history notes--Colonial America and 17th & 18th century France (2024)

The years immediately preceding the French Revolution were a time of great excess and terriblepoverty. Royalty feasted on rich confections and huge roasts; the starving peasants ate anythingthey could find, including stale bread and scraps. In 18th century France, new world foods, mostnotably potatoes, played a pivotal role in feeding the starving country.

The Revolution was a great culinary equalizer. The fall of the Royal regime created (bynecessity) a more egalitarian cuisine. Food, and the concept of how it was eaten changedradically. During the revolution another notable French "invention" happened. The restaurant.The first restaurants were quite different from what we know today. Their initial purpose wasto serve healthy restoratifs (soup!) to anybody who could pay.

"The eighteenth century was a great century for cooking, but the progress made and therefinements added to the art of cooking were briefly interrupted by the French Revolution. In1789 the French Revolution broke out, and according to one observer at the time, it "served thesoverign people a dish of lentils, seasoned with nothing but the love of their country, which didvery little to improve their blandness." The interest in cooking and gastronomy was temporarilyinterrupted, but when things had calmed down enough in 1795, a little book entitled LaCuisiniereRepublicaine was published. It was written by a Mme. Merigot, who gives recipes forpotatoes(unnacceptable until then as a food by the French.)"
---The Grand Masters of French Cuisine: Five Centuries of Great Cooking, Celine Venceand Robert Courtine [G.P. Putnam:New York] 1978 (p. 55)
[NOTE: This books has much more information/recipes than can be paraphrased here. Ask yourlibrarian to help you find this book.

The bread question
"Let them eat cake," Marie Antoinette allegedly pronounced. What was this cake and why is this phrase so important? Parisians were indeed starving in the yearspreceding the French Revolution. Bread, while commonly employed for its symbolic connection as the "staff of life," was not the only commodity in short supply. There were several reasons for these food shortages, number one being a population explosion. Other key factors included war (farmers pressed into service meant neglected fields), weather conditions (severe drought), and economics (inadequate distribution systems).

"A shortage of bread has been suggested as the cause of the fall of Rome, the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution of 1917."
---The Story of Bread, Ronald Sheppard and Edward Newton [Charles T. Branford:Boston MA] 1957 (p. 58)

"Bread was the staple food of the masses and it was poverty which caused the [French Revolution] rebellion. The more naive than caustic comments of Marie Antoinette, 'Let them eat cake,' was explosive in an already tense atmosphere. What the people wanted was bread, with all its symbolic implications."
---Gastronomy of France, Raymond Oliver, translated from the French by Claude Durrell [World Publishing Co.:Cleveland OH] 1967 (p. 107-108)

"'The people was all roaring out Voila le boulanger et la boulangere et let petit mitron, saing that now they should have bread as they now had got the baker and his wife and boy.' The year was 1789, the place Paris, the 'baker' Louis XVI and the 'bakers wife', Marie Antoinette. The French Revolution had not...been sparked off by hunger or high prices, and Marie Antoineette's relentlessy mistranslated remark that if there was not dread, the people would eat 'cake' was no more than one of those minor but eminently quotable political gaffes that their perpetrators are never allowed to forget. Bread shortages had always been a fact of Parisian life, productive of nothing more serious than an occasional riot. It was only after the middle classes made the first breach in the defences of the privileged elite that the ordinary people of France began to take a hand in the game. While the Constitutent Assembly discussed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the abolition of aristocratic privileges, the market women of Paris took the opportunitiy of demonstrating their disapproval of the fact that, after a series of disastrious harvests, a four-pound loaf now cost 14 1/2 sous. The effective daily wage of a builder's labourer at the time was 18 sous. Throughout the 1790s far more serious food crises and riots were to bedevil the plans of the revolutionaries and their successors--and to sound a warning to the governments of other countries confronted with the problem of expanding towns and an unprecedented increase in population. The problem was more one of distribution than production since agricultural developments were taking place that promised to make shortages a thing of the past."
---Food in History, Reay Tannahill [Three Rivers Press:New York] 1988 (p. 283)

"...in France...there was a new investment by the state in solving problems of food distribution that had previously been the responsibility of individual cities...French monarchs in the eighteetnh century became increasingly concerned with the possibility of popular uprisings due to bread shortages. To forestall that possibiltiy, they stocked wheat and promulgated new laws governing the sale of grain. Both responses appear to have improved the situation, but not everyone agreeed that this was the case. In The Bakers of Paris and the Bread Question, 1700-1775, Steven Kaplan has shown that when merchants followed the king's orders to stockpile grain, their actions were often interpreted as attempts to corner the market in order to drive up prices. Large-scale wheat purchases did in fact raise prices on local markets and force some people to go hungry, and critics saw this as evidence of a "famine conspiracy." Furthermore, laws promoting free trade in grain, which ultimately stimulated new cereal production, had to be withdrawn or modified on several accasions in the face of vehement protests by various groups: the best known of these episodes was the "flour war" of 1775...Was the French government right to intervene in the food distribution system rather tahn lieave it, as in the past and as in some other coutnries, in the hands of municipal governments and private interests? It would have been difficult to have acted differently: whereas popular protest in the seventeenth century had been directed mainly against taxes, int eh eighteenth century it was directed maily against shortages of bread. Although these disturbances were not as severe as in previous centuries, they could not be neglected. Thus the bread question became the paramount political issue of the day, just as wheat came to dominate agriculture and the popular diet...Antoine Parmentier, suggested making bread with flour from potatoes, which could be grown in fallow fields between grain harvests and with helds tow to three times greater than that for wheat. But in many parts of Europe people did not yet feel miserable enough to accept such fare, which was considreed fit only for hogs, eveni if it could be turned into bread."
---Food: A Culinary History, Jean-Louis Flandrin & Massimo Montanari [Columbia University Press:New York] 1999 (p. 354-355)

"In the months before the storming of the Bastille the people of Paris commenced once more to greet each other with the forbidden greeting of the Jacquerie: "Le pain se leve..." What bread? There was none...most Frenchmen believed that the lack of grain was due to a conspiracy...There is no doubt that the grain speculators were making a great deal of money at the time...The unique factor was the mass delusion that the purpose of their speculation as to "exterminate the French nation."..It was said that Louis XV had already earned ten millions pounds as a result of this murderous conspiracy. The society was alleged to be buying cheaply all the grain in France, secretly exporting it, buying it again from abroad, and importing it back to France at tenfold the original price...The fact was that all export of grain from France had been prohibited for the past hundred years...Revolt was...raging in the provinces...The Bastille had been stormed--but the people of Paris did not yet have their bread...In fact, in the days after the storming of the Bastille there was an unusual shortage of flour. The people could not feed on the glory of the Revolution. Why did a four-pound bread still cost 12 1/2 sous and a white bread 14 1/2? The government provided subsidies so that the bakers would lower their price. But this did not increase the supply of bread. The angy populace lost precious hours waiting in front of the bakeries. To be sure, Parmentier's potato bread was much cheaper. But who was interested in Parmentier and his bakers' college? That was...nonsense. Parmentier's experiments--it was unjustly said--were donducted only so that the rich could cram something into the mouths of the poor. Let him eat his potates himself. "We want bread!" the people shouted...[in] August 1789...a drought had come upon France worse than any the nation remembered. The streams dried up. The result was that the mills could not run. There were windmills only in the provinces of northern France. In central and southern France all milling was done in water mills. Now the little grain there was could not be ground! The Minister of Agriculture at once ordered the erection of horse-driven mills. But this took time. In September the supply of bread in Paris dwindled away again, and the price rose shamelessly. The seething masses became convinced that the Court still had bread...In the early morning of October 5, 1789, Paris spewed her torrents of human beings out into the misty roads. They marched with pikes and scythes, barefood and in rags...The masses were obsessed with hallucinations. "Did you see the bread wagons?" "Yes, bread wagons on the horizon!"...King Louis XVI had turned off the water in the park--it was needed to run the mill. Because the water no long splashed in the fountains, the villages around Versialles had bread--though there was not enough for Paris. All at once it occurred to the marchers that perhaps the king himself had not much bread...The women's cries from bread died down...When they returned, there was general disappointment. Paris had though it would now begin to rain bread...but...Louis XVI could not conjure up bread...Fourteen hungry days passed..."Watch out for the bakers" became the watchword. "The bakers have hidden flour. They want to wait until we can pay more."...Both the National Assembly and the administrators knew that whether the nation were kingdom or republic, the people would hang all authorities who did not solve the bread problem. But the bread problem could not be solved. The National Assembly set aside 400,000 pounds for agricultural aid, but this still not solve the problem...Where was the bread? The flow of grain dwindled to a trickle, as it had when the despots reigned, and the bakers' ovens remained empty...Grain had to be procured--but how? Trade was unpopular...Traders must be speculators, therefore cheats...At great cost the city of Paris bought grain abroad...What monsters there were among the people; such individuals as those who on August 7, 1793, spirited away 7,5000 pounds of bread out of starving Paris becasue they hoped to obtain higher prices in the provinces...All the guilty men were executed...In Ocober 1793 Paris once more received flour...The Commune of Paris decreed that from then on only a single type of bread could be baked in the city--the pain d'egalite. The flour sieves of millers and bakers were confiscated, for they were a symbol of fine berads. All, poor and rich, would have bread of equally poor quality...On Decmeber 2, 1793, the bread card was introduced; and eighteen months later the Commune decided upon free distribution of bread: one and a half pounds daily to workers and the heads of families, one pound to all others. Before long all there was of bread were the cards. In 1794 the harvest was pitifully small...Men killed one another for bread...France saw no bread until peace came. The Revolution had not been able to produce it, and the war made it impossible to distrubute it. It was until the period of the Directory, from 1796 on, that the soldiers were furloughed; they returned to the fields which now no longer belonged to landowners but to themselves and their families, and they began to till these fields. Such was the role of bread in the French Revolution."
---Six Thousand Years of Bread, H.E. Jacob [Lyons Press:New York] 1997 (p. 246-254)

"For a time, food prices rose dramatically; crops planted by farmers, who were then drafted into the Republic's armies, went unharvested...Attempting to impose fraternal solidarity by means of food distribution programs, more than one revolutionary demanded that bakers stop preparing their typical range of breadstuffs and combine brown, white, and rye flours together to make one single "Bread of Equality." In the capitol, in Feburary 1792, shortages led to the outbreak of popular street protests, but, as William Sewell has noted, the men and women of Paris were rioting not for bread, the totemic staff of life, but for sugar, soap, and candles. Sewell's point is particualrly well take, for the radical revolutionary rhetoric of "subsistence" has long led historians to believe that the danger of famine was the driving force behind many of the National Convention's economic policies. True, the Convention passed "the Maximum" in September 1793, putting it in effect a broad series of...price-fixing regulations...That these "necessities" included not only bread and wine, but cheeses, butter, honey, and sausages as well..."Subsistence" was certainly at the heart of much revolutionary rhetoric; but revolutions do not subsist on bread alone."
---The Invention of the Restaurant, Rebecca L. Spang [Harvard University Press:Cambridge MA] 2000 (p. 106-107)

Period fruit?
Many of the fruits growing in France during the Revolutionary period (mid-late 18th century) were introduced by the Romans in ancient times. They flourished according to agreeable climate, accomodating soil, and nurturing farmers. In the late 18th century, fresh fruits were consumed in season. Fruits were also preserved (dried or sugared) for use in baked goods, confectionery, bread spreads (jams, jellies), cake and pie filling.Grimod de la Reyniere's Almanach des Gourmands (early 19th century) mentions these fruits in the dessert chapter: strawberries, cherries, apricots, redcurrants, raspberries, peaches, plums, greengages, raisins, figs, melons, blackberries, Seville oranges, lemons, apples, pears and pineapples. Grapes were used for wine; probably also consumed as fruit.

Noble food
The 17th century marked the genesis of classic French Cuisine. Foodhistorians tell us the nobles of this period followed this new trend, supporting the chefs and theirideas wll into the 18th century. By the 18th century, the noble and wealthy classes were dining inthe manner of "Grand Cuisine." Multi-course meals and elaborate service were the hallmarks ofthis style. Notable chefs/cookbook authors included Massialot, La Chappelle, Marin, and Menon.

"Louis XVI did not inherit Louis XV's delicate taste in food. Like the Sun King, he was aglutton...During their reign Louis and Marie-Antoinette dined every Sunday in public. But thequeen only pretended to eat...She dined afterwards in her apartments, among her intimates."
---An Illustrated History of French Cuisine, Christian Guy [Bramhall House:New York]196 (p. 86)

Supper given...for Marie Antoinette
...menu of this supper from the imperial archivesquotedby L'Almanach des Gourmands pour 1862, by Charles Monselet. Her Majesty's Dinner,Thursday 24 July 1788 at Trianon:

Middle class food

"The difference that existed, up to the end of the seventeenth century, between ordinary, everydaybourgeois cooking and aristocratic cooking was a difference in quantity and in elaborateness ofpresentation. Beginning in about 1750, the cuisine of ordinary days and that of special occasionswere separated by a difference in kind, quality, and method. Ordinary cuisine naturally remainedcloser to old-style cuisine, for reasons of cost and convenience. According to Brillat-Savarinwho, who had gathered his information from the inhabitants of several departments, a dinner forten persons around the year 1740 was composed of the following:

First service...boiled meat
an entree of veal cooked in its own juice;
an hors-d'oeuvre.

Second service...a turkey;
a vegetable dish;
a salad;
a cream (sometimes)

Dessert...cheese;
fruit
A pot of jam

See Also

Customs and Cuisine of Mexico - Together Women Rise

Peasant food
Daily meals for the "average" person consisted of bread, pottage (gruel from ground beans or soupwith vegetables and perhaps a little meat), fruit, berries & nuts (in season) and wine. If you needto make/take something to class to signify this particular period in French history wesuggest basic a loaf of French bread and a simple dish of potatoes. These would have been foodsconsumed daily by most of the people at that time.

Here is a recipe...with historic notes...for "Pommesde Terre a L'Econome," Cuisinier Republicaine 1795:

"Although potatoes could have been grown in France earlier, it was not until the FrenchRevolution in 1789 that this precious vegetable was accepted by the French. The French acceptedit only because famine, and the economic exigencies of the Revolution, forced it on them. Thepotato had long been considered poisonous in France, but once the French tried it and survived,they showed a surprising amount of enthusiasm for this "new" food. The following recipe is takenfrom one of the first postrevolutionary French cookbooks and is one of the earliest French recipesusing potatoes.

Pommes de terre a l'econome
Ingredients: (for 4 servings): 3 sprigs parsley, finely chopped. 1 scallion, finely chopped. 4shallots, peeled and finely chopped. 2 cupps chopped cooked meat (leftover meat or poultry). 2pounds potatoes. 3 1/2 tablespoons butter. 1 egg. 1 egg, separated. Salt. Pepper. Flour. Oil forfrying. Chopped parsley (to garnish).

The Herbs and the Meat: Mix the finely chopped parsely, scallion, and shallots with the choppedmeat.The Potatoes: Boil the potatoes in their jackets (skins) for thirty minutes in lightly salted water.Peel while still hot; then mash with a fork.The Patties: Combine the mashed potatoes and the chopped ingredients. Add the butter, egg, andegg yolk. Salt and pepper to taste. Shape into medium patties. (If they are too small, they will betoo crunchy, and if too large, the centers will not cook thoroughly.) Beat the egg white until itbegins to stiffen. Dip the patties into the egg white; then roll them in flour.Cooking the Patties: Place the patties in a frying pan with very hot oil. Turn so that they willbrown on all sides.To Serve: Drain well, and serve garnished with parsley."
---The Grand Masters of French Cuisine: Five Centuries of Great Cooking, Celine VenceandRobert Courtine [G.P. Putnam:New York] 1978 (p. 253)

AFTER THE REVOLUTION

"In July 1789, only a few days after the storming of the Bastille, the Marquis Charles de Villetteproposed that the new ideal of fraternity could be achieved by common dining in the streets. Therich and poor could be united, and all ranks would mix...the capital, from one end to the other,would be one immense family, and you would see a million poeple all seated at the same table...'And then, standing on its head the ancien regime traditon of the royal family dining au grandcouvert, Villette goes on to add: On that day, the nation will hold its grand covert'. Ironically, ofcourse, the proposal would have represented just as much a manipulation of the meal in service ofthe state as anything ever staged at Versailles. That flirtation with the communal meal asemblematic of a new age of equality and faternity was to continue to ebb and flow through theearly, more extreme, years of the Revolution. On 14 July 1790, the first anniversary of the fall ofthe Bastille, a Festival of Federation was staged, prefaced the previous day by two thousandspectators watching members of the National Assembly share an open-air patriotic meal' in thecircus of the Palais Royal...The left-overs from this fraternal repast were distributed to thepoor...All of this was to be as dust within a few years, yet what occurred in the priod after 1789fundamentally shaped developments around the table down to our own day. A primary effect wasto dissolve the equation of cuisine and class. Henceforward cuisine of a kind seen as theprerogative of royalty and nobility would be available to anyone who could afford to pay forit."
---Feast: A History of Grand Eating, Roy Strong [Harcourt:New York] 2002 (p. 274-6)

"The French Revolution marks, in its first years, a certain slowing down in the "culinary"evolution of the coutnry...But not for long. Soon the arts of the gourmet and the pleasures of thetable reclaimed their prestige; the new leaders of France quickly tired of Spartan virtues. Peoplebegan to eat well again, not only in Paris, but also in the provinces. Cooks whos masters hademigrated were snapped up. Great houses reorganized. New restaurants were opened. The cuisineof France regained the grandeur it had enjoyed during the reign of Louis XV. However, what withwars and the gory horrors of the Terror, famine raged again for several years. In 1793 andordinance prohibited more than one pound of meat a week per person...There was no bread andthe potato crop was poor. But restrictions are never applied to all-under any regime. And whileplain people...were rushed to the guillotine, there were feasting and carousing in the mansions ofBarras and Fouche. The following is a menu of a dinner served by Barras in the winter of1793:

"The Revolution was not merely political: it also changed many customs of the French people.The four meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper) were reduced to two: breakfast and dinner.The latter was soon the more important of the two."
---An Illustrated History of French Cuisine, Christian Guy [Bramhall House:New York]1962 (p. 95-7)

Napoleon and Josephine were said to be fast and fussy eaters. They were not a gastronomes but they did understand and appreciate the social power of the table. Napoleon chose his chefs wisely. Josephine was chargedwith teaching the "new" etiquette to staff and guests.

"If Bonaparte had been as great an epicure as were Barras, Cambaceres and Tallyrand, the already rapid progress of gastronomywould have been very considerably speeded up."
---The Gastronomy of France, Raymond Oliver, translated by Claude Durrell [Wine and Food Society:Cleveland OH] 1967 (p. 102)

"Even in the sumptuous days of the Empire, Napoleon never conformed with good grace to the ceremonies of the table. He ate quicklyand gluttonously. After the meal, Constant, his valet, sometimes had to bring him clean garments to replace those he had spotted. At any hour of the day or night, his meals had to be ready to be served on call. His breakfasts, which he was apt to takefrom six o'clock in the morning on, were most often served to him on a little mahogany pedestal table, incrusted with mother-of-pearl:eggs fried in butter, a salad of beans and, for dessert, some Parmesan cheese or two olives. Dinner was heartier meal. TheEmperor ate between six o'clock in the evening and two, three or even four o'clock in the morning, depending on his work or hisaudiences. He liked to eat alone. He was served a great number of dishes, each one under a cover which the Emperor lifted himself.He would keep the dishes he liked and return the others to the kitchen. 'How is it I never eat pork crepeinettes (small, flatsausages)?' he asked Danau, his maitre d'hotel, one day testily. 'Sire, that is not a choice dish..' 'I don't care! I want somecrepinettes.' The next day Danau had crepinettes of pheasant prepared for his master. Napoleon clapped his hands (sic) and helpedhemself thre times. A month later, the maitre d'hotel gave it to him again. 'What's this!' cried Napoleon in angry disgust, 'I'llhave none of these hostler's dishes!' The Emperor would not allow string beans to be served. He was afraid of finding strings in them which, he said, felt like hairs in his mouth. At the siege of Cherbourg, when he was inspecting quarters and walked past the campkitchen, he asked for a plate of 'ration soup.' It was served to him. He grimaced in disgust: there was a hair in the plate! Napoleonlooked around, saw his old guard watching him, petrified with respect. The Emperor calmly went on eating his soup--he even asked fora second helping! 'The most extraordinary thing,' Constant relates, 'is that there was also a hair in the second plate.'...Napoleon was fond of starches, potatoes, beans, lentils and especially of pastas a l'italienne of which he consumed a full plateat least once a day. He never ate bread. Among cooked dishes--if one can believe Constant his faithful valet--his preferences leaned to Boudin a la Richelieu (blood pudding served on stewed apples fragrant with cinnamon), ragout of mutton, quenelles (force-meat balls).For dessert, nothing pleased him so much as macaroni timbales a la Milanaise. His favorite wine was Chambertin, diluted with water. Henever drank alcohol or liqueur but ended every meal with a cup of coffee."
---An Illustrated History of French Cuisine From Charlemagne to Charles de Gaulle, Christian Guy, tranlsated by ElisabethAbbott [Bramhall House:New York] 1962 (p.99-103)

"If Napoleon was not a gastronome, he nevertheless occupies an important place in the history of French cooking through a thirdperson. 'Entertain in my place,' he ordered the Arch-Chancellor Cambaceres,' and let your table do honor to France.' 'Entertain, ' hesaid to Tallyrand his minister. 'Give a dinner for thirty-six people four times a week. See that all men of importance in France and all foreign friends are invited.' Both Cambareres and Tallyrand were ideally suited to play the part..."
---ibid (p. 107)

Napoleon & Jospehine: public banquets & private dining
These rulers and their period were a time of social upheaval. Everything Old Regime was shunned. But? The contemporary literary histographers were Old Regime. They shunned back. The seeds of culinary evolution in Josephine's time were planted by the Revolution. Restaurants serving all people who could pay, regardless to rank or birth, thrived. The Bonaparte did not participate. They ate/entertained just like the nobility they supplanted. The BEST source for researching period foods/dining customs is the book A Palate in Revolution: Grimod de la Reyniere and the Almanach des Gourmands/Giles MacDonough. Your local public librarian can help you get a copy. Reyniere chose to ignore Napoleon for a reason. Biographers generally agree neither Napoleon nor Josephine were "gourmets," (aka enjoyed the pleasures of the table). Privately, they were dining soulmates: consuming whatever quickly & return to business/pleasure. Napoleon understood state dining is not about enjoying food, but an edible expression of power and influence. This is a common thread among all powerful/wealthy people from ancient times to present. Napoleon engaged the finest culinary talent to plan and execute his public dinners. Josephine was expected to oversee dining etiquette & attend public meals in full regalia.

"The emperor expected his wife to supervise the observance of palace etiquette, and to ensure that the expanding corpus of regulations prescribed in the official etiquette book be carried out without default. It was her responsibility to invite the young wives of court to breakfast and introduce them to the subleties of the recently installed social code...The etiquette book goverened nearly everything; the proper serving of meals, their number of courses, the correct way to eat... In her role as hostess, Josephine was kept constantly in a state of preparing for, or presiding over, official events. There were dreary suppers for aging generals and balls for five hundred guests, civic and military festivals held in the open air over which the empress had to preside...There were small 'teas' at three in the afternoon, and late suppers, and concerts at the palace by celebrated Italian singers."
---Josephine: A Life of the Empress, Carolly Erickson [St. Martin's Press:New York] 1998 (p. 240-242)

"When Napoleon and Josephine were alone--neither one interested in food or wine--they dined in a few minutes. But even official banquets must reflect what Napoleon called the 'social mirror,' and he demanded for these occasions the complicated dishes promoted by the imperial chefs...all the courses except for the dessert were still placed on the table together in a minutely ordered pattern...The serving dishes themselves...were set between the massive silver gilt services, the candelabra and the four-foot-high soup tureens, all stamped or painted with the imperial arms."
---Napoleon & Josephine: An Improbable Marriage, Evangeline Bruce [Lisa Drew, Scribner:New York] 1995 (p. 390)

"At eleven, Josephine was finally ready for breakfast, served by her matire d'hotel, Richaud, in her apartments. Bonaparte did not join her, usually breakfasting alone in his office...Josephine's meal was often shared with Hortense and five or six friends or dames de service. The menu seems formidable to modern eyes, including soup, hors d'oeuvres, entrees, roasts, entremets and sweet dishes. These were accompanied by numerous bottles of Burgundy and followed by coffee and liqueurs. Josephine, like her husband, was not a gourmet, and ate lightly, preferring the gossip to the food...Josephine waited to be summoned to diner by the prefect of the palace. The meal was scheduled for six o'clock but it was sometimes delayed by one, two, or even three hours while Napoleon worked. When he finally arrived the pair usually dined alone."
---The Rose of Martinique: A Life of Napoleon's Josephine, Andrea Stuart [Grove Press:New York] 2003 (p. 332-333)

Recommended reading (period history & dining customs)
A Palate in Revolution: Grimod e de La Reyniere and the Almanach des Gourmandes, Giles MacDonough

Modernized recipes

• Chicken Marengo
• First & Second Empire Recipes
• Napoleonic Reenactment groups (practical advice for period cooking today)

About culinary research & about copyright
Research conducted by LynneOlver, editor The FoodTimeline. About this site.