While in Normandy over the holidays I spent time with an extraordinary book, an encyclopedic compendium of recipes – 3,760 in all – translated into English as The Art of French Cooking and published sometime in the 1920s or 30s. It sits on the bookshelf of Mme and Mr Colombiers’ country house collecting dust. I often wonder if other renters share my giddy enthusiasm for it. I’ve even thought to ask Mme Colombiers if she would agree to sell it to me, but then decided against the idea. Its girth is such that it wouldn’t find a wide enough parking place in my bookshelf. I have to be satisfied with consulting it on vacation, by the fireside, when the rain keeps us from venturing out into the bogs and pastures.
There are two things I love about this big, fusty book.
1) Its anachronistic self-importance for starters. The book was “Created by the Great Chefs of France”, including the famous Escoffier and another curiously named Ali-Bab. They compiled their knowledge of French Cuisine into these enlightened pages and there is little doubt Julia Childs spent some time splattering them with cooking sherry.
The authors intended the book’s Authority to be atemporal, for All Time, yet its sensibilities bear the distinct marks of the era in which the enterprise was undertaken. Have a look at this photo and you’ll see what I mean.
Cock in Paste (coq en croûte)
Astonishing, isn’t it? The cock is shrouded in his own image. Like many a saint, he is more beautiful unearthed from the oven than during his life in the basse cour. What we also find in these pages is that there is more than one way to cook a cock. There are literally fifty or so recipes for sublimating the sacrificial rooster. Which brings me to the second reason I love this book;
2) Its unapologetic excessiveness. The Art of French Cooking is a Culinary Opera, with a mind-boggling number of variations on its themes. The pedestrian cook is so far surpassed by the embarras de choix she either withers under its weight or cackles as she tosses a dollop of goose fat into a hot skillet and hopes for the best. Few, I believe, can live up to its demands and yet how important it is we try!
As an example let us take a brief look at the egg listings:
-Eggs Symphony, Eggs Rossini I (with truffles and foie gras in honour of the composer), Eggs Rossini II (like the former but with lobster supreme),Eggs à la Sevigné, Eggs à la Virofly (with sauce parisienne and brioche crusts), Eggs à la Xavier, Eggs Princesse Marie, Eggs Petit Duc, Eggs à la palace, Eggs Monseigneur (served with fish purée and béchamel), Eggs Balzac (with truffles and pickled tongue), Eggs Aurora, etc . The egg thème continues on for another ten pages. I am providing only the short-short list.
In the midst of this relentless excess nest oddities which deserve our attention:
-Sitting Hare (lièvre au gîte) : Could this not be name of an Indian Chief ?
-Saddle of Hare with Sharp Sauce: Lots of sharp notes seem right for a rabbit.
-Young Boar Chops Saint Hubert : St Hubert is the patron saint of hunters. I haven’t seen baby boar chops around the markets these days. Will check with my butcher.
-Larks in Shroud : the larks get stuffed into hollowed potatoes.
-Quails in the Nest I and II : a potato burial as in the above.
-Aurora’s Pillow: a full-page recipe involving pheasant, foie gras, wild rabbit, pork, woodcock intestines, partridge livers and champagne brandy cooked into a plush pie shaped like a pillow just before dawn.
– Cod Benedictine: basically a mound of cod brandade in the likeness of a Benedictine’s belly.
This dizzying variety so neatly categorized tends to trigger the Cosmic Giggle — that most honest response to the Great and the Unfathomable. Gentle Friends, do not hold it in, but let The Giggle spring forth. This is the closest we will ever get to the Fountain of Youth.
Ironically, the more the Grand Chefs tried to codify, classify and regulate the Mysteries of the French culinary arts, the more mysterious they became. What we are left with is a glorious abundance that verges on the nonsensical, for who in our contemporary era has time to cook these elaborate concoctions, let alone attempt to prepare more than one of the sixty roasted chicken recipes? What on earth is the need for all this exuberance, detail, variety? All I can say, Gentle Friends, is that it is needed. Without it, we are doomed; I am certain of it.
So let us celebrate the legacy by participating in the Holy Alliance Cook off!
Are you ready? Get your pots and pans polished up and tie those apron strings. On y va!
The featured recipe of our cook off competition is…
Pheasant Holy Alliance (Faisan à la Sainte Alliance)
Voici la recette :
Stuff a young pheasant with light forcemeat made from the flesh of 2 boned woodcocks, grated pork fat, poached beef marrow and peeled, quartered truffles sautéed in butter. Season with salt and pepper. Truss the pheasant, cover the breast with thin strips of pork fat and place on a spit. Make a forcemeat from the mashed entrails of the two woodcocks, including the livers and two mashed truffles, adding a little grated suet, one soaked anchovy (pressed through a sieve) and a piece of fresh butter. Spread this mixture on a grilled bread crouton under it so that it will soak up the juices that flow from the bird. Serve the pheasant on the crouton and surround with bitter orange slices.
*Brillat-Savarin said that this masterpiece was executed in his presence by the head chef of Mme de la Ville-Plaine at the Château de la Grange. This clever preparation had a deserved success, Brillat Savarin added (Physiologie du Goût)
Don’t forget to send your pictures as proof! Gentle Friends, get cooking!