Defining Culinary Authority: The Transformation of Cooking in France, 1650-1830

Introduction: Taste in the Kitchen

 Introduction taste in the kitchen T his book is about the people and the institutions that incubated France’s distinctive national cuisine. Over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries French cooks began to claim a central role defining and enforcing changing standards of taste and educating their diners to the new standards. The work of cultivating culinary taste was not simply an elite matter, therefore, but central to the livelihood of thousands of men and women. French cooks participated in and responded to new forces of publicity and capital intensification to forge professional identities independent of their employers. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries French cooks played a role in the transformation of the aesthetic ideals that governed their work. They created and acted within institutions organizing education and employment. Cooks wrote books and by the nineteenth century had wrested authority over the definition of fine food from social elites. They contributed to the structure and the surveillance of the culinary marketplace. They corresponded with the state, striving to define their work as socially useful and scientifically informed. More than any other group of people in France, cooks made cuisine a central feature of national identity by consistently highlighting food as a sign of the relationships between individuals, social groups, and the state. Finally, cooks assumed prominence in culinary discussions at precisely the moment when French cuisine took shape and gained international influence. Who were these cooks? Paris claimed some of the finest cooks in the French kingdom, and as early as the seventeenth century the capital boasted many guidebooks and almanacs that educated the public about these artisans ’ talents. Nicolas de Blégny offered his Livre commode des adresses de Paris (Handy book of Parisian addresses) in 1692 to direct foreigners to major 2 Defining Culinary Authority Parisian merchants and judicial institutions. Blégny was a prominent surgeon who had been appointed as the queen’s attending surgeon in 1678 and the king’s physician in 1682. He did not capitalize on these credentials in his publication, however, but instead highlighted his status as an outsider to Parisian society. The Livre commode revealed to its limited public the names and locations of the capital’s leading merchants, including the most prominent culinary tradespeople. Blégny notes that among “the Roast Cooks famous for large-scale supply are the Sieurs Gerbois, near the Saint-Honoré slaughterhouse , and Meusnier, on rue du Temple, who also host the grandest Weddings and Festivities with much reputation.” These men catered elite urban parties in clients’ homes or in their own facilities. Renowned pork butchers (charcutiers) included Sieur du Cerceau, located on the rue de l’Arbre Sec, a specialist in Mainz-style hams; Sieur Robinet, on the montagne Sainte Geneviève, known for his sausages (andouilles); and Sieur de Flandres, on the rue des Barres, renowned as a source for good salamis (cervelats). Blégny also observes that Monsieur Fagnaült, a cook for the king’s brother, makes excellent sausages, “which he sells to persons of discerning taste.” A select public had access to the culinary skills of royal servants. Blégny reveals the long-standing professional overlap among culinary guilds and between public and private cooking. The seventeenth-century culinary market displayed the regional bounty of France. A community of Provençal merchants inhabited the cul-de-sac near the church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, across the street from the Louvre Palace. There they sold “Rocfort [sic] cheeses, olives, anchovies, St. Laurent wine, figs, raisins, nectarines, almonds, and other dried fruits from Provence.” Through the sale of Provençal products in the Parisian market, these merchants participated in the crafting of regional identity based in culinary ingredients and preparations. Other regions and nations also benefited from this type of alimentary representation. Blégny praises the plum and barberry jams sent by post from Dijon, as well as the mortadella and other Italian specialties available at Sieur Pilet’s grocery on the rue de l’Arbre sec. The variety of regional foodstuffs made it possible for Parisians to unite the choicest offerings from around the kingdom in an evening’s meal. Every neighborhood sheltered caterers and wine merchants, who catered wedding feasts and large parties in their establishments. Blégny highlights the cabarets of Clossier at the Gerbe d’or, on the rue Gervais Laurent; Blanne at Introduction: Taste in the...