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    Feasts and All Their Finery: Elegant Dining in Old Regime France
    Feasts and All Their Finery: Elegant Dining in Old Regime France
    Feasts and All Their Finery: Elegant Dining in Old Regime France
    Ebook173 pages1 hour

    Feasts and All Their Finery: Elegant Dining in Old Regime France

    By Jim Chevallier

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    About this ebook

    A mechanical horse... A mountain flowing with rose-water... A lake with a boat in full sail.. These were a few of the details of the complex entertainments presented with elegant Medieval meals. Meanwhile, table decoration, which began with abundant flowers and piles of fruit, evolved into complex constructions of glass, artificial frost and drawings in sand. Even as kings struggled to limit luxury, meals grew more ornate, multiplying courses and the dishes in each course.

    Le Grand d'Aussy ends his three-volume history of French food with these exuberant chapters, bristling with colorful details, about how fine dining in France grew more formal and more ambitious, remaining extravagant (by today's standards) even after the sometimes stunning, sometimes laughable excesses of the Middle Ages were reigned in and more sophisticated service and entertainment replaced a host of mechanical devices, pantomimes, and outright exotica.

    Le Grand draws on a classic cookbook and several forgotten memoirs to bring a wealth of details on menus, table decoration, royal households, customs, and entertainments to those who study the Middle Ages, food history, decoration or simply France in all its infinite variety. For the first time, this rich and unique text is available in English.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJim Chevallier
    Release dateFeb 6, 2014
    ISBN9780463373019
    Feasts and All Their Finery: Elegant Dining in Old Regime France
    Author

    Jim Chevallier

    Jim Chevallier is a food historian who has been cited in "The New Yorker", "The Smithsonian" and the French newspapers "Liberation" and "Le Figaro", among other publications. CHOICE has named his "A History of the Food of Paris: From Roast Mammoth to Steak Frites" an Outstanding Academic Title for 2019. His most recent work is "Before the Baguette: The History of French Bread". He began food history with an essay on breakfast in 18th century France (in Wagner and Hassan's "Consuming Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century") in addition to researching and translating several historical works of his own. He has been both a performer and a researcher, having worked as a radio announcer (WCAS, WBUR and WBZ-FM), acted (on NBC's "Passions", and numerous smaller projects). It was as an actor that he began to write monologues for use by others, resulting in his first collection, "The Monologue Bin". This has been followed by several others over the years.

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      Book preview

      Feasts and All Their Finery - Jim Chevallier

      Feasts

      and

      All Their Finery

      Elegant Dining in Old Regime France

      Pierre Jean-Baptiste Le Grand d'Aussy

      Notes and translation by Jim Chevallier

      Chez Jim Books

      All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in any form.

      Feasts and All Their Finery: Elegant Dining in Old Regime France

      Copyright 2013, 2014 by Jim Chevallier

      Published by:

      Chez Jim Books

      To contact the editor, e-mail: jimchev@chezjim.com

      Although the editor and publisher have made every effort to ensure the accuracy and completeness of these translations and any additional information contained in this book, we assume no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, omissions, or any inconsistency herein.

      About Le Grand d'Aussy's work

      The current volume has been extracted, translated and retitled from Pierre Jean-Baptiste Le Grand d'Aussy's classic work on French food and drink, which has come down to us with the slightly misleading title of Histoire de la vie privée des Français depuis l’origine de la nation jusqu’à nos jours; that is, History of the private life of the French from the origin of the nation until our days. Though Le Grand originally intended to produce such a comprehensive work, in practice he only finished the three volumes on food and drink (first published in 1783). Incomplete as these may be in terms of the overall project, they are almost manically thorough in their examination of the specific subject and have remained, over the centuries, some of the prime sources on the subject. Not only do even modern writers continue to draw on them for key information, more than one writer (in both French and English) has shamelessly copied whole stretches of Le Grand's work, well after it was written, and presented it as their own.

      Le Grand at one point refers to himself as a compiler and certainly one of the strengths of his work is that it brings together a wealth of information drawn from earlier sources, some classics of their respective periods, some profoundly obscure. He began as a Jesuit and brings to his task the methodical, erudite and demanding precision which made the Jesuits so admired as teachers. But his personality – passionate, determined, unsparing, but also compassionate, even witty and sensual – shines through. When he thinks a previous writer has written nonsense, he says so, succinctly. When he feels obliged to work his way through fastidious, if important material, he lets his impatience show. When he includes an anecdote more because it is entertaining than because it is essential, he does so without apology. At the rare moments when he draws on his personal experience or acquaintance, he brings us vividly into the instant.

      He is, in a word, not only an informative but a lively and enjoyable writer, but one who, in English, is more often cited than translated at length. The present work is part of an effort to remedy that, if only in small measure.

      About this translation

      Le Grand regularly includes side-heads in his text; most of the headings used here are taken from these. Several have been added, primarily to group related headings. These additions appear in square brackets.

      This is not, in any meaningful way, an annotated edition, but some rare notes have been added here in-line, in square brackets ([]). Le Grand is also inconsistent in regard to providing dates. Since it is often helpful for the reader to know these, they have often been added here, italicized and in square brackets. A similar issue exists with Latin, which he sometimes paraphrases or even translates fully and sometimes leaves in the original; in the latter cases, a translation has been added in square brackets and quotes. The alphabetic footnotes are Le Grand's own and originally appeared at the bottom of the physical page in each case.

      Both Le Grand's approach to quotes and to capitalization are inconsistent. This translation for the most part retains those of the original.

      Le Grand on feasts

      Le Grand ends his three volume survey of French food with some of his most colorful chapters, looking at aspects of luxury dining. He first surveys feasts in general, providing details of two Medieval meals, along with broader views of these in France. Then he describes the different ways of decorating tables, beginning with the use of flowers and tracing the evolution of the complex and clever decorations of his own glittering century. This includes the story of several specific decorative techniques, using glass tubes, sand, special powders, etc.

      His longest chapter here is on the customs associated with meals, starting with the simple concept of eating at set times and moving through some specific customs like horning the water and washing one's hands before a meal. This leads, a little surprisingly, to a long look at drunkenness in earlier centuries, before a discussion of hot drinks (which were easy to make) and chilled drinks (which were not, requiring a variety of clever techniques). Then Le Grand goes through a variety of aspects of table service, from changing the napkins along with the plates to using flying tables, as well as the particularly French etiquette of carving gracefully.

      He ends this chapter with a wealth of details on the positions and functions in royal households, closing with a description of the meticulous ceremony at one duke's table.

      The last chapter – and the last in Le Grand's work – is the merriest, addressing the entertainments offered at meal times over the centuries. These ranged from the guests themselves singing and telling tales to the ornate entremêts of late Medieval times. He provides detailed descriptions of several of these before ending with an event closer to his own time: the elaborate reception devised by the Prince of Condé for the Dauphin.

      Le Grand's errors

      Le Grand does not really bear the blame for his grossest error here: writing that Taillevent (Guillaume Tirel), who died in 1395, directed feasts held in 1455 and 1457. The first published edition of theViandier, which is typically credited to Taillevent, was published in the fifteenth century and it included the menus which Le Grand (somewhat loosely) adopted for this work. A modern reader however should bear the discrepancy in mind when reading Le Grand's claims that Taillevent organized the feasts in question.

      More strangely, in his own edition, Le Grand calls the great cook Taillevant. The actual name has a meaning: Wind-cutter (very literally, Slice wind); Le Grand's version does not. In this translation, the correct spelling is used, to avoid propagating confusion.

      Le Grand also briefly discusses people eating where they cook. While he seems to understand that the Gauls did not have kitchens, he seems unaware that in the Middle Ages few people did either. Kitchens existed in large institutions or rich households, but most people ate and cooked, and often lived, in the same room. They cooked on a hearth; not the front of a brick fireplace we know today, but simply a fire set off by a ring of bricks or another divider. Except for someone of means, it would have been rare not to eat in the same place the food was cooked.

      A brief glossary

      The numerous French terms here, from a number of different centuries, include some with no equivalent in English, some which have traditionally been translated in misleading ways, some which are extremely rare even in French, etc. This glossary provides a closer look at these.

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