Feeding France’s Grande Armée: A Pictorial Tribute for Memorial Day
An army marches on its stomach. ~~Napoleon Bonaparte~~ And Napoleon Bonaparte would know. He, like Adolph Hitler in another time, …
Monthly Archives: May 2011
Dining Alone – Not the Loneliest Number that You’ll Ever Do: Just Ask Louis XIV
King Louis XIV did it. M. F. K. Fisher did it. The faceless man in Edward Hopper’s painting, “Nighthawks,” did …
Obesity and the Birth of France: Louis the Fat and Centralization of Power
Nothing is new under the sun, including the problems of obesity. Is obesity ever a good thing? What if someone …
The Cookbooks on Their Shelves: The First English-Language French Cookbooks in the United States, or, Who was Sulpice Barué?
Much has been made of Thomas Jefferson’s influence on the “Frenchification” of cuisine in the young United States and in …
Auguste Escoffier: Le Guide Culinaire, Revised
New, revised version of Escoffier’s premier work, unabridged fourth edition from 1921. In English, glory be. Translated from the 1921 …
The Fish of France: Weever (Trachinus draco Linnaeus )
A bouillabaisse fish, the weever is. Mentioned in William Verral’s A Complete System of Cookery (1759) as “weaver,” the weever fish’s …
Will Verral’s Masterpiece of 1759: A Complete System of Cookery
The English could never catch a break in the kitchen. Why, as early as 1759, in A Complete System of …
Why Bother with Culinary History?
A friend recently asked me, “Why is culinary history important?” Actually, her words came out of her mouth a little …
The Fish of France
The Duke of Newcastle’s Pique, or, A Good Chef is Hard to Find
The diarist Samuel Pepys, no mean observer of human foibles that relieve the monotony of day-to-day human life, recorded — …
