which they were inevitably astonished not to recognize.
Superficial observers did not know what to think of this endless, meaningless eating; but the real Frenchmen chuckled and rubbed their hands together as they said: “Look at them, under our spell! They have spent more crowns tonight than the Government paid them this morning!”
It was a happy period for everyone who catered to the pleasures of the palate. Véry built up his fortune; Achard began his; Beauvilliers made a third lucky one, and Madame Sullot, whose shop in the Palais-Royal was not more than ten feet square, sold as many as twelve thousand little tarts a day.
This still lasts: foreigners flood into our country from every part of Europe, to carry on in peacetime the pleasant habits they formed during the war; they feel helplessly drawn to Paris, and once there they must enjoy themselves at any price. And if our public stock is high, it is less because of the good rate of interest it carries than because of the innate confidence which is felt in a country where gourmands are made happy.
—from The Physiology of Taste, 1825,
translated from the French by M.F.K. Fisher
ALEXANDRE-BALTHAZAR-LAURENT GRIMOD DE LA REYNIÈRE ON GOURMETS AND GLUTTONS
Mr. Barthe [Nicholas-Thomas Barthe, who died in 1785 at age fifty-one, it is said from a life of overindulgence], the ingenious author of Fausses Infidelités, who was as egotistical as he was gourmand, had the habit of eating something from every dish on the table. His sight being poor, he suffered from the constant fear of having missed something; consequently he was constantly turning to his servant and asking, “Have I had any of this? Have I eaten any of that?” All of which was extremely amusing to the other guests. Barthe died of indigestion, aggravated by a fit of temper: for he was irascible, too. Had he only been a gourmet [though Grimod uses the older word, gourmand] he might still be alive today, like his enemy Mr. Cailhava [Jean-Claude Cailhava, who died in 1813 at the age of eighty-two].
A voracious appetite is all that is required to be a glutton. To merit the title of gourmet requires an exquisite judgment, a profound knowledge of every side of the gastronomic art, a sensual and delicate palate, and a thousand other qualities which are difficult to find in the same person at the same time.
—from Almanach des Gourmands, 1804,
translated from the French by Mark Kurlansky
AUGUSTE ESCOFFIER ON THE ART OF COOKING IN MODERN SOCIETY
It is ironic that Auguste Escoffier (1846–1935), who defined French cooking for several generations, did so in London after moving there in 1890. From his base at the Savoy Hotel and later the Ritz-Carlton, he was the most famous chef of the turn of the century, an epoch marked by opulence. His 1903 book Le guide culinaire became the professional cook’s textbook, explaining French cuisine for the next seventy years, until he was dethroned by nouvelle cuisine. Interestingly, in the introduction to the 1907 edition, he forecast nouvelle cuisine, accurately describing the kind of cooking that would replace him.
—M.K.
The art of cooking depends on the psychological state of society, and it is not possible to separate the two. Where life is relaxed and easy and not troubled, where the future is certain and protected from the whims of fortune, the art of cooking becomes considerably developed because it provides one of the most agreeable pleasures that can be bestowed on a man of taste.
On the other hand, where life is active, where the thousand anxieties of industry and business consume a man’s spirit, there cannot be a life of luxury. Usually, the need for nutrition seems, to people driven by the whirlwind of business, no longer a pleasure but a burden; they consider the time spent at the dinner table as lost, and they demand of those charged with serving them that they are never left waiting.
One can, and one should, deplore such habits. From the perspective of the diners’ health, the stomach will pay the consequences, and they are to blame. But it is completely beyond our power to stop them: All that can be done with culinary science is to counteract the foolishness of man, in whatever measure possible, with the perfection of products.
If the customer demands to be served quickly, we have no choice but to do what he asks or to lose him: that which we refuse him our competitors will provide. We are therefore forced to be in the service of his fantasy. If our customary methods of working, if our service does not comply with this requirement, we must retrain ourselves. Only one thing has to remain unchangeable: that is the quality of the dishes; it is the value that is at the root of cooking, the foundation of our work. The presentation has already begun to change. Much of the paraphernalia and frills have vanished or will vanish, replaced by modern service: the pedestal, the fringes, etc. We will go even further down this path. We will take simplicity to its limits, but at the same time we will improve both the taste and nutritional value of dishes; we will make them lighter, and more digestible for weakened stomachs; we will concentrate them; we will strip them of most of their nonessential ingredients. In a word, cooking, without ceasing to be an art, will become scientific and will be elaborate in formulas, in the service too often of a method and a precision which leaves nothing to chance.
—from Le guide culinaire (2nd edition), 1907,
translated from the French by Mark Kurlansky
HENRI GAULT AND CHRISTIAN MILLAU ON NOUVELLE CUISINE
The October 1973 issue of Le nouveau guide Gault-Millau, the fifty-fourth issue of Henri Gault and Christian Millau’s hip food and travel magazine, featured on the cover a fat, worried old hen with bloodshot eyes staring helplessly while her egg hatched a brash young rooster who crowed “Vive la Nouvelle Cuisine Française.” A new food term was born, soon to be misused for all sorts of inventions.
Gault and Millau were talking specifically about French food. Younger chefs, among them Paul Bocuse, Alain Senderens, the Troisgros brothers, and Michel Guérard, they contended, were rethinking French cuisine for the first time since Escoffier and introducing new approaches, and especially new products, many of which, such as avocados, were already commonplace in the United States. The cuisine that was described in 1973 became the standard way to cook in France. Nouvelle cuisine was so specifically French that it was, and still is, misunderstood in the rest of the world. You have to be dominated by Escoffier before rejecting him becomes meaningful.
While the emphasis was on lighter food, it should be remembered that they were talking about lighter than Escoffier’s sumptuous cuisine for the worry-free, nineteenth-century elite who ate at their leisure. It was the cuisine Escoffier had predicted in 1907, with simple presentation, quicker preparation, and an emphasis on good products. Inside the magazine, an article was marked by an illustration of a fallen pot-bellied older chef, medals on chest, haggard ruddy face bespeaking excess and abuse. Over him stood a thin young chef in the kind of pose once used by hunters who had bagged their big-game quarry. The article offered the following “ten commandments” of nouvelle cuisine Française.
—M.K.
1. Reduced cooking time (like the Chinese) for most fish dishes and all shellfish and crustaceans, dark meat fowl, game roasts, veal, some green vegetables, pasta. Roasted lobster and veal rack chez Denis, the green beans of Bocuse, the fish at Le Duc, the frog legs at Haeberlin, the duck at Guérard, the shrimp at Troisgros, the woodcock at Minot, among others, are outstanding examples.
2. New uses of products It is undeniable that our era of overproduction and debasing technology is poisoning, even eliminating, many products. Gastronomically speaking, there is practically no more chicken, veal, beef, game, trout, cheese, etc. Old-fashioned cooking, even the best, continues to use these antiseptic and rigorously insipid products without wavering. New chefs try to eliminate rather than cover up the bad quality with overly aggressive sauces. They have two solutions.
a. To make what we are calling “market cuisine,” which is made with the products bought the same morning (the new chefs get up very early) or duly ordered. They uncover among the best markets rare and precious (and expensive) chickens, veal, shrimp, partridge, frogs, tomatoes, eggs, truffles, etc.
b. They make do with what the modern world has not yet destroyed, or things that have been made more accessible and fresher: seafood (oysters are better than ever); butter, generally respectable; vegetables, in spite of pesticides; Israeli foie gras; California asparagus; etc.
3. This approach has led modern chefs to reduce the choices on their menu. This has been done for a long time now in the provinces, where regular customers return more often. In Paris, fewer of those giant menus are being seen that offer an absurdly varied choice and impose the necessity of stockpiling food in the cold. (God knows in what condition “fresh” products were in those restaurants with five hundred dishes in the time of our grandparents.) With the new way, there is the means for stocking fresh food, a more immediate cuisine, more inventive, fresher, less routine, always cooked to order. And the fortunate end to sauce bases worked in the bain-marie, the glory of the prewar epoch.