By the time Oscar Wilde arrived to end his life in Paris
gorging on ortolans and writing about them, cookery had become
so blame literary that a dish was dubbed "omelet homme de let-
tres," Author's Omelet, and Georges Vicaire published his ency-
clopediac "Bibliographic Gastronomique" to record the vast lit-
erature on the subject. But don't imagine that any of this was
over the heads of the people who by that time were calling each
other affectionately by marrowy pet names like "my little cab-
bage," men petit choux. All Paris went to Les Halles (the vast
market) at dawn to select a live fish from the tanks, eat onion
soup stringy with cheese, and discuss the sapid Fromage de Mon-
sieur Fromage, a cheese actually made by Mr. Cheese himself and
so named — which is reminiscent of the famous poulet of Mere
Poularde (fat pullet).
Then Picasso and Picabia came along with their modern art
and cubist salads were concocted of triangles of tripe, cones of
cucumber and geometrical lozenges of shrimp, just to get the
artistic effect. Food went violently futurist for a while. Potage
a la Paul Poiret. Choucrout Chirico. There were fantastic food
fandangos, in which all seven of the arts were crammed into one
dish, inventions as ridiculous as bananas baked with anchovies
and served with a dash of absinthe. Paul Reboux published
"Plats Nouveaux," suggesting heretical compositions of purple
purees and mauve mangoes, so for a while cooking went dada.
Then came the reaction of reason, and in 1923 the Salon
d'Automne of Paris officially recognized Gastronomy as the Ninth
Art (moving pictures being the eighth) and voted to squelch
the radical left-wing tendency and stop for all time their wicked
FRENCH 277
experiments with mixing surrealist salads o£ dill pickles and ice
cream. Since the first gastronomic exhibit of 1923 a section of
the great seasonal art show is devoted to the classical cookery of
the French provinces, and the patriot takes his regional potage or
garbure even more seriously than before. And that always has
been serious enough, as anybody knows who has watched a
French family sit down to dinner, the head of the house solemnly
ladling his portion out of the immense tureen, savoring its steam,
sampling its quality as though it were a rare wine. For French
soup is a rigid institution without which there is no dinner. In
its way, the potage is as important here as port in England or
dumplings in Bavaria.
The Frenchman is informal enough at his plain morning
cafe au lait with a brioche or croissant, newspaper and cigaret,
but he approaches both lunch and dinner with sanctified serious-
ness, a rubbing of hands and tummy, crackling and tucking in of
napkins, anticipatory peeping under dish covers. At table noth-
ing must interfere with his enjoyment, the slightest interruption
is resented and no visitor would presume to butt in on this devout
ritual.
Page 115
Presented as published in 1936. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
AI-modernized reading of the original text
By the time Oscar Wilde arrived to end his life in Paris gorging on ortolans and writing about them, cookery had become so blandly literary that a dish was dubbed "omelet homme de lettres," Author's Omelet, and Georges Vicaire published his encyclopediac "Bibliographic Gastronomique" to record the vast literature on the subject. But don't imagine that any of this was over the heads of the people who by that time were calling each other affectionately by marrowy pet names like "my little cabbage," mon petit choux. All Paris went to Les Halles (the vast market) at dawn to select a live fish from the tanks, eat onion soup stringy with cheese, and discuss the sapid Fromage de Monsieur Fromage, a cheese actually made by Mr. Cheese himself and so named — which is reminiscent of the famous poulet of Mère Poularde (fat pullet).
Then Picasso and Picabia came along with their modern art and cubist salads were concocted of triangles of tripe, cones of cucumber and geometrical lozenges of shrimp, just to get the artistic effect. Food went violently futurist for a while. Potage a la Paul Poiret. Choucrout Chirico. There were fantastic food fandangos, in which all seven of the arts were crammed into one dish, inventions as ridiculous as bananas baked with anchovies and served with a dash of absinthe. Paul Reboux published "Plats Nouveaux," suggesting heretical compositions of purple purees and mauve mangoes, so for a while cooking went dada.
Then came the reaction of reason, and in 1923 the Salon d'Automne of Paris officially recognized Gastronomy as the Ninth Art (moving pictures being the eighth) and voted to squelch the radical left-wing tendency and stop for all time their wicked
experiments with mixing surrealist salads o£ dill pickles and ice cream. Since the first gastronomic exhibit of 1923 a section of the great seasonal art show is devoted to the classical cookery of the French provinces, and the patriot takes his regional potage or garbure even more seriously than before. And that always has been serious enough, as anybody knows who has watched a French family sit down to dinner, the head of the house solemnly ladling his portion out of the immense tureen, savoring its steam, sampling its quality as though it were a rare wine. For French soup is a rigid institution without which there is no dinner. In its way, the potage is as important here as port in England or dumplings in Bavaria.
The Frenchman is informal enough at his plain morning cafe au lait with a brioche or croissant, newspaper and cigaret, but he approaches both lunch and dinner with sanctified seriousness, a rubbing of hands and tummy, crackling and tucking in of napkins, anticipatory peeping under dish covers. At table nothing must interfere with his enjoyment, the slightest interruption is resented and no visitor would presume to butt in on this devout ritual.