Eating 'à la française'.

It is a bit difficult to avoid a French flavour to today’s post, it being Bastille Day (or La Fête Nationale, or simply Le Quatorze Juillet, if you prefer.) I am quite intrigued by what various authorities and cookbook writers consider makes a dish French-style (à la française). When I started looking, it quickly became apparent that the question is not answerable in a short blog post, it requires the work of at least a dozen PhD students working round the clock for a number of years. The range of ingredients and combinations of ingredients is so great that I can only say there is no possibility of consensus. It appears that a dish is à la française if the cook names it so.

My 1961 English edition of the Larousse Gastronomique seemed a good place to start. On garnitures à la française, it gives this description:

Small nests made from Duchesse potatoes, dipped in egg and breadcrumbs, fried and hollowed out, filled with diced mixed vegetables; bunches of asparagus tips; braised lettuces; flowerets of cauliflower, coated with Hollandaise sauce … [used] for large cuts of meat.

As for sauce à la française , the Larousse quotes Careme (1784-1833), in his Art de la Cuisine Française aud XIXe siècle, noting that this sauce is for fish.

Put into a saucepan some Béchamel sauce based on fish stock. When it is almost boiling, add a little garlic, a little grated nutmeg and mushroom essence. When it has boiled for a moment, and just before serving, add crayfish butter to give it a pinkish colour.

Note: Shelled crayfish tails and small peeled mushrooms may be added to this sauce. I served this sauce for the first time in the house of Prince Paul de Wurtemburg.

Richard Dolby’s The Cook’s Dictionary and Housekeeper’s Directory (1832) includes the following:

Croquignoles à la française:

Break up half a pound of bitter macaroons, so small as to be able to sift them; and having laid half a pound of sifted flour on your slab, and made a hole in the middle, put in the macaroons, with six ounces of powdered sugar, three yolks of eggs, three ounces of fresh butter, and a grain of salt; make these ingredients into a paste, and form the croquignoles of the shape and size of olives; dores them lightly, and bake them in a gentle oven. These must be of a lighter colour than other croquignoles.
Instead of macaroons you may use any other ingredients you please.

In Dainty Dishes from Foreign Lands (1909), the author starts her chapter on Some Delicious French Dishes with the caveat

I do not think that the French have so many distinctive dishes as other nations, but have, rather, a certain style of cooking all things. The recipes which I give, herewith, convey something of the French spirit.

She goes on to single out truffles and mushrooms as being “considered, quite rightly , to distinguish French cookery, but too often they are bedevilled out of all resemblance to their original succulent selves by people who imagine they must be cooked elaborately.” She then provides a few recipes which are simple, and ‘genuinely French.’

Mushrooms with Chicken Livers.

Mushrooms with chicken livers is a dish literally fit for a King; to make it take a dozen (or as many as you want) of chicken livers, and fry them with one or two strips of very thin, very sweet bacon; when the livers are just turning brown, add at least a dozen mushrooms, peeled, and wiped very dry. Simmer five minutes, or until the mushrooms are soft, and serve on hot toast. Into the grease left in the pan drop a tablespoon of flour, and let it brown, stirring constantly. Make this into a gravy by pouring into the pan, very quickly, a cup of cold milk; let it boil up once and pour over the toast, livers, bacon and mushrooms.

And finally, from 365 Foreign Dishes: a foreign dish for every day in the year (1908), a recipe for apple dumplings. I am at a loss to know what the author considered quintessentially French about this dish.

French Baked Apple Dumplings.

Peel and core apples; sprinkle well with sugar. Then mix some cold boiled rice with 1 egg, a pinch of salt, sugar and cinnamon, flour enough to make a dough. Cover the apples with this dough; put in a well-buttered baking dish with 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, and bake to a delicate brown. Serve with whipped cream.

Quotation for the Day.

“Even the coeur flottant merveilleux aux fraises, presented with a great flourish, made little impression, for it was no more than what may happen to the simple, honest dish of strawberries and cream once it falls into the hands of a Frenchman.”
Dr. Watson in 'Sherlock Holmes and the Hapsburg Tiara' by Alan Vanneman (2004)

Conspicuous Consumption.

March 26 ...

The most enthusiastic guilders of already golden lilies during the Golden Age were the Vanderbilts. Mrs. Vanderbilt held the party of the season at their home on Fifth Avenue at 53^rd street on this day in 1883. Twelve hundred of the social elite were invited, and the town was a-buzz with anticipation for six weeks. It was to be a costume ball.

The idea had been announced a week before Lent, and since then, said the New York Times, ‘It has been on every tongue and a fixed idea in every head … It has disturbed the sleep and occupied the waking hours of social butterflies, both male and female, for over six weeks, and has even, perhaps, interfered to some extent with that rigid observation of Lenten devotions which the Church exacts. … Amid the rush and excitement of business men have found their minds haunted by uncontrollable thoughts as to whether they should appear as Robert Le Diable, Cardinal Richelieu, Otho the Barbarian, or the Count of Monte Cristo, while the ladies have been driven to the verge of distraction in the effort to settle the comparative advantages of ancient, medieval, and modern costumes …..’

The newspaper devoted many inches of column to the individual costumes, which were, as would be expected, of great and shining magnificence. Fancy dances (including a hobby-horse quadrille) were to be the main fun of the evening, and to that end ‘The drilling in these quadrilles has been going on assiduously in Mrs. William Astor’s and other private residences for more than a week …’. The floral arrangements were suitably fantastic with ‘vases and gilded baskets filled with natural roses of extraordinary size …. as were the rest of the decorations. The gymnasium was converted into the supper room, and was particularly spectacular:

‘ .. the gymnasium, a spacious apartment, where supper was served on numerous small tables. But it had not the appearance of an apartment last night: it was like a garden in a tropical forest. The walls were nowhere to be seen, but in their place an impenetrable thicket of fern above fern and palm above palm … two beautiful fountains played in opposite corners, … the doors of the apartment, thrown back against the walls, were completely covered with roses and lilies of the valley.'

The New York Times columnist was clearly not inclined to describe the food, (or perhaps that might have seemed vulgar?) other than to say that the catering cost $65,000 of the total of $250,000 for the event. I was then, at the end of the lengthy article, forced to make an alternative choice for the recipe of the day.

It was common at the time for chefs to invent new dishes (or variations on old) and name them in honour of the rich and famous. Alexander Filippini, one-time Delmonico chef, wrote several cookbooks, and there are a set of recipes in The table: how to buy food and how to cook it, published in 1889, which are styled ‘a la Vanderbilt’. They consist of a garnish, and two egg recipes based on the garnish. I like to think that the name came from the large amount of green peppers used, which was reminiscent of a large amount of some other green stuff that the Vanderbilts threw around like confetti.

Garnishing Vanderbilt.
Peel one green pepper ; chop it very fine, and place it in a stewpan with one tomato cut into small pieces. Add an ounce of butter and eighteen canned, picked, and chopped-up shrimps ; season with a third of a tablespoonful of salt and a scant teaspoonful of pepper. Cook for ten minutes, and use for garnishing.

Omelet a la Vanderbilt.
Take two fine, sound, green peppers, plunge them into hot fat for half a minute, then take them up and lay them on a dry cloth; skin them neatly, remove all the seeds from the insides, and when emptied cut them into small slices. Put these into a saucepan on the hot stove with two medium-sized fresh, sound, slicedtomatoes, twelve nicely shelled shrimps, and three tablespoonfuls of Madeira wine sauce (No. 185), then season with half a pinch of salt and a third of a pinch of pepper; cook slowly for fifteen minutes. Break twelve fresh eggs into a bowl, season them with half a pinch of salt and a third of a pinch of pepper, and beat well for five minutes. Put two ounces of good butter in a frying-pan, place it on the hot stove, and when the butter is melted drop in the eggs, and with a spoon or fork mix briskly for two minutes. Fold the opposite side up with a skimmer, lift up the thick part of the prepared sauce, and place it in the centre of the omelet, fold the other side either with a knife or fork, and let it cook for two minutes longer, then turn on a hot dish; pour the rest of the sauce in the saucepan around the omelet, and send to the table very hot.

Eggs a la Vanderbilt.
Place one ounce of good butter on a silver dish, set it on the hot stove, and break in twelve fresh eggs, being careful not to disturb the yolks; season with a light pinch of salt and the third of a pinch of pepper; then let cook slowly for four minutes. Pour over the eggs a pint of hot Vanderbilt garnishing as for the omelet, and serve immediately.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Unconspicuous Consumption.

Quotation for the Day …

Have wholesome, but not costly Food, and be rather cleanly than dainty in ordering it. William Penn (1644-1718)