The Baron Brisse Menu 2.

Today, August 14th

This is our second day dining from the book of the Baron Brisse. In his home in France, it is summertime. This is what he has to say about the month ofAugust:

AUGUST.

August was the Emperor Augustus’ favourite month, and no-one can have been a better judge of a good dinner than he was. This emperor had the whole world at his feet, and hecould well set heat and cold at a defiance. Rome was at this time not only the capital of the world, but also of gastronomy. Everything worth having was brought to Rome, without Augustus having to exclaim, as did Louis XIV, “I had almost to wait.” Large cities become deserted in August on account of the great heat, and people either go to the country, the sea-side, or to drink the waters. They go about the country and fields, and do not think much about eating. However, at the end of the month shooting begins, and gourmands are provided with young quail, leverets, and young wild boar. Other game is not worth much just yet.

Here is the baron’s suggested menu for August 14.

Potage au tapioca.
(Tapioca soup)
Gigot braisé.
(Braised leg of mutton).
Laitues farcies.
(Stuffed lettuces).
Langouste sauce mayonnaise.
(Sea crayfish with mayonnaise sauce).
Pommes de terre sautées.
(Fried potatoes)
Macédoine de fruits en gelée.
(Macédoine of fruit in jelly)

I am not convinced of the idea of tapioca soup in the depths of summer, but the baron would no doubt disagree.

My choice of recipe for the day is the stuffed lettuce. Feel free to use cabbage, and hope that the baron does not find out.

Stuffed lettuces
Wash, trim, blanch, and drain your lettuces, remove the centre leaves very carefully, fill with forcemeat of fowl and truffles, or with quenelle stuffing; tie the lettuces round with string, and cook in a stew-pan lined with slices of veal and bacon; season with carrots, onions, and a bouquet of mixed herbs, and moisten with stock. If the lettuces are preferred in a white sauce, they must be warmed in béchamel sauce, thickened with yolks of egg, after being braised.

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Baron Brisse Menu 2.

Quotation for the Day ….

If any one element of French cooking can be called important, basic and essential, that element is soup. Louis Diat.

The Baron Brisse.

Today, August 13th …

As promised, this week we will be inspired by the mid-nineteenth century menu and recipe book of the Baron Léon Brisse. Not much is known about him. He was a (presumably) aristocratic Frenchman who appeared to have to earn a living. He began his working life in the department of Water and Forestry under Louise Phillipe, but left in 1850 to pursue his interests in gastronomy and writing (it seems that he left his employ in the wake of a scandal of sorts).

The baron was perhaps the first food journalist. He wrote regularly for La Liberte, and in 1868 published Les Trois Cent Soixant Six Menus du Baron Brisse (The 366 Menus of Baron Brisse). The book included 1200 recipes, many of which are quite outlandish – a fact for which he was criticised at the time. How was he to know? He did not actually cook himself, he was a collector of recipes.

In his preface, the baron makes one highly unusual comment. Cookbook authors almost always advocate frugality in the kitchen (or at least denounce flagrant waste). The baron says:

“I have not attempted to give recipes for using up scraps, as this art is only useful when you run short of provisions; it is quite a mistake to imagine that warming up cooked meat is economical, as all good transformations must be expensive.”

His suggested menu for August 13 is:

Potage Crécy
(Crécy Soup)
Matelote de carpe et d’anguille
(Stewed carp and eel)
Poupiettes de veau.
(Stuffed fillets of veal)
Pintade rôtie.
(Roast guinea-fowl)
Haricots verts au beurre noir.
(Green beans with black butter)
Biscuit de savoy.
(Savoy cake)

I do hope that I have solved your problem of what to cook for dinner tonight. The Baron has also enabled me to fulfil my promise to you a few days ago of giving you a recipe for a Savoy cake.

Savoy, or sponge cake.
Break fifteen eggs, keep the yolks separate from the whites, stir a pound of powdered sugar into the yolks, and flavour with either grated lemon peel or vanilla, beat until frothy; whip the whites to a thick cream, add to the yolks, and stir in a pound of flour; pour into a buttered mould, or into small cases, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and bake; when done, glaze the cake with whipped whites of egg, flavoured with lemon juice and sugar, and serve when cold.

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Baron Brisse Menu 2.

Quotation for the Day ….

Chef: Any cook who swears in French. Henry Beard and Roy McKie

Last Minute Historic Food Gift?

This recipe was a serendipitous Christmas Eve find. If you need a last minute gift for a friend who loves food or is a history nerd, this might just suit. The quantity will need to be scaled down - Durand clearly made this amount for restaurant use!

Spiced Salt.

The great cook, Durand, of illustrious memory, advocated the use of spiced salt, which he said had often stood him in good stead. The following are the exact quantities he gave in his recipe.
Take twenty ounces of salt, four heads of cloves, two nutmegs, six laurel [bay] leaves, a stick of cinnamon, four whole black peppers, half a quarter of an ounce of basil leaves [not a typo- he means an eighth of an ounce], and the same quantity of coriander seeds; pound in a mortar, pass through a tammy, pound any pieces that remain over, pass through the tammy, and keep in tightly corked bottles.

From: 366 Menus and 1200 Recipes; by the Baron Brisse (originally published in 1868, this was transcribed from the eighth edition of the English translation).

Dinner with the Crown Prince.

Today, January 30th …

The Crown Prince of Austria, Rudolph Habsburg, and his beautiful seventeen year old mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera died on this day in 1889 in what may have been a double suicide, a murder-suicide (with either Rudolph or Mary being the murderer), or a politically motivated assassination. The subsequent publicity was a masterpiece of cover-up and spin-doctoring, as would be expected from an Imperial family, and the response was speculation and rumour of epic proportions. Officially Rudolph died from “apoplexy of the heart” - a complication, no doubt of the large bullet hole in his chest. Mary was not mentioned at all; officially, she was never there.

It is not only the motive that is in doubt. Mary may or may not have been pregnant (and if she was she may have died as the result of a botched abortion), and she may have been shot in the head or beaten to death (her body disappeared for a while, and the rediscovered body, may not have been the same as the one buried with her name on it, and it is not certain which of the two was the real one anyway). She may or may not have poisoned Rudolph, although again, this does not explain the bullet-hole in his body.

In the midst of such controversy, it is comforting to find that there is no dispute about their last meal together. Rudolph and Mary were at Mayerling, the royal hunting lodge in the Vienna woods (now a Carmelite convent). On that last night his valet served them a meal of pheasant with fresh mushrooms, leeks, and baked potatoes, with two bottles of Tokay on the side.

Not a bad final meal, planned or not, and surely more elegant than the usual American prisoners’ death-row requests for hamburger or pizza!

Here is a pheasant dish from a titled gentleman of the same era : the Baron Brisse, from his book “366 menus and 1200 recipes”.

Stewed Pheasant.
Truss the pheasant for boiling, lard it with fine strips of bacon, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and mixed spice; be careful to lard even the legs, cover with slices of bacon, and place in a stew-pan lined with bacon; moisten with equal quantities of white wine, and stock, and simmer for two hours; when done, drain the pheasants, remove the slices of bacon, and dish up covered with game sauce.

Enjoy with the Tokay!

Tomorrow: Cheating and eating.

Elephant (not) on the menu

Today, November 7th …

Today in the U.S.A is Republican Elephant day, which commemorates the political cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast for Harpers Weekly in 1874. Nast represented the Republican voter as an elephant, and although it was not meant to be complimentary at the time, the party itself adopted the elephant as its symbol, for its size and strength.

What has this got to do with food, you ask? I remember a story about canned elephant meat omelette being served as a publicity stunt at a Miami restaurant during a Republican convention in the 1960’s – a politically incorrect act of astonishing proportions by today’s standards, but one which nevertheless made me wonder what elephant flesh would actually taste like. Absolute abhorrence at the thought of actually eating it does not do away entirely with simple curiosity, so I was forced to look at the reports of others.

Gordon Cumming, great white hunter in Central South Africa in the 1840’s, was enthusiastic: “the feet, thus cooked [in a pit] are excellent, as is also the trunk, which very much resembles buffalo’s tongue.” Dr David Livingstone in 1867 – even extremely hungry - was not:

We get some elephants' meat from the people, but high is no name for its condition. It is very bitter, but we used it as a relish to the maëre porridge … not one of us would touch it with the hand if we had aught else, for the gravy in which we dip our porridge is like an aqueous solution of aloes …

If you read French, and have no conscience, I refer you to Alexandre Dumas’ “Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine” for a recipe for elephants feet. Otherwise, I offer one for athe “other” pachyderm - cooked hunter’s style to give the illusion of adventure - as described by the French gastronome Baron Brisse in “366 Menus and 1200 recipes” (1868)

Fillet of boar au chasseur.

Soak the fillet for at least two days in olive oil and salt, drain, and simmer in a stew-pan lined with slices of bacon, carrots, onions, a bouquet of mixed herbs, salt, pepper, and equal quantities of stock and white wine; when sufficiently done, drain the fillet, glaze it, and serve with piquant sauce, to which you have added a little of the liquor in which it was cooked, after passing it through a tammy and reducing.

Tomorrow … Food for cowboys and popes ...