“It is truly doing an injustice to the greatness of your mind, which takes pleasure only in the most elevated things, to set before it things so common and of so little value. Nevertheless, since the breadth of your intellect extends even to the smallest curiosities, I hope you will not take offense if I offer you these, if only to provide you with some amusement when, by way of relaxation, you come to set aside what is substantial and serious. They do indeed have some appearance of baseness, which might make one think them unworthy of you; nevertheless, since one sometimes finds pleasure in the smallest curiosities, I hope that you will not reject them, if I offer them to you as a means of amusing yourself, at least for a little while, when you wish to turn away from the solid and serious.”

L’abricot d’une femme, “a woman’s apricot,” appeared in French linguist Antoine Oudin’s curious little French dictionary French Curiosities in 1640, and and might very well be the earliest known printed explanation of abricot as a euphemism for a woman’s sexual anatomy in French.

While language dictionaries of the day - such as Thresor de la Langue Francoyse by Jean Nicot, 1606, or Pierre Richelet’s 1680 Dictionnaire François - gave a pretty dry, literal, and scholarly definition - bland, I might say - of the apricot as “a fruit that, when ripe, is yellow with a hint of red on one side” or “Malam Armennim, Pruoum Ajmeniacain”, Oudin’s French Supplement to Dictionaries, or A Collection of Many Fine Expressions, with an Infinite Number of Proverbs and Witty Sayings gave his learned readers a titillating look into the popular slang of the day….”if only to provide you with some amusement when, by way of relaxation, you come to set aside what is substantial and serious.”

I simply went looking for the history of the apricot in France and stumbled unexpectedly on a much more provocative and colorful tale. I went looking for fruit and chanced upon sex. And I take it upon myself here and now to repeat Oudin’s own words written above: “It is truly doing an injustice to the greatness of your mind, which takes pleasure only in the most elevated things, to set before it things so common and of so little value. Nevertheless… I hope you will not take offense if I offer you these, if only to provide you with some amusement.” Just a little bit of harmless fun to turn our minds from the seriousness of the culinary and botanic history of a pale, little fruit and insert a touch of literary bawdiness into our post.

L’abricot d’une femme. “A woman’s apricot, that is, her sexual parts, by analogy with the slit/opening.” - Oudin’s French Curiosities, 1640

Abricot - apricot - was already a well-established erotic euphemism by the publication of Oudin’s rakish dictionary. François de La Noue Briord’s “young princesses burning with passion for a knight whom they have seen for no more than two hours… throw themselves out the window and go into some delightful garden to eat apricots,” enjoying those apricots without modesty or shame, in his 1587 Discours Politiques et Militaires. La Noue’s satire mocks the romantic literature of the day, and the reference to apricots was quite clear to his readers. Delightful.

THE DUKE : If you still had some of those special apricots… FLAVIE : We could certainly provide you with a few more pots. - Les Galanteries du Duc d’Ossonne, vice-roy de Naples, Jean Mairet, 1632

Fruit and female sexuality were repeatedly allowed to overlap in seventeenth-century literary imagination, and the apricot, as pointed out by Oudin, unmistakably resembled a woman’s, well, it’s a pretty straightforward comparison.

In Thomas Corneille’s Le Berger Extravagant (1661), the apricot becomes part of an elaborate tease about fruit, women, and the body. His 2 nymphs - who seem to moonlight as apothecaries specializing in preserving or candying apricots and cherries, both already sensually charged symbols - have refused to candy fruit for a sick nymph of Diana. Diana punishes them by transforming them into trees - an abricotier and a cerisier. Of course, they don’t produce ordinary raw fruit. They produce candied fruit. Lysis, Corneille’s main character, a would-be shepherd whose imagination has been completely overtaken by the fantasies of pastoral romance, upon realizing that each tree nymph was feasting upon her own fruit, suggests that the Apricot Nymph should eat cherries and the Cherry Nymph apricots, so that they might sustain one another without consuming their own fruit, which he finds barbaric. The joke is absurd and unmistakably sexual, the Nymphs eating each other’s candied fruit.

François de Sales gives fruit a different metaphorical twist in his Oeuvres of 1637. His apricots and cherries (and quince) are not sexual innuendo, but rather one of human frailty to be either tempered or preserved with devotion. “There are fruits, such as the quince, which, because of the harshness of their juice, are hardly agreeable except when made into preserves. There are others which, because of their tenderness and delicacy, cannot last unless they too are preserved, such as cherries and apricots. Thus wives should wish that their husbands be preserved in the sugar of devotion.” Apricots, alongside cherries, are tender, delicate things whose goodness quickly perishes unless preserved in sugar, as compared to quince whose harshness and acerbity must be tempered by the sweetness of sugar, both characters tamed with devotion.

“The apricot loves me and will love me,” wrote Mme la comtesse de La Suze and Paul Pellisson in their Collection of Romantic Pieces in Prose and in Verse (in French) in 1664. In their fable, La Poire à l’Abricot, the Pear personifies a noble courtly lady who defends her honor by framing her feelings for the Apricot as a pure, duty-bound, and purely platonic love (“un amour chaste & pudique” - a chaste and modest love), a love which would cause no shame if it “were to become public.”. The Apricot represents a passionate lover who refuses to accept these chaste boundaries. While the Pear preaches restraint, the Apricot is furious, rebellious, and consumed by earthly desire (“il enrage, il fait le mutin” - he flies into a rage, he rebels). Although the apricot in this particular cautionary tale is male, not female, it is, nonetheless, erotically charged, embodying untamed, wild passion.

While the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française of both 1687 and 1718 give, once again, very respectable definitions of abricot as “a kind of stone fruit” and “a stone fruit whose flavor lies somewhere between peach and plum” followed by examples of apricot compote, preserves, paste, marmalade, we must, once again, turn to a less conventional, more ribald French lexicon if we are to follow our path into the next century. Joseph Le Roux’s 1718 A Comic, Satirical, Critical, Burlesque, Free, and Proverbial Dictionary has the more vulgar definition, still popular into the 18th century, of abricot fendu : pour dire à mots couverts la Nature d’une femme - split apricot, to describe a woman’s Nature in veiled terms. Most definitely a term for female sexual anatomy.

If Adam had not obeyed his wife,

We would never have known what pain means.

Girls would never have had to hide their apricots;

we would never have had to speak of the amorous intrigues and adventures

that young men had with girls.

- La vénérable abbaye de Bongouvert de Grenoble by Jean Millet, 1660

Jump ahead another century or so and the apricot, l’abricot, and (more visually) the split apricot, l’abricot fendu, is still the standard euphemism for a woman’s sex (to put it bluntly) in tavern songs and bawdy poetry, and even, as we’ve seen, in high-salon allegory as an object lesson, political satire, or simply off-color and erotic entertainment. Fruit allegories, apricots, peaches, figs, etc, could be used to both discuss love tastefully as well as to cast aside all decorum. Alfred Delvau (in his 1864 Dictionnaire Érotique Moderne) elaborates on the term even further, defining it as “the nature of woman, which does indeed resemble this fruit” adding “which leads one to suppose, given the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that the Garden of Eden was a vast apricot tree.” He also includes a new one, “the gardener’s apricot”, l’abricot de la jardinière, writing “The Nature of women - whether they be gardeners or princesses.”

The writing of Delvau’s erotic dictionary is reasoned in its introduction : “When we are together, among friends, we can speak as we like, use language that no one, not even kings, emperors, the pope, have the right to use in public.” We curse and swear and use vulgarities that express our thoughts as we see and feel them. So why not gather these words in a dictionary? This slang has become a natural part of our language. “Our excellent and witty friend Alfred Delvau also wanted to undertake this work anew; for he had had the courage to venture into the lowest rungs of society — brothels, dive bars, and marketplaces. There, he had gathered numerous colorful expressions unknown to his predecessors.” All for professional research, of course.

So, why not, eh?

“At last, I must tell you

That this fruit, so sweet to the bite,

May have been the treat

That was called the Apple of Adam,

When our unfortunate father,

Having yielded to Eve’s wish,

Suffered Heaven’s wrath—

It was for the split apricot.”

- L’Abricot Fendu, James Bouvier, from La Musette: A Collection of the Versified Ramblings of the Typesetters at the Imprimerie Nouvelle, 1885

René Magritte famously painted a pipe and wrote beneath it, Ceci n’est pas une pipe - this is not a pipe. A picture of a pipe, after all, is not a pipe. And “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

I have fallen down many a strange rabbit hole in the course of researching food history, but I wasn’t expecting the apricot to lead me into one that was decidedly obscene.

And sometimes an apricot is an apricot.

While the apricot found its place without hesitation in the literature and popular language of the day, botanists and chefs had a more confusing and difficult time figuring out what it was and what it could be used for. The medieval manuscript Tacuinum Sanitatis describes Apricots (Armeniaca) as “peaches rather than Armenians” (apricots were believed to originally come from Armenia and so called thus), unsure of how it differed from its fellow stone fruit. In 1552, Claude Galien’s work On Nutritive Substances doesn’t describe apricots as “a kind of fruit” or even “a kind of stone fruit.” Rather, Galien writes “These fruits are a kind of peach, although they surpass peaches somewhat in goodness. For they do not spoil as quickly in the stomach as peaches do, nor do they turn sour, and they are commonly found to have a better flavor and to be more pleasing to the stomach. For in every other respect they are similar to peaches.”

In 1771, Johann Hermann Knoop published his Fructologie, a description of fruit trees and fruits, and says that apricots are “without a doubt, a kind of plum, or at the very least a fruit very closely related to them, because of the many similarities that exist between these two kinds of fruit.”

Even Jean de La Quintinie himself refers to a “prune d’abricot” or an “apricot plum” in his own book Instruction pour les Jardins Fruitiers et Potagers.

While the fruit had been known in France since the 15th century, when - or so the story goes - René d’Anjou, King of Naples, brought apricot trees to France, specifically to Touraine and the Loire Valley, the apricot didn’t become truly popular until Louis XIV’s gardener and agronomist (and lawyer) La Quintinie created the famous Potager du Roi at Versailles between 1678 and 1683, with its extensive collection of fruit trees. Knoop voiced the opinion of an entire country when he wrote “Apricots are a delicious fruit, to be eaten raw, and many people rank apricots second only to peaches among all other types of stone fruits…Cooks also prepare some excellent dishes with apricots, such as compotes, jams, tarts, etc. Both ripe and unripe apricots are candied.”

Just a handful of years later, Louis Lémery writes “In Pliny’s time, they were very rare and very expensive; but nowadays they are so common that they can be found in almost every garden.” The year is 1702, and Lémery’s Traité des Aliments was just published, an early modern work on dietetics and the scientific study of food. It took only 20 years for the apricot to be so abundant in France that everyone seemed to be growing them. And why not? “Their flesh,” Lémery writes of the apricot, “is tender, agreeable, and has a nice fragrance…They are refreshing and replenish moisture to the body; they stimulate the appetite; they promote urination; they are cordial and pectoral; they induce expectoration.” But, the respected physician, botanist, and chemist warned, “Apricots fill the stomach with gas and easily cause indigestion; that is why they should be eaten in moderation.” And he concludes “Apricots are fruits with a very pleasant taste, which are eaten more for pleasure than for sustenance.”

And yet, even as apricots became more widely grown and accessible, their uses remained surprisingly limited, and, in many ways, still do today. Mostly eaten fresh, they begin appearing in French cookbooks in the form of jams, compotes, and marmelades, sauces and glazes, dried or as fruit paste, obviously all ways to preserve this delicate, perishable fruit, with only the occasional fresh apricot tart or cake, simply made, simply served.

Well, even La Quintinie admits “Otherwise, we would miss out on the best of all desserts — the astonishing fact that heat and sugar bring out in the apricot as it bakes a certain fragrance that one had not noticed in the raw fruit.”

François Pierre de La Varenne made “une tourte de fruit crud” - a raw fruit tart - in Le Pâstissier François in 1653 and detailed several interesting ways to preserve apricots in Le Parfaict Confiturier in 1664 - from fruit paste to conserves (one in which apricots are preserved in syrup with lemon zest, pistachios, and cherries), and dried. Pierre de Lune (Le Cuisinier, 1656) makes a tart with apricot marmelade, cooking the apricots first with just enough cinnamon, almond cream, and orange flower water to flavor. He also gives a recipe for Oeufs à la Germaine & à la Romaine, in which 4 thin “egg pancakes” are layered with candied pistachios and apricots, candied lemon peel, un maquaron (a macaron), a little cream, then finally topped with pomegranate seeds and dusted with cinnamon. Quite exotic, and rather refined for an undoubtedly more elegant society.

By the early 1800s, apricots still appear most often as marmelade. This apricot marmelade (or compote) is not only eaten as is, but now used to fill popelin (choux) or tarts, fruits, or candy, and as the century advances, apricot marmalade is used to fill omelettes and crêpes, and used as a garnish, sauce, or glaçage. By the time Jules Gouffé writes Le Livre de Pâtisserie in 1873, well, the apricot is still used almost uniquely in its “marmalade” form, meaning a compote or jam, as filling for all kinds of pastries and tarts. But it is, I am happy to say, now also used to make ice cream, charlottes, and puddings. There are, too, tarts large and small made with fresh, raw apricot halves.

Pierre-Marie-Jean Compte Cousin de Courchamps does go a little crazy in his 1853 Dictionnaire Générale de la Cuisine Française Ancienne et Moderne, making clear the importance - and the love of - the apricot in France’s kitchens :

“This excellent fruit is one of the most commonly and delightfully used ingredients in the preparation of sweet treats, as well as in our fall and late-season desserts. Using this useful and sweet produce from our espaliers and orchards, we can deliciously flavor sorbets and ice creams; we can make excellent cakes, fritters, pies, jellies, creams, compotes, and preserves, commonly known as dry or liquid jams. We will limit ourselves here to mentioning, among the recipes that can be applied to the culinary use of apricots, those that are most reliably proven, and those that have come to us from foreign countries - notably Germany, which could justly and reasonably be called the land of sweet desserts.”

Ahhhhh but our M. Burnet takes a completely different, much more practical attitude towards this small orange and blush fruit in his own Dictionnaire de Cuisine et d’Économie Ménagère of 1836 :

“A sweet, very healthy fruit that is easy to digest when perfectly ripe. Apricot paste and apricot jelly are light and well-suited for people recovering from illness; apricot marmalade is slightly harder to digest.”

The July 1939 issue of French Marie-Claire magazine shows that nothing at all has changed, and apricots are preserved, cooked, baked, and loved as they have been since Louis XIV turned this sexy little unknown fruit into a highly sought-after royal delicacy : “Apricots, a delicious fruit, are excellent prepared in any way: fresh, as marmalade, jam, jelly, in syrup, candied, etc. The natural sugars found in these beautiful fruits are easily absorbed by the body; that is why they provide nourishment without weighing you down.”

I will leave you with Prosper Montagné and his famous 1938 Larousse Gastronomique :

“Apricots are among the fruits that offer the most versatility in baking and confectionery. They are used in a wide variety of dishes, including sweet desserts and pastries. When candied, they are among the best fruits. They also make excellent tarts, delicious compotes, and a succulent jelly.”

Letter to Monsieur d’Ivernois from Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Motiers, August 15, 1765 :

“I have received all your parcels, Sir, and I thank you, etc.” He thanks him for the commissions. — He does not want any gifts. “Gifts are a little exchange of friendship, very agreeable when they are reciprocal; but this exchange requires effort and care on both sides, and effort and care are the bane of his life.” It was, however, only a matter of apricot preserves sent by Mademoiselle d’Ivernois.

Gâteau Caramélisé aux Abricots - Caramelized Apricot Upside Down Cake

This is how the French bake at home, with simple ingredients and ripe seasonal fruit. Call it rustic or call it unfussy and unpretentious, but always call it quintessentially French. For breakfast, snack time, or dessert en famille.

8 or 9 inch (20 or 22 cm) baking pan with 2 inch sides. I used a non-stick baking pan.

1 pound (500 grams) ripe apricots

For the caramel:

4 tablespoons granulated sugar

2 tablespoons water

The juice of 1/4 juicy lemon

For the cake :

1 cup less 1 tablespoon (120 grams) flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup (100 grams) sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 eggs, preferably at room temperature

7 tablespoons (100 grams) butter, cubed and softened to room temperature

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).

Rinse the apricots, pat dry, slice each lengthwise in half, discarding pits and stems.

Prepare the caramel in the baking pan : put the sugar and water in the center of the cake pan and place on a burner over low heat. Make sure you are wearing oven mitts to protect your hands. Heat the sugar and water in the pan, stirring carefully, until it colors. Watch carefully. When it is a caramel color, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the lemon juice. Swirl the pan a bit so the caramel spreads around the pan.

Immediately place the apricot halves in the pan cut side down, pressing them closely together in concentric circles.

Prepare the cake :

Blend the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a small bowl.

Using an electric mixer, beat the sugar, vanilla, and eggs together in a large mixing bowl until the mixture is thick, pale, and creamy. Beat in the softened butter. Add the dry ingredients to the bowl and beat until well blended, smooth, and creamy.

Spread the batter evenly on top of the apricots in the baking pan. Bake in the preheated oven for about 30 minutes or so or until the cake a deep golden brown, puffed, and set. Remove from the oven, slide a knife blade around the outside to loosen, then turn the cake out of the pan onto a cooling rack and allow to cool.

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I visit Paris occasionally. I take the train up, spend a few days seeing friends, wandering my favorite quartiers, visiting museums, shopping. Just getting my fill of … (ha!!) I was going to say culture, but I don’t need to go to Paris to be surrounded by culture, art, and history.

I go to Paris to get my fill of solitude.

Those long weekends in Paris are a way for me to escape the pressures of my everyday life, work and deadlines and competition, the often-crushing stress and anxiety I experience from all directions, the constant hustle and bustle of the hotel and the problems that keep cropping up, always demanding immediate resolution, and living surrounded by people. So I (over)pack a suitcase, and take the train to Paris.

I love roaming through the 3rd and the 4th, both lovely and lively; I think the 10th is cooler than the 6th now, less pretentious, more real, maybe. Bustling. I’ve stayed a couple of times in the 15th, and while I hesitated at first (“It’s so far away!”), I’m now enchanted by the quaint, small-town, neighborhoody feel of the place. Meandering through the streets of Paris, wide avenues and narrow streets and along the Seine, I invariably spy details that surprise me, discovering street art or unusual old storefronts, strange architectural features, and a completely different aura from what I am used to every other day. I love this city’s secret corners and the down-and-out local eateries and the never-ending feast for my curiousity.

And if I stay away from the tourist hubs, I am overcome by a surprising sense of serenity (which I don’t often, feel) and flooded by a gentle happiness (gentle, yes, that’s the word). It is a beautiful city. When I’m alone and off the beaten track, Paris feels suddenly intimate, revealing its grace and charm only, seemingly, to me. Small villages within large cities.

I know Americans go gaga for Paris. There is a cinematic mystique about the City of Light that is romanticized endlessly - the quaintness of the street cafés where Parisians go to smoke cigarettes and sip espressos and read books or stare at the passersby for hours together; the glamour and fashion, the bewildering self-confidence and air of effortless, stylized cool of the residents, adults and children alike. Lingering lunches over wine or the eponymous café au lait and croissant beurre while animatedly chattering on and on about politics or philosophy or art or life.

But I’m tired of those stereotypes. No, not all the women are thin (or dress in Chanel and Dior), not all the children are well behaved, not all Parisians are chic, and not everyone is a good home cook or able to discuss (or cares about discussing) the subtleties of wine and cheese. The French don’t stroll the streets with a baguette tucked under their arm or even eat croissants every morning and pastries every afternoon. And I, more often than not, find myself tucked between tiny tables of tourists than locals on those sidewalk café and bistro terraces. At home, I find myself yelling uncontrollably when some American tv series or movie (or cookbook) insists on serving up the same well-worn clichés of Paris and the French.

* le sigh *

While I can admit that I am still dazzled by the Eiffel Tower glittering in the snow and the beautiful old stone façades with those stunning wrought iron balconies, and while I can never get enough of the Place des Vosges filled with - yes - Parisians through every beautiful season, I’m long beyond all of the seductive, romantic illusions.

I see Paris as a city. A large, magnificent, rather spectacular city. Sometimes dirty, much too crowded, often exasperating, and frequently overwhelming. I see both the allure and the flaws. And I’ve lived long enough with the French to know that they are an unremarkable yet extraordinary bundle of contradictions and maddeningly human - and normal - like the rest of us.

But for all the splendor of Paris, I find it to be too elegant, too sophisticated, a little too grandiose for my taste. I find it staid and conservative. It’s a beautiful, impeccably dressed woman one admires from afar yet cannot approach; she’s perfectly composed, handsome, classically chic, self-consciously polished, and discreetly ornate. She doesn’t warm up or let down her guard.

Yes, once in a while she breaks into giggles or bursts out laughing or lets flash her temper. It’s unexpected and exciting. And you want it to happen again. And again. But the stony façade returns, demanding respect and distant appreciation. Never to be let into whatever is behind the screen. Demanding you be as well-behaved and as genteel as she.

At night I would climb the steps to the Sacre-Coeur, and I would watch Paris, that futile oasis, scintillating in the wilderness of space. I would weep, because it was so beautiful, and because it was so useless. ― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

I’m more drawn to a place like Brussels or Rome. A big mash-mash of styles and cultures, a rambunctious, noisy, chaotic, disorganized vitality, a vibrancy that one can cut with a knife. A city that can laugh at itself. Every striking, breathtaking, unique feature of these cities is almost beside the point, something that exists as part of an energetic, colorful, cultural whole, something to be lived rather than admired. I love a city that is too busy living to notice how beautiful it is. Paris is self-conscious about its reputation and its looks; I love a city that’s nonchalant, as though it and its residents have nothing to prove.

Wait, I’m getting way off course here. I wanted to write a little bit about my own corner of the world, this other France in which I live, and about my hotel. I recently shared photos of our hotel on various social media platforms and so many people were surprised! They didn’t know I owned a hotel in the center of France, in the middle of the beautiful Loire Valley.

The other France. The France a train ride away from Paris.

Paris isn’t my style. Is Chinon? Maybe. I feel at home here in a way I’ve never felt at home in any city or suburb around France in which I’ve lived. It’s a bit messy and disheveled, as far as small towns in France go, but I can say that’s normal for an authentic medieval town. I walk through the narrow, cobbled streets and still marvel, 11 years in, that these houses built in the 13th, 14th, 15th, 17th, and 18th centuries have been lived in by families continuously since they were built.

Through wars and upheaval, through English kings and French, through an occupation and in peaceful times, an unbroken chain of lives. An uninterrupted flow of daily lives bustling behind these same limestone walls and through these uneven, twisted streets.

The Hôtel Diderot is one such place in the long history of Chinon. Built in the fifteenth century, it housed the canons of the Collegiate Church of Saint-Mexme until the upheaval of the French Revolution, when the clergy were scattered and their grand and elegant homes confiscated by the state. It was sold to a wealthy family who used it as their winter “city home” until they eventually sold it back to the state who put it to use as the property tax offices and archives for the region, of which Chinon was the center. The ground floor still retains many of its fifteenth-century features: its massive oak beams, worn tuffeau stone, and the great original fireplace that once warmed the house’s earliest occupants.

The top floors and the roof, legend has it, were rebuilt after an 18th century fire. It makes me wonder whether the fire was simply an accident, or a casualty of the Revolution that so profoundly changed the fate of this house.

Interesting story : the hotel was created in the 1960s and used as a rudimentary hostel-type lodging for fishermen come to fish the Vienne River, American soldiers who still worked on the nearby base, and the odd traveller. The owners didn’t put any effort into renovating. It was the second owners in the 1970s who decided to restore the building. Pulling down plasterboard walls that had reshaped the inside of this magnificent old building into a series of cubicles, they uncovered the original 15th century fireplace and the 18th century staircase, both now protected features.

Of course we fell in love with the building. It was exquisite. Soft white stone, gracefully wrapped in roses and ivy twining up the walls and wrapping around windows. It was a hotel with a personality, a house that reflected centuries of continuous occupation, that breathed centuries of accumulated lives. Inside, the rooms were charming, old world style meets modern comfort. I knew - we knew - that we had to make a decision as fast as possible or the chance to own this property and business would slip through our fingers.

I had really been hesitant about buying and running a hotel. I mean, could we actually do it? Well, I never doubted my husband could…he can and has done anything and everything he’s put his mind to. And he had run companies both large and small, overseeing dozens and dozens of employees and multi-million (billion?) euro budgets. But could I? I have always been more comfortable working alone, which is why research and writing suit me so well. And I was terrified that taking on this project would interfere with my writing career (is it a career?). But I couldn’t say no to my husband. Or to our financial situation.

We recently had a discussion with our son about all those people we see on social media and YouTube who buy a château and turn it into a bed & breakfast or start some lovely little business, then shut it down after a few years. Just quitting. These projects were dreams that could be picked up or dropped on a whim. Remember I wrote about that, about “living the dream”? When those folks get tired or bored, or when they realize just how much hard work and long hours it requires to run a business like that, they shut it down. Turn to something else. Or not. Whatever.

“They’re just living the dream,” I remarked - or maybe my husband did - with a roll of the eyes and just a bit of a sarcasm in our tone. My son turned to us and said “but isn’t that what you guys did?”

Nope. We never had the dream to own a charming hotel in a small town in France. Moving to Italy might have been a dream. Quitting everything and moving to Nantes might have been a dream. But we’ve never had the pleasure or privilege to live solely on our dreams, no matter how many quirky, risky, ultimately exciting changes we’ve made in our lives. We had to earn a living.

And that’s how we came to own a hotel. We had found ourselves in the situation of needing work. My husband had left his position (I explain all about it in the post linked to below for paid subscribers) and had a limited time to find a new job. Yes, for many reasons, he was the big breadwinner of the family. (I explain a lot of that in my memoir extracts for paid subscribers). In France, once one reaches a certain age, a certain level of expertise and title, a certain salary, it’s incredibly difficult to find a job. Positions at that level may be advertised, but the job is almost always given to someone already working within the company. So, no matter how qualified (or over-qualified) he was, nothing was landing.

So we only had one solution : to own our own business.

So buying a hotel - which made perfect sense considering our backgrounds and experiences - was a necessary work/life decision and had nothing to do with “living the dream.” Our dream was simply to be financially stable with an income, an activity that we thought we were qualified to do.

We never ever had the option to just change our minds, shut up shop, drop everything because we got bored or because it the work was too difficult.

We didn’t, and we don’t have that choice.

People used to ask me “aren’t you excited?” as we were preparing to move in. About owning and running a hotel in the middle of France, I assumed. I was never excited. I was….nothing. How could I be excited over something that I had absolutely no idea how to imagine? I have always had a difficult time imagining the unimaginable. Always. I was curious, maybe. I was reticent, not only doubting my own capabilities, but worried whether or not I would have the time to write.

But the decision was made, the offer accepted, the bank loan secured, and at the end of January 2015 (my birthday!) we bought a hotel. And we moved in.

And then there is the hotel, with its own long, complicated, improbable story. I’ll tell you more about that in the next post.

Thank you for reading and subscribing to my Substack Life’s a Feast. Please leave a comment, like and share the post…these are all simple ways you can support my writing and help build this very cool community. If you would like to further support my work and the creation and development of the recipes, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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Long, long ago, according to legend, the lands around the great medieval fortress of Coucy were terrorized by a ferocious lion “who had thick, long hair, a proud and hideous gaze, and bristling fur.”. The Lord of Coucy, Enguerrand II, slew the beast and freed the countryside. The victory was considered so momentous that a stone lion was carved and erected in the town square as a permanent memorial. A relief of the lion was also sculpted above the gate of the great tower of the castle.

This story of this glorious feat performed by the 12th-century Seigneur of Coucy, Count of Amiens is recounted, among other historians, by Maximilien Melleville in his 1848 history of Le Château de Coucy. From this victory, Melleville continues, annual festivities were instituted in Enguerrand’s honor. One extremely bizarre ceremony was performed by the Abbey of Nogent, which owed a feudal obligation to the Lords of Coucy. Three times a year, the abbot, or more commonly his tenant, had to present rissoles to the Lord of Coucy in the square where the stone lion stood. But, of course, this being the Middle Ages, a mere presentation wasn’t enough.

“The abbey’s tenant, entered Coucy on the mornings of Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas, dressed in a cloak of blue cloth to which rissoles were attached. He rode a light-colored horse whose ears and tail had been cut off and which was harnessed as if for ploughing. He was followed by a reddish dog, also without ears or tail, wearing a rissole around its neck. In this attire he awaited the officers of justice before the parish Mass. He then rode off among them, with a pack basket full of rissoles carried before him…”

In 1728, Antoine de La Roque wrote of these festivities of rejoicing, still observed today “by the Abbot of Nogent - whose abbey was founded by the House of Coucy - [which] requires him to present, three times a year, rissoles (a kind of pastry) to the Lord of Coucy, or to his officers, at the place where the lion now stands. This is done in the presence of those same officers, who draw up an official record of the ceremony. This ceremony has continued uninterrupted to the present day, in memory of and in gratitude for the peace and security the inhabitants of the region enjoyed after the death of that cruel beast.”

Medieval France abounded in strange and wonderful customs. Just north of Paris and about sixty miles southwest of Coucy, the priory of the little village of Deuil was required to pay its taxes to the Lord of Montmorency in rissoles. “It owes,’ says an ancient manuscript, ‘at the four solemn feasts a certain due named roissoles (a type of pastry) with spice cakes ...; and in the event that there should be a failure of payment, as soon as the said Jehan (Jean de Montmorency) is served roast meat, the said prior is fined one muid [a large historical measure] of wheat for each omission.” - Paris et Ses Environs, Dictionnaire Historique, Anecdotique Partie 1 by Edme-Théodore Bourg, 1827

Neither Coucy nor Montmorency was unique in accepting food instead of money. Throughout medieval France, abbeys and tenants rendered dues in all kinds of goods, from bread, wine, and cheeses, to geese and fish, to cakes and pastries. It seems to have been more symbolic than economic - is it possible these foods found their way onto a nobleman’s table? - and I assume that the presentation was more important than what was being presented : in the Coucy ceremony, the Count’s officials were present and an official record (Acte & Registre) was made. This suggests the ceremony was about acknowledging the lord’s rights and reaffirming relationships rather than supplying his household with food.

But what are these rissoles (or roissoles) and what made them so special as to be accepted in lieu of money by one great lord, and offered to another as a ceremonial gift?

A Summary of the Comparison of the French and Latin Languages, Presented as Faithfully as Possible to Their Characteristics by Father Phillibert Monet, published in 1637, has an almost perfect definition for us :

Rissole: a small pastry made of ground tripe, covered with dough, in a half-moon shape, and fried in a pan. To “rissoler” means to fry something and form a crust of dough around it, in the style of a rissole.

Strangely, the very thing that distinguished the rissole - that beautiful golden crust - is what elevated it, at this time, to a high-status luxury food. Gervais du Bus composed the allegorical and deeply satirical poem Roman de Fauvel between 1310 and 1314, intensely critical of the corruption in the Church and the political system. His antihero, Fauvel, embodied the vices Flatterie (Flattery), Avarice (Greed), Uvrie (Arrogance/Pride), Variété (Inconstancy/Fickleness), Envie (Envy), and Lâcheté (Cowardice). Fauvel presided over a court obsessed with outward splendor and pageantry, both of which covered up the corruption, greed, and moral decay hidden beneath. The golden rissole was he perfect metaphor: crisp, golden, and enticing on the outside, all false gold, concealing whatever lay hidden (greasy indulgence?) within. When Fauvel marries Vaine Gloire (Vainglory), Fauvel and his companions dine on many of the popular and decadent foods of the time, among them “there were waffles and wafers, little goose pastries, tarts, and flans, spiced apples, darioles, crespines, beignets, and rissoles…”

As we see, the rissole seemed to be an aristocratic indulgence, a high-end dish found in feudal ceremonies and courtly banquets. And yet, remarkably, and for all its prestige, these small savory fried pastries, hand pies if you will, were also popular street foods by the middle of the thirteenth century in France.

Ici il y a des oeufs, ici des poireaux.

Il y a des pâtés chauds, des gâteaux chauds.

Ici il y a du poisson de Bondies,

De chaudes oublies renforcées,

Des galettes chaudes, des échaudés,

Des rissoles ; par ici, des marchandises à jouer aux dés.

Here are eggs! Here are leeks!

Here are hot pies, hot cakes!

Here is Bondy fish!

Hot thick wafers!

Hot galettes! Échaudés!

Rissoles! And over here, pastries to be won at dice!

Guillaume de Villeneuve recorded and set down in print the popular cries of people selling fish, meat, fruit and vegetables, bread, cheese, butter, hot pâtés, cakes, milk, firewood, brooms, and dozens of other goods, including rissoles, on the streets of Paris - les Crieries de Paris - in 1265. De Villeneuve’s ancient poem of 194 lines is essentially a walking tour of medieval Paris through its sounds, specifically the cries of street vendors, and bears direct witness to the commonality and popularity of rissoles.

And yet, while Pierre Lacam claims that rissoles, among a slew of other pastries, were still being hawked on the streets of Paris in the 15th century, these little filled pies seem to have risen from humble peasant fare, if they truly ever were, to noble tables and religious feasts and were quite celebrated.

“The King was lunching,” wrote the Duchess of Montpellier in her Memoirs; “the Queen sent word asking for rissoles, and so did I. - Even the King lunched on rissoles. - L’Histoire de la Vie Privée des François, Pierre Jean-Baptiste Legrand d’Aussy, 1782

Although historian Legrand d’Aussy claims that 12th and 13th century rissoles were simply a kind of galette or pancake fried in oil or butter, we know that a century later they were definitely filled pastries.

The author of Le Ménagier de Paris in 1393, a prestigious nobleman, although exactly who is often debated, peppers his book with various recipes for rissoles. The filling for his rissoles for “les jours de poisson,” or lean days, is a lovely combination of chestnuts, hard cheese, hardboiled eggs, salt and seasoning (“pouldre”). One can, he suggests, replace the eggs and cheese with fish, specifically “cooked hake and crayfish, finely minced, or the flesh of pike or eel, together with chopped figs and dates.” His “rissoles en jour de char” - for days one is allowed to eat meat - are filled with finely chopped pork and hard-boiled eggs, then fried in pork fat. Although the author makes a point of adding “at the court of lords such as Monseigneur de Berry, when an ox is slaughtered there, the marrow is used to make rissoles.”

Of course, there is little chance that any worthy noble would have served something so bland at his table during a period when the most remarkable combinations of sweet and savory were de rigueur, and when spices were an integral part of every luxury medieval dish.

Ah, yes, the author continues : ““Likewise, they are commonly made with figs, raisins, cooked apples, and peeled walnuts to imitate pignolat, together with powdered spices. The pastry should be well colored with saffron, then fried in oil. If the filling needs a binder, use starch and rice as well. Likewise, the flesh of sea lobster may be used in place of meat.”

This book of domestic economy and instruction - which includes such topics as cooking, hunting, gardening, and even the social and sexual conduct of a young wife - also recommends serving rissoles with the dessert course alongside flans, and dried fruits and nuts, although he never revealed which ingredients transformed the recipe into sweet.

The rissole was definitely a filled pastry, and meat filling was an integral part of the recipe, when it wasn’t replaced with fish. “In the regulations issued to pastry chefs in 1440,” according to Legrand d’Aussy, “they were forbidden from using pork from diseased animals in rissoles. In the regulations of 1566, it was ordered that the meat they used be veal, mutton, or sliced beef. However, in addition to these rich rissoles, people continued to make lean ones that contained no fat at all.”

Maître Chiquart wrote down what would become, from the fifteenth century onward, the quintessential - the blueprint - rissole recipe, with only the filling ingredients varying here and there. And his sound excellent. Chiquart’s rosseolles, published in 1420, are much more luxurious and rich that that of Le Ménagier, the filling a blending of fresh pork, figs, prunes, dates, pine nuts, raisins, these dried fruits and pine nuts washed several times in good white wine, then drained before being chopped and mixed into the meat. He calls for the “best cheese available”, grated or finely chopped. He then stirs in a “large quantity of parsley, eggs, white ginger, grains of paradise, and saffron” and a generous quantity of sugar. The completed filling is then “delivered to your pastry cook”, who encloses it in pastry (”les dorures“), fries the rissoles in white pork fat (lard), decorates each with a small leaf of gold, arranges them on beautiful platters, and finishes them with a sprinkling of sugar.

Gold leaf, saffron, white wine washed dried fruits, no street food this! Chiquart’s extravagant and utterly delightful version of the rissole was prepared to be served on the table of his master, le comte et premier duc de Savoie, Amédée VIII.

Pierre François de La Varenne - in his famous Le Pastissier François of 1653 - sets down once and for all the more everyday meaty recipe for this treat (albeit now a rather aristocratic treat), using “beef, mutton, pork, or veal, roasted or boiled then chopped quite finely, seasoned with a bit of “salty spices” which is then wrapped in pastry and fried on both sides in pork fat “until golden.” And he introduces us to rissoles feuilletées plus delicates, a fancier, more flavorful, savory-sweet, delicate rissole : “Boil or - better yet - roast meat until just underdone (as it will be better this way) - chopped with spices, raisins, pine nuts, a bit of sugar, and a little rose water. Wrap bits of this filling the size of an egg or a walnut, in puff pastry. Brushed for a glaze then bake in an oven. Once baked, remove them from the oven, dust with sugar, put back in the oven until glazed.”

2 years later, Nicolas de Bonnefons with his 1655 publication of Les Délices de la Campagne, also brings us a recipe for these elegant rissoles feuilletées, like La Varenne, making his with capon, a meat becoming more and more popular for this preparation, seasoning it with beef marrow, then also doing it up with raisins, pine nuts or pistachios, spices and sugar, wrapping the whole in puff pastry, glazing with sugar and egg white and baking.

While these new-styled rissoles are baked - obviously allowing the puff pastry to work its magic, and the glazing to bring that crispy, golden crust - the word rissole actually comes from the verb rissoler, to fry. So you will always find the traditional fried version in cookbooks alongside this baked version. In 1706, Pierre Richelet includes both versions of rissoles - “It’s a kind of small pastry; and there are several kinds.” - in the Dictionnaire François. He mentions both “the puff pastry pie filled with chopped capon, beef marrow, raisins, pine nuts or pistachios” and the “rissole commune” or common rissole - no puff pastry mentioned - filled with ground beef and beef marrow.

Antoine Furetière is much more straightforward in his own Dictionnaire Universel, 1690 edition, with a simple “type of pastry made with chopped meat and spiced, wrapped in a thin dough.” He seems to conclude that the word rissole comes, in fact, from the Italian fritelle - fritter - and claims that the French once called them frissoles.

As we move into and through the 18th century and then into the next, we find the now-standard rissole evolving in a different direction. The definition of the rissole and the method of preparing it had become firmly established, but the fillings grew ever more varied, allowing cooks to adapt the same pastry to every season, every table, and every taste. The rissole was never defined by what was inside, but by the pastry that enclosed it, its distinctive shape, and the final cooking method that endowed this delightful turnover with its crisp, golden exterior.

Louis Liger (1721) fills his with chicken or veal, spring or new onion, a little lard and chopped mushrooms. François Massialot (1722) brings into fashion the spinach rissole. André Viard (1822) adds both mushrooms and truffles and a reduced tomato sauce to his lamb filling. And by 1850, chefs are preparing the splendid, rather extravagant, and aptly-named rissoles à la Pompadour, a delicate fried pastry turnover filled with truffle purée, which is then dipped in beaten egg, coated in fine breadcrumbs, and served in a crown-shaped arrangement with a salpicon of finely diced vegetables, meat, truffles or mushrooms, sweetbreads or foie gras. This salpicon itself can replace the puréed truffle filling.

André Viard also delights his readers with rissoles aux confitures (jam-filled), à la frangipane (almond cream), and aux fruits nouveaux (with fresh fruit purée or compote) in his 1822 Le Cuisinier Royal.

Both M. Burnet (1836) and Alexandre Dumas (1873) offer an incredibly abundant choice of fillings for the savory rissole, but now offer a rather astonishing array of sweet rissoles, either building on Viard’s creations or as if just realizing that a sweet, fried pastry was an excellent idea. From rissoles à la moelle glacée, a rich combination of pastry cream, beef marrow, cream, and a few crushed bitter almond biscuits; rissoles filled with just pastry cream, either chocolate, coffee, saffron, almond or pistachio, and even “all sorts of fruits.” The dough for the apricot jam rissoles is made with cream and flavored with orange flower water and lemon zest and the spinach rissoles are sweet - like my own spinach frangipane tart - made with spinach, ground almond cookies, lime zest, butter, and orange flower water. Burnet offers rissoles à l’Itallienne made with a butter-and-egg-rich dough with a “filling” - no details - blended with both Neufchâtel and Parmesan cheeses, nutmeg and pepper, and egg yolks.

By the 1900s, we’re finding recipes for rissoles filled with all kinds of fruit and jams.

From Burnet (1836), to Urban Dubois (1889), to Henri-Paul Pellaprat (1950s), we know that these fried goodies are served as hors-d’oeuvres, entremets, or as garnish. According to an article in a 1939 issue of Marie-Claire magazine, rissoles are made to use up leftover veal roast, while a decade later, Henri-Paul Pellaprat considers the rissole “a very practical way to use up most any kind of leftovers - whether poultry, game, foie gras, fish, etc.- since these types of appetizers contain very little filling.”

Urban Dubois, just as practical as the others, wrote in 1888 that rissoles are prepared in order to use up puff pastry or shortcrust scraps as well as any excess chicken croquette preparation, which, I personally think, would make an excellent filling.

And yet, the more lavish, aristocratic rissole never went out of style, even as 19th- and early 20th-century chefs and culinary writers reintroduced the rissole back into economical kitchens and to more modest tables. Auguste Éscoffier proves that the humble rissole is in fact and always has been a gastronomic delight by using prized ingredients for the filling, like his rissoles à la Bohémienne filled with “two thirds foie gras” and “one third diced truffles,” the two made into a filling by stirring them together with a reduced demi-glace; his rissoles à la Bergère made with braised lamb sweetbreads, mousserons and morels, thickened with a thick Béchamel sauce; his rissoles Bouquetière with finely diced fresh spring vegetables, asparagus tips, Béchamel and cream. Rissoles à la Dauphine are enclosed in a brioche crust, the filling for his rissoles à l’Indienne are composed of lobster and a curried Béchamel… crayfish tails, pheasant and truffles, poached oysters, foie gras and tongue… noble, indeed.

But to be fair, M. Escoffier opens his list of fabulous recipes by describing rissoles as a “generic name for a hot appetizer consisting essentially of a salpicon, bound exactly like croquette batter and thoroughly chilled, whose main ingredient - such as poultry, game, foie gras, etc. - determines its name.” The important part, he concludes, is that the rissole is encased in “a pastry shell, made of either thin shortcrust pastry, semi-puff pastry, or pastry trimmings, or plain brioche dough without sugar.”

I guess it all depends on who is dining at your table.

Having spent the past few weeks tracing the rissole through eight centuries of culinary history, I’m taking the liberty of going a little off-script with the recipe I’m sharing now. The heatwave has left me spent, and I’ve done little cooking these last few weeks other than making so many batches of jam for the hotel, something I do not have the luxury of skipping, not while summer fruits are in season.

Today I’m sharing my recipe for Spiced Lamb and Feta Pastries. While the dough is a yeast bread-type dough (rolled out thin and delicate), the filling is reminiscent of those ancient recipes of minced meat seasoned with spices, the filling enhanced with raisins and pine nuts. I’ve started with lamb, although you can use beef or chicken. I added feta, which I love in this kind of preparation, a dash of pomegranate molasses for the tangy fruitiness reminiscent of medieval meat dishes, and a little tomato paste for the deep savory flavor. You can make changes to the filling as you like. These pastries are cooked in olive oil in a pan on the stove, giving the turnovers that beautiful golden crust.

You can prepare the filling ahead of time, just reheat gently where indicated in the recipe.

Spiced Lamb and Feta Pastries

I make 4 large pastries; you can make 4 or 6 smaller ones.

Dough

1 tablespoon golden or white granulated sugar

1 packet (about 2 ½ teaspoons or 7 grams) dry active yeast

⅔ cup (175 ml) warm water

1 ¾ cups (about 9 ounces / 250 grams) flour, plus more for kneading

½ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

Filling

2 ounces (50 grams) good-quality pine nuts

1–2 tablespoons olive oil

1 small to medium onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 pound (500 grams) ground (minced) lamb, or a combination of lamb and beef

1 slightly rounded teaspoon ground cumin

1 slightly rounded teaspoon ground coriander

¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¾ teaspoon ground chili or chipotle chili powder, or to taste

Salt and pepper

2 ounces (50 grams) raisins

2 tablespoons tomato purée, more to taste

2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses, more to taste, optional but good

4 ounces (100 grams) drained feta cheese, crumbled

Prepare the dough: Place the sugar and the dry yeast in a small mixing bowl. Add the warm/tepid (not boiling) water and allow to stand for about 15 minutes until the yeast is activated and the mixture foamy.

Put the flour in a mixing bowl and stir in the salt. Make a well in the center of the flour and add the yeast mixture and the olive oil. Using a wooden spoon, stir until blended and all of the dry ingredients have been moistened. Scrape the dough out onto a floured board or work surface and knead for 8 – 10 minutes, flouring the work surface and the dough only as needed. After 8 to 10 minutes, the kneaded dough should be smooth, soft and elastic, not dry but not sticky.

Lightly oil the inside of a medium to large bowl and place the round ball of dough into the bowl, turning the dough to oil evenly. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and then a clean kitchen towel and set aside to rise, at least doubled in size, about an hour.

Prepare the lamb filling: Have everything prepared – the onion and garlic chopped, the spices, raisins and pine nuts measured out, etc.

Heat a skillet over medium heat. Add the pine nuts and cook very quickly, stirring constantly so they do not burn, just until toasted (they will begin to turn a golden brown). Remove quickly from the heat, scraping the pine nuts into a waiting bowl.

Return the skillet to the heat and add a tablespoon of olive oil. Add the chopped onion and cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the onion is tender and golden brown around the edges. Add the chopped or minced garlic and cook, stirring, for another minute until the garlic is tender but has colored. Add another tablespoon of olive oil and then the minced/ground meat and cook, stirring and chopping the meat to break up any lumps, until cooked through and browning, no longer pink.

Stir in the spices as well as salt and pepper until evenly coating the meat and cook, stirring, for a minute or two. Add the toasted pine nuts, the raisins, as well as 2 tablespoons each tomato purée and pomegranate molasses, stirring to blend. Cook, stirring, for a few minutes until the meat is done cooking and the ingredients are well blended. Remove from the heat and allow to cool just for a few minutes until just cool enough to handle. Taste and add more flavoring, salt, pepper, tomato paste or pomegranate molasses to taste.

If prepared ahead of time, gently heat the filling through until warm before preparing the pastries – adding just a bit of water while reheating will help to keep the mixture from burning as well as bring back moisture to the meat.

Make the pastries: Have both the warm (but not hot) filling and the crumbled feta ready. Also have ready a small bowl with several tablespoons of olive oil and a clean pastry brush as well as a good skillet or griddle.

Scrape the risen dough onto a floured work surface and divide into four even pieces. Working one piece of dough at a time, pat the dough into a rectangle and place on the board in front of you lengthwise perpendicular to your body. Gently roll the dough into a 8 x 10 inch (20 x 25 cm) rectangle, being very careful to keep the dough an even thickness and not to tear, split or weaken the dough.

Place ¼ of the meat filling on the bottom half of the dough rectangle, leaving a ¾-inch (2-cm) edge on the 3 sides of the dough of the bottom half of the rectangle (the space covered by filling). Pat the filling until it evenly covers the space. (See photos)

Place ¼ of the crumbled feta cheese evenly on top of the meat filling.

Very gently and lightly brush a very small amount of olive oil on the edge of the dough - the 3 sides around the filling - and then bring the top half of the rectangle of dough down over the filling to create a pocket or turnover. Match the edges, pressing the top dough to the bottom and sealing.

Very gently brush the sealed edges with a bit more olive oil and gently roll the edge over onto itself to form a rim. Very gently brush/pat a bit of olive oil all over the top of the pastry, including the rim.

(I keep repeating very gently because the dough is incredibly light and fragile and it must not rip!)

Heat the skillet or griddle over medium heat. Very gently and carefully (the dough is soft and fragile and must not rip) lift the pastry off of the work surface (I use a pastry/cake lifter and my fingers) and, once the skillet is hot, flip the pastry into the pan olive oil side (the top) down and press all around with the back of a spatula for even cooking. As the pan-side of the pastry cooks, gently brush/dab the flip/bottom side (now facing up) with olive oil. Cook the pastry until the pan side of the dough is a deep golden brown – the dough will puff as it cooks – and then very carefully flip the pastry over to cook the other side until golden brown.

Serve hot!

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“Curiosity may well inspire new experiments; the desire for variety may lead to changes which, without altering the fundamental nature of a dish, modify it by means of a simple garnish or decoration. At that point, one may give it whatever name one wishes. An ingenious chef…adds or removes some element from a familiar dish, either in its composition or its presentation, and gives it a fanciful name, often that of the patron to whom he is attached.”

The dawn of the nineteenth century would become a turning point in French cuisine. As the great aristocrats, all those princes and dukes, were swept away to the guillotine or run off to foreign lands, their households were dismantled and the nation’s greatest chefs who served in their kitchens, whose craft was reserved for the pleasure of the nobility and the privileged, had no choice but to adapt to a new world and cook for a new clientele. And so they opened restaurants.

Antoine Beauvillier, esteemed chef who had cooked for the Prince de Condé and M. Comte de Provence, the brother of Louis XVI and future Louis XVIII, opened what is considered the first true restaurant and high-end luxury dining establishment in Paris, Le Beauvilliers, in 1782. He had the extraordinary foresight to take his talents out of aristocratic kitchens and bring the fine dining experience to the public - or to anyone who could afford it - before it became necessary.

Except that up until the Revolution, many of his restaurant clients were aristocrats. So he, too, was run out of business, his restaurant confiscated, and he, the great chef, imprisoned. Liberated 18 months later and disillusioned with politics, he nonetheless decided to open a second restaurant, La Grande Taverne de Londres, bringing, of all things, “the most exquisite and highly praised dishes of English cuisine, which I had the privilege of being the first to introduce to France.”

He quickly understood the need to modify and adapt the recipes prepared in private kitchens for aristocratic tables to an entirely new way of dining, for a paying public, and to the realities of the restaurant.

In 1814, his restaurant booming, Beauvilliers penned and published L’Art du Cuisinier, a cookbook that reflected this significant moment of culinary transition. He simplified and codified the refined cuisine of the great aristocratic households under the Ancien Régime and adapted it to the new restaurant culture of post-Revolutionary France. “Cooking, simple in its origins but refined over the centuries, has become a challenging art and a complex science about which many authors have written, without ever being able to fully grasp it,” he wrote in the introduction.

But he chose to extend his influence beyond the professional kitchen, writing not only for fellow chefs in professional kitchens but home cooks as well: “A mother could find in this book instructions for preparing all well-known dishes, as well as those of my own invention, and oversee their preparation herself.”

And in this changing, post-Revolution culinary landscape, one would imagine the recipes would change, as well. Non?

Well, maybe, maybe not. Sort of.

Beauvilliers and Carême, near contemporaries, both preserved the cuisine of the Ancien Régime in their work and in their cookbooks, its gastronomic opulence, fine ingredients, and elegant presentation, both on the table and on the plate, while trying to bring it to a wider public. But they would also oversee a shift in how dishes were named. For centuries, dishes quite simply bore descriptive names, an indication of its shape (chausson aux pommes), ingredients (navarin d’agneau), physical aspect (neige seiche), or method of preparation (tian or aïgo-boulido). But post-Revolution, chefs suddenly began attaching the names of former patrons or well-known personalities, many of them noble, to familiar recipes. As Beauvilliers wrote (see the opening paragraph), one simply altered a familiar dish or dessert ever so slightly, or added a garnish, or changed its presentation, stuck a fanciful name or the name of one eminent personality or another on the end, and voilà a fabulously elegant dish was born!

It began tentatively, in the early 18th century, when François Massialot introduced dishes à la Reine or à la Dauphine, designations which would last. Joseph Menon followed suit a few decades later, tacking on a variety of nondescript descriptives, a little all over the place, many rather confusing : à la mariée (bride’s style), à l’Abbesse (abbess), à la Gendarme (police), à la Sultane, à la Fermière (farmer’s wife), à la Nourrice (wet nurse), à l’Infante, à la Marquise, and even à la Mousquetaire.

But along comes Beauvilliers and Carême and company and suddenly the aristocracy is making a comeback! Potage à la Condé, côtelettes à la Soubise, boudin de faisan à la Richelieu, potage à la Conti, omelettes or turbot à la Noailles, poulardes à la Pompadour, even filets de soles à la royale … and the list goes on and on.

One of the great ironies of post-Revolutionary France - despite the succession of 2 emperors and 4 kings - was that naming dishes after the aristocracy became quite the fashion. And yet, not everyone approved. In Le Cuisinier Parisien (1828) Carême takes one critic, a Mr. Martin, to task for his grievances :

“In his ‘History of French Cuisine’, Mr. Martin crafts grand sentences that say nothing of substance: it is a jumble of grand, meaningless words and illustrious names cited to draw parallels, in which pedantry and error shine equally bright; and all of this, merely to flaunt his erudition!

And by what right, you writer without a mission, do you insult the culinary arts? What! Will you always pass such senseless and rash judgments? “The names,” you say, “of our dishes have something barbaric and foreign about them, just like the dishes themselves.” What an injustice! What a falsehood! On the contrary, the dishes of French cuisine bear the most illustrious names of the French nobility: à la Reine, à la Dauphine , à la Royale , à la d’Artois , à la Xavier , à la Condé , à la d’ Orléans , à la Chartres , à la Penthièvre , à la Soubise , à la Conti , à la Montmorency , à la Villeroi , à la Pompadour , à la Mirepoix , à la Matignon , à la Montgolfier , à la Mazarine , à la Richelieu , à la Colbert …. Certainly, these names belong to France and are by no means barbaric.”

Carême explains to Mr. Martin, and ultimately to us, that the point is not merely the individuals for whom these dishes, sauces, desserts, or techniques were named. Rather, culinary names preserve history. Over time, the names will become as important as the dishes themselves, as though it were the duty of a great chef not merely to nourish his guests, but to preserve the memory of the great figures of his nation. The irony is that today, few diners or chefs recognize Condé, Soubise, or Colbert as princes, noblemen, or statesman; their names have become inseparable from the recipes or the techniques they once merely adorned.

Barely a century later, Henry Bidou, food columnist, brings it all home with a hefty dose of satire :

“Patriots, moreover, had their revenge. Both the French and the English had a dish bearing the name Montmorency (referring to the noble House of Montmorency, one of France’s oldest aristocratic families) — on the French side, a Savarin; on the English, an ice cream. Thus Old France thus seemed, on both sides of the Channel, to contribute to the destinies of Europe through these cold dishes, one never knows. A journalist even detected in this a stirring sense of (patriotic) glory. Already, in Gabrielle de Vergy, when the heroine recites the dishes her lover’s heart might have devised, she bows, as it were, before riz à la Condé and volaille à la d’Albufera. From the depths of the Middle Ages, she honors those great names of history. Let us likewise honor glace à la Montmorency: it is patriotism of the purest sort—and Caillavet (the author) at his best.”

Food, according to Bidou, had become an expression of patriotism, or, rather, patriotic elegance, with absolutely no meaning, no connection to the dish itself. Any lover will, as Caillavet’s medieval heroine knows, succumb to a dish, no matter how banal, if wrapped in the charm, sophistication, and patriotism of a dish thus named.

Riz à la Condé and, ultimately, abricots à la Condé, is our hero of this post.

“The cuisine of the age of Louis XIV was refined, sumptuous, and quite beautiful; and it was at the Condé table that people first began to glimpse the heights of refinement it could reach.” - Alexandre Dumas, La Grande Dictionnaire de la Cuisine, 1873

The princes of the House of Condé - among the wealthiest and most powerful princes in France, second only to the royal family - were known for their lavishly sumptuous table, their magnificent and splendid hospitality, and their impressive kitchen staff which included the most illustrious chefs of the day. If any aristocratic name deserves to be on the French menu, it is Condé. So celebrated was their cuisine that Carême himself later recalled that the House of Condé had once been regarded as “the first in the kingdom for the excellence of its table.”

But rice? Who decided to stick their name onto a dish of rice? No one really knows. It is thought by some that this elegant dessert was actually created in the kitchens of the House of Condé. By accident. Possibly by Chef Feuillait (also rumored to have invented or refined puff pastry, pâte feuilletée, although unfounded rumors abound in food history). The story goes that there was confusion, a mix up, at the moment the dishes were brought to the tables (always several tables throughout several rooms for the Condés’ magnificent dinners) and the rice, possibly a sweet rice pudding, or more than likely sweet rice croquettes, ended up being served with the apricots, most likely stewed and sweetened, and everyone loved it!

“Rice prepared in this way serves as the base for many hot and cold desserts, such as apricots, peaches, apples, pears, and bananas — known as “à la Condé” or “à l’Impératrice” — as well as meringues and Creole-style pineapple. It is also used in cakes, puddings, and rice soufflés.” - Auguste Escoffier, Le Riz, 1927

The History of Rice Pudding and the Evolution of Fancier Rice Pudding Desserts

While “riz à la Condé” was seen in cookbooks as early as the 1820s - Carême served a “potage de riz à la Condé”, a savory soup with rice - it is suspected that the first recipe for a sweet version appeared in 1845 in La Grande Cuisine Simplifié by P. C. Robert, chef to the Minister of the Interior, Secretary of the Navy, and the French Ambassador to England, the Count of Saint-Aulaire, not all at the same time. His recipe for Abricots à la Condé did indeed begin with the very same croquettes that were supposedly served with apricots to the guests of the Prince de Condé by error. Robert begins with an enriched sweetened rice pudding flavored with orange flower water, lemon zest or vanilla; half of the prepared rice is used to make a base for the dessert set and shaped on the serving platter, the other half to make about 20 small croquettes in any shape - pear-shaped, prune-shaped, oblong, etc - then fried until a lovely deep golden color. These are arranged around the rice base. A compote made of poached apricots is mounded in the center. The compote is decorated with candied angelica and citron. The poaching syrup is reduced and drizzled over the dessert.

Soon after the recipe appeared in Robert’s cookbook, apricot (and peach) à la Condé began appearing on restaurant menus throughout Paris. Both very quickly found their place and became fixtures - to this day - in the repertoire of French cuisine. Over time, the recipe evolved, or rather, I would argue, was perfected : vanilla found its way into both the rice pudding and the poached fruit, the croquettes disappeared, though the distinctive round or crown-shaped base and decorative arrangement remained. By the 1880s, kirsch had become a standard addition to the sauce.

Some did try to give it a more theatrical flourish, for better or for worse. Mique Grandchamp, in his 1883 Le Cuisinier à la Bonne Franquette, quite literally sets it ablaze: “To make the Condé-style rice more fragrant and visually appealing, pour a little kirsch over it just before serving and set it on fire (flambé it).”

Most of us, though, are quite happy to add the kirsch to the poaching syrup before drizzling this thickened sauce over the finished confection just before serving.

And so, while a generation of chefs helped immortalize the great and illustrious epicures, gourmands, and gastronomic patrons of their day and before, and generations of diners continue to celebrate the Princes de Condé, there were some who lamented the names chosen to be honored. Joseph Favre began his entry on “Condé“ in his Dictionnaire Universel de Cuisine et d’Hygiène Alimentaire (1890) with a thought-provoking reflection :

“The chefs of the Princes of Condé paid their masters every honor they deserved by perpetuating their memory through first-rate dishes. It would have been more fitting for these dishes to bear the name of the great Vatel, chef to the no less great Condé, for whom he died.”

He makes an excellent point.

Abricots à la Condé

I prefer a creamier rice pudding so began with a lower quantity rice to milk, basing my recipe on that of Henri-Paul Pellaprat (L’Art Culinaire Français, 1950 and La Cuisine Familiale et Pratique, 1955) ; if you want a firmer rice pudding that you can mold, use 2 cups (200 grams) rice and cook as long as needed until desired consistency. For a richer pudding, replace some of the milk with liquid heavy cream. If you like a pudding that is less sweet, start with a little more that ¼ cup (50 grams) sugar and add more to taste towards the end of cooking, but I find this amount of sugar is perfect with the tart apricots and the warm kick of Kirsch.

Prepare 6 or 8 glass dessert bowls - glass allows guests to see the rice pudding layer - to serve. I find using a soup ladle is the easiest and cleanest way to do this. I made 6 for generous portions. This can also be brought to the table in one large glass serving bowl.

Riz à la Condé

¾ cup (150 grams) uncooked round rice for risotto or pudding

3 ¼ cups (750 ml) whole milk

½ cup (100 grams) sugar

1 vanilla pod, split lengthwise, seeds scraped out, both reserved

1 ½ tablespoons (25 grams) unsalted butter

2 egg yolks

Abricots

12 just-ripe apricots

½ cup (100 grams) sugar

1 vanilla pod, split lengthwise, seeds scraped out, both reserved

2 cups (500 ml) water

Kirsch

Candied cherries or Amarena cherries, for garnish

Candied angelica stems or chopped (coarsely or finely) green pistachios, for garnish

Whipped cream, very lightly sweetened (or not at all), to top

Prepare the riz à la Condé

Place the rice in a fine mesh sieve and run under cold water, rinsing until the water runs clear. Drain.

Place the rinsed rice in a saucepan and cover with water; bring the water to a boil and allow to boil for 5 minutes. Drain the rice in the fine mesh sieve and rinse quickly again under cold water. Drain well.

Return the drained rice to a saucepan with the whole milk, the sugar, and both the vanilla pod and the scraped seeds. Bring just to a boil then reduce to heat to low and cook, stirring constantly, until the rice is cooked and the mixture has thickened, the rice having absorbed almost all of the liquid, about 35 minutes. The rice should be very soft, almost melting in the mouth, yet retaining its shape. It should not be al dente.

Scrape the pudding into a large Pyrex bowl - I do this because I use Le Creuset which retains heat - and immediately whisk in the butter, then vigorously whisk in the 2 egg yolks, one at a time until really well blended - whisking vigorously will keep the yolk from cooking on the hot rice.

Place the bowl in the refrigerator to cool down while you prepare the apricots.

Prepare the apricots

Carefully slice the ripe apricots in 2 lengthwise, discarding the pits.

Blend the sugar, the split vanilla pod and the scraped seeds, and the water in a large saucepan or sauteuse large enough to hold all of the apricot halves in a single layer, even if pushed tightly together. Bring to the boil, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved, lower the heat and place the apricot halves, skin side down, in the liquid. Cook on a very very low simmer just until the apricots are poached and softened; this should only take a couple of minutes as you want the apricots to retain their shape and not dissolve into a compote.

Very carefully scoop out the apricot halves, drain, and place on a plate to cool. Allow the poaching liquid to simmer several minutes until beginning to thicken, add 3 or 4 tablespoons Kirsch (or to taste) before removing it from the heat. Allow to cool; it will continue to thicken slightly as it cools.

To serve

Divide the cooled rice pudding (it can be served warm or tepid) evenly between the dessert bowls.

Arrange 3 or 4 apricot halves on top of the rice pudding in each bowl.

Decorate with candied cherries, other candied fruits or Angelica, if you like, or coarsely chopped unsalted green pistachios (for a nice contrast).

Drizzle a spoonful or two of the Kirsch-spiked poaching syrup and spoon or pipe a few dollops of whipped cream on top.

Serve immediately.

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“Vous cherchez quelqu’un?” Are you looking for someone? A polite voice pulled me from my reverie as I slowly made my way around a block of mausoleums, aged but still elegant, a dense jumble of tiny stone houses, crumbling and twisted, each leaning at its own precarious angle without regard for its neighbors, some improbably still standing.

It was a beautiful morning, about half past nine: cool, but with a lovely summer sun, the early light filtering through the thick canopy of leaves on the towering rows of trees that bordered the cobbled lanes. Millions of footsteps had trod and worked these dirt paths and cobbled lanes, while the bulky, gnarled roots of ancient trees, thrusting upwards as though searching for air, had heaved my path into a dangerously broken, uneven surface. I had to keep my eyes fixed on the ground to avoid tripping - or, worse, twisting my ankle again - rather than looking for my destination.

“Yes, I’m looking for Narcisse Julien,” I answered.

“Ah, yes, I know Narcisse Julien, I passed by him this morning! I remember because I said good morning to the two Narcisses - Berchère and Julien! ‘Bonjour Narcisse et bonjour Narcisse!…now where did I see him? Come, follow me!”

I was glad of any help in making out the names, worn by time until they were barely legible in the stonework above the broken wrought-iron portals to each secret world encased inside each tomb. I know I never would have found my Narcisse, as I had already wandered around division 62 several times with no luck - unless you can count my not having tripped and twisted an ankle luck.

“I’m a guide here at Père Lachaise and since I live close by, I come often to keep my memory sharp and to say hello to those who are here. I knew you had to be looking for someone; anyone who is here as the gates open usually comes to find someone.”

And yes, he was right, I had.

And as I hadn’t set foot in the cemetery for decades, I remembered very little of it —certainly not its labyrinthine layout, and even less where any of its famous residents lay. I was feeling both lost and helpless. His assistance was welcome, indeed, because I was coming to find someone. Many “someones”.

The story of Père Lachaise is almost as fascinating as the lives of those whom I had come to see who now rest beneath its soil.

Opened by Napoleon in 1804 on 17 hectares (42 acres) of the former Mont-Louis estate just outside what were then the city’s limits, Père Lachaise - named after Père François de la Chaise, confessor to Louis XIV, who sometimes resided here - was designed by architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart as an English-style landscaped cemetery. The newly proclaimed Emperor had declared “Every citizen has the right to be buried regardless of race or religion.”

But, in fact, Paris simply lacked sanitary burial sites, particularly after the closure of The Holy Innocents’ Cemetery next to the city’s central market, Les Halles, a couple of decades earlier. It was intended to be a modern cemetery, designed to accommodate the deceased outside of the residential area.

Initially considered too remote from Paris, it attracted only 13 burials in its first year. In 1817, in a brilliant publicity move, the remains of Jean de La Fontaine, Molière, and later the legendary lovers, philosophers Pierre Abélard and Héloïse d’Argenteuil were transferred there (along with their extraordinary and sumptuous stone canopy), transforming the new cemetery’s fortunes: it quickly became the fashionable place to be buried. By 1830 it contained more than 33,000 graves. Expanded five times between 1824 and 1850, Père Lachaise is today the largest cemetery in Paris, with more than one million people buried within its walls.

Of course, everyone knows of Père Lachaise now; it’s a famous tourist attraction, close to 3.5 million visitors each year coming to search out the famous dead, come to gawk and snap photos. But it is also a strangely enchanting and peaceful place. The many large, tree-lined avenues were created to allow the passage of funerary processions, but have become lovely shaded lanes for a bucolic stroll. The decorative mausoleums, sculpted tombs, and chapels, a hodgepodge of Gothic, Haussmann-style, and contemporary, are a veritable art museum. The serenity of Père Lachaise’s garden setting most definitely invites contemplation. Time spent either wandering the graves or sitting on a bench in the central park is deeply soothing.

Many of us also come to honor the dead, the illustrious figures who marked history.

I was there, like so many others, on a pilgrimage. Not to see Jim Morrison (although I did detour long enough to snap a quick photo for my friend Mike. A rather ravaged, drunken Frenchman, bottle clutched in one hand and gesturing theatrically with the other, had taken it upon himself to hold court in front of the barred enclosure, preventing the few curious tourists from getting too close), nor the magnificent Oscar Wilde (“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” And, aptly “I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.” Or my favorite “If I am occasionally a little overdressed, I make up for it by being always immensely overeducated.”). I wasn’t there for Edith Piaf, Apollinaire, Gertrude Stein, or Proust. I had come instead to pay my respects to my culinary heroes.

Starting with Narcisse Clément Julien, the youngest of the illustrious Julien brothers - Julien frères, as they officially named themselves, the 19th century Parisian pastry chefs I’ve been studying. So I allowed my search to be taken in hand by this mysterious man dressed like a cross between a schoolteacher and a safari tracker. It didn’t take him long, and I was standing in front of a dusty mausoleum, the wrought iron embraced by cobwebs, his majestic bronze bust likeness hidden in the darkness inside coated in a fine blanket of dust, his handsome face draped with more cobwebs.

I had really wanted to pay homage to my hero, whisper to him, maybe ask him questions… But my guide didn’t understand my holy reverence and kept rattling on and on about himself and his work. I stood there in awe of this great figure, trying to focus my thoughts, studying the inscriptions on the marble plaques inside as my companion’s words continued to intrude like someone yelling in a church while you are trying to pray.

I finally held up my hand to silence him, if ever so briefly, and I brought my hands together and bowed towards Narcisse - my Narcisse - and, speaking to him, declared my esteem and admiration for him. But I know that my guide, rather than thinking this strange American woman should be abandoned and left to her own crazy devices, must have understood, because he did the same in front of another tomb later in the morning. I do believe that simple gesture created a bond between me and…. You know, I never got his name.

I turned away from Narcisse and my guide asked me who else I was looking for. I unfolded a piece of paper I had been clutching and showed him my list - Brillat-Savarin, Antoine Parmentier, the potato man, Charles Monselet, writer, journalist, author, and culinary critic, Cambacérès (Jean-Jacques-Régis de…), grand gourmand known for his extravagant dinner parties, Auguste Escoffier, and Antoine Beauvilliers, the man who opened the first grand restaurant in Paris.

He perused the list quickly and said “okay, I know where he is and him and him… would you like me to take you to each one? Do you mind if I tag along?” If my search for Narcisse Julien was any indication, I knew this could save me a lot of time and footsteps.

And we were off. We spent a lovely morning roaming around Père Lachaise and I let him talk and I learned a great deal: about the history of the cemetery itself, about the men I had come to seek, and about figures I should have known but didn’t, including more contemporary influences on the French culinary and restaurant scene, like the fascinating Roxane Debuisson. I listened to his anecdotes, occasionally interjecting fragments of information of my own. He explained that the tomb of Brillat-Savarin had recently been restored, 200 years after his death, by the members of an association from his birthplace.

“Did you know,” he chattered on excitedly.… I wasn’t a paying client so I imagine his enthusiasm for each unique personnage buried in this place was authentic. He was quite knowledgable, and offered me tidbits that even I didn’t know about my food folks. “Did you know that Cambacérès was gay? As statesman, Napoleon’s Second Consul, and later Archchancellor of the Empire, his homosexuality was an open secret in Parisian society, protected by his rank, his immense political importance, and the Emperor’s favor. According to my guide, Cambacérès was anything but discreet, caring not a whit to hide his flamboyance. Napoleon teased him and and printed images and paintings may have exaggerated his elegance or portrayed him with feminine affectations. He did indeed cultivate elegance and luxury, was always immaculately dressed, quite taken by the display of his full Napoleanic regalia complete with gold trim, silk sash, sparkling medals, and a rakish display of feathers in his hat. His Paris residence was one of the most luxurious in the Empire, although considered more as refined and sophisticated than ostentatious. “Yet his dinners were legendary!” as my guide explained. He maintained one of the finest kitchens in France, employing several chefs and serving elaborate multi-course dinners that became the social highlight of Napoleonic Paris. It wasn’t simply abundance - Cambacérès insisted on perfect service, impeccable timing, and beautifully presented dishes. Revolutionary!

We stopped in front of Cambacérès to pay homage. While a large structure compared to many others, it is rather restrained and simple in design, a neoclassical funerary chapel with almost no decoration at all. The Cambacérès coat of arms - he was Duke of Parma - sits atop the mausoleum, while the sides are decorated with laurel wreaths, symbols of honour and achievement. Understated glory, his name only legible to those of us who stop purposely to see him and, eyes straining, pick it out in the stone.

The sun had risen as it neared noon, yet standing under the cover of leaves, the dance of the light fluttering across the gray stone and among the flowers, I felt unexpectedly light. This morning trip, this running conversation with my safari guide had brought these beings to life, figures that had seemed almost like illustrations, fictional characters that I had only encountered in books or huddled over a laptop in my apartment. And this cemetery felt less like a resting place than a discussion in progress, a conversation two people would have over a long meal, two passionate diners sharing stories and appetite for the curious.

As we moved away from Brillat-Savarin’s lovingly restored headstone and Beauvilliers’ column, now weathered and listing in abandon, my guide suddenly became more animated and said “Oh, let me show you another…. It’s very old and the words are barely legible now, but I’m sure it says something about being a royal food taster!” He dragged me over to a section close at hand and pointed excitedly to the worn stone partially hidden in the unkempt, overgrown plants. We moved as close as we could, but neither of us could make out the words. As I was saying that maybe we could make a gravestone rubbing with paper and pencil, he said “and there’s another here, too, an “homme de bouche.” An “homme de bouche” was chef so this one must’ve been a fairly important figure in the culinary world of his time. I looked to where we was pointing: I studied the words carved into the stone for a bit before I worked it out. “André Viard,” I screamed, thrilled. “That’s André Viard, great chef and illustrious author of several cookbooks - one of which I own.” According to the Père Lachaise website : “(Viard’s) last wishes regarding his funeral reveal a certain penchant for eccentricity. Well before his death on May 5, 1819 (recorded as May 11), he purchased a burial plot at Père Lachaise. He had his tomb built there and visited it regularly thereafter. According to (journalist Édouard) Henrion, he insisted that his coffin be large enough to be filled with 1,000 pounds of salt and an equal amount of bran. This was indeed done upon his death! Furthermore, he also forbids his close friends—specifically named, 25 in number—from paying their respects at his grave on the day of his funeral. Instead, they must gather for a meal at a specific restaurant that he has already booked for the sum of one thousand francs.”

I had forgotten about Parmentier, the Apostle of the Potato, so was delighted when my guide pointed and said “here’s another one” as if he didn’t know who this great man was. I had seen photos online of his tomb, a miniature classical temple, this charmingly symbolic monument to the man who devoted much of his life to persuading the French that the humble tuber could help feed the nation. Visitors have long left potatoes on the grave, perched on the ledge in front of his profile sculpted in a bronze medallion set in the stone, potatoes often turned into little people with addition of eyes, mouths, and limbs, like a collection of little Potato Head people. I was sorely disappointed to find only one and that with no googly eyes.

I wonder if Parmentier designed his own burial place as well. It’s a complete monument to his life’s work as a pharmacist and agronomist and his efforts to improve French farming. Each side is carved with representations of the tools and symbols of cultivation and agriculture, ears of wheat and corn, grapevines, an alembic with a furnace and a wheelbarrow, and, of course, a basket of potatoes. It’s planted (ha!) In the center of a mini square bordered with a narrow flower bed, and is regularly tended by certain pharmacists’ associations. Until the early 20th century, the grave was adorned with a vegetable garden where potato plants flourished, but it’s beautiful, nonetheless.

My last wish was to see the final resting place of Henri-Paul Pellaprat, another personal hero of mine. Pellaprat, who I have written about, was a well-known chef, culinary instructor, and co-creator of the Cordon Bleu cooking school. He advocated for teaching young women cooking and other household skills as early as grade school and was one of the first to write and popularize family cookbooks for modest homes. I checked for the location of his grave online and double- and tripled-checked on ChatGPT and got a different location every time. We looked and looked and, sadly, never found it. By this time I was too hot and too exhausted to head back across miles of cobblestones to the office to ask. All I wanted was to take the metro back to where I was staying and pull off my boots. I still had a coffee date with someone later that afternoon.

And in our search for Pellaprat, we lost each other. I wandered around a bit but couldn’t find my guide anywhere. So I headed towards the entrance gates and the metro.

It was a wonderful morning. I was thrilled to have been able to stand in front of Narcisse Julien (more on him later), as well as my other culinary folk heroes. And I loved rediscovering Père Lachaise after decades; I have always loved wandering around cemeteries, imagining the lives and stories of those buried there and honoring those who seem to have been forgotten to time. I love the beauty and sadness of funerary art. I love the peaceful atmosphere of a cemetery, a quiet peace that strangely comforts, a placid serenity that compels reflection and a feeling of weightlessness as if I am lost in time.

I spent the rest of my trip and the following meeting food historians, doing research at various libraries, and visiting museums. Somewhere in these last several years, I’ve found a purpose and chosen a role: to preserve a bit of culinary history, to commemorate those who have been forgotten by too many people. They lived extraordinary lives, rich with adventure, invention, and imagination, leaving an indelible and important imprint on French cuisine. They deserve to be both remembered and admired.

The least I can do is tell their stories.

There is no happiness where the chef’s art is ignored. - Jean-Jacques Régis de Cambacérès

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“Since I’ve just told you about a rather special dish from Limousin, and since it’s cherry season, let me also tell you about a seasonal pastry that’s very common in our region. It goes by the decidedly unpoetic name of clafoutis. I can’t guarantee the spelling of the word; Littré and our other dictionary authors are silent on the matter. Perhaps it appears in some Auvergne dictionary that I’m unaware of. In any case, while the name is more than original, I can attest that the thing it refers to is not easy on the stomach, and I am far from having to bestow upon it the praise I have unreservedly and without remorse bestowed upon the gireau, of which the clafoutis is, in a way, the antithesis in terms of digestibility.” - Dr. J. Beaubrun, Causeries Médicales et Scientifiques, 1887

It’s obvious that Dr. Beaubrun didn’t enjoy clafoutis; no praise from him for a regional delicacy that weighed heavily on his poor tummy. He seems to have found it bland, barely worth mentioning, and yet he does. A sign of its importance in the region. A backhanded compliment or two after accolades for the gireau, a traditional lamb’s blood sausage from the Limousin region of France. Much more to his taste.

The good doctor might very well be surprised, then, at the popularity of a pastry that has become an internationally beloved icon of French home baking.

I’ve written about “the amiable flognarde, the humble sister of the clafoutis” in a past Substack post, but never about the more famous of the two. Funny, I can’t even remember the last time I made a clafoutis; rather, I make flognarde and far Breton. Maybe it’s because apples and prunes are more accessible year round. And more affordable. Or maybe it’s because I never found a really excellent clafoutis recipe, a recipe that creates a creamy flan-like base rather than a tough, chewy one. Well, we’ll see.

Like the flognarde, the tôt-fait, and the flamousse, the clafoutis is difficult to trace much before the 19th century when it suddenly appeared on the written page. A staunchly local speciality, clafoutis (or clafouti) was barely mentioned outside of the Limousin province or dialectic glossaries and dictionaries; like the others, it was a humble family treat found on country tables and in the nursery. Sometimes called a flan, sometimes a tart, a tourte, or even a cake with cherries, the clafoutis was finally presented to the French public, brought right into the mainstream and into bourgeois homes, when Urbain Dubois published a recipe for the clafoutis aux cerises in his 1888 Nouvelle Cuisine Bourgeoise Pour la Ville et pour la Campagne. Why it became so well known and - eventually - internationally popular, leaving the others to their rustic and regional obscurity, we’ll never know.

Like the other simple, modest, homey desserts, the clafoutis is a variation on the crêpe, although now the batter poured over dark cherries then baked in a shallow dish. But not just any cherries will do! Fruit specialist André Leroy insisted upon the Guigne Noire des Bois - the Black Wildwood Guigne Cherry - a small, deeply colored, highly flavorful wild cherry that 19th-century authors — and Leroy, a cultivator and gardener, himself — maintained were necessary for an authentic clafoutis. In his 1877 dictionary of ancient and modern fruits, Leroy refers to the Guigne Noire des Bois as the Guigne à Clafoutis, writing : “Highly sought after in the Creuse department for making Clafoutis - an excellent style of tart, though hardly suited for weak stomachs - this wild cherry was completely unknown to the horticulturists of Western France when I introduced it to my estate in 1869.”

In his 1856 Glossaire du Centre de la France, Hippolyte-François Jaubert defined the true country clafouti as a “cake of small black guignes, which contains as much of these fruits as it does batter.” The preparation - and the depiction - of the clafouti(s) was deliciously simple : “One places the liquid batter, in which the guignes are suspended, into a dish with slightly raised edges, and bakes it in the oven.”

Edmond Richardin agrees that “the blacker they (the cherries) are, the better they will be,” making the specificities of the fruit the essential starting point for the creation of the dish itself. “The bigarreau cherries celebrated in song by Victor Hugo,” Richardin continues, “are not good cherries for a clafoutis. Once black cherries are placed at the bottom of the dish, pour over them the sort of batter formed by the flour thinned out with the eggs and milk… It is not an aristocratic dish, but when it is successful (I have made it myself at times) it is delicious. And besides, it is the food of childhood, the food of one’s home country! It looks good, and it always tastes good.”

The food of childhood, the food of home, nostalgic and comforting.

The dark, round aspect of the cherries dotting the pale custard was more than just a dramatic contrast of colors — it was the source of the dessert’s name. Clafoutis (historically spelled clafouti or glafouti) stems from the Limousin dialect of Occitan (clafotis), derived from the old French verb claufir, meaning “to fix or fasten with nails.” Looking down at the finished dish, the visual metaphor is unmistakable: the heavy, dark guigne cherries appear to literally “nail” the rising, dense batter to the baking pan.

Another hypothesis for the origin of the name was put forward by Lemouzi, a regional journal dedicated to preserving the local Occitan language, which suggested that the name “clafoutis” was, in fact, a corruption of the word clafit or claufit, full or filled, the clafoutis being a dish filled to bursting with cherries.

“The clafoutis, a Limousin dish as hearty as the region’s thick cabbage soup, was already baking in the oven, with its black cherries embedded in the flour mixed with water, like bricks set into the clay dish.” - Catissou by Jules Claretie in L’Univers Illustré, 1889

And so now the question is : does one pit the cherries before smothering them in the batter, or does one leave them whole ? While I have heard over and over again that the French leave the pits in, that it is utterly sacrilegious to remove the pits, the French seem rather split on the question and always have been. Some say yes, some say no. Urbain Dubois pitted his. Curnonsky does not. Dr. Beaubrun, he who, above, warns us about the digestibility of the clafoutis, adds his own two cents on the subject :

“Therefore, eat clafouti only with moderation and circumspection. It is a heavy dessert that suits only those enthusiasts blessed with a time-tested, proven digestive power. Furthermore, you know the old prudish refrain:

If you are eating prunes,

Do not swallow the stones...

This advice is, I trust, superfluous for you, my dear reader, but watch over the children with the greatest care, for almost all of them are utterly frantic gluttons when it comes to clafouti (and stone fruits).”

Leave it to a fussy nineteenth-century physician to take the joy out of dessert.

For my part, I want the experience of eating clafoutis to be one of pure, uninterrupted joy. Therefore, I remove the pits for easier eating. Not only does one avoid choking (and breaking a tooth), but one can certainly enjoy each mouthful of this sweet dessert with its boisterous bursts of tartness infinitely more when not having to constantly search around in the mouth for a pit.

As I said above, I have been sorely disappointed in the past with the quality of each clafoutis I have made using recipes from various cookbooks. So I decided to figure it out myself and thought I would share my process.

I looked over recipes from several old French cookbooks and then several more recent cookbooks and websites (and blogs). I made a spreadsheet of about 10 of them from books or sites I trust. No two were alike - more or less eggs, more or less sugar, wildly different amounts of flour, even preparation techniques and oven temperatures varied… Using my own judgement and experience (or so I like to think), I took all of the historical and modern variations and consolidated (synthesized?) them, deciding the quantity of each ingredient I thought would work. I tested the recipe I had come up with. I found the cooked custard too dense and chewy, just too firm. The rest seemed to work, and the quantity of the sugar was perfect. So I cut back on the flour in the recipe, perfected the mixing method so I would be sure to have a perfectly smooth, lump-free batter, and baked the second one.

It was a revelation. Throughout my research, I had noticed that historic cookbook authors universally categorized the clafoutis as “un entremets chaud” — a hot dessert. They always insisted it be served warm from the oven, a traditional detail I’d neither noticed nor considered until that moment. Armed with this newfound wisdom, I pulled my second clafoutis from the oven and, unlike the first which I let cool completely, let it rest for only 5 or 10 minutes before slicing into it while it was still warm.

The result was absolute perfection. The quantity and set of the baked custard was just enough to hold the cherries in place, yet it remained incredibly velvety, creamy, and smooth. Very much like a thick, tender crêpe. Its gentle, milky sweetness was the perfect complement to the tart, flavorful cherries. Yet, even refrigerated overnight, the clafoutis remained creamy when eaten the following day. Although, if you like, don’t hesitate to warm the leftover tart slightly.

But, yes, I would heed Beaubrun and Leroy’s warnings and eat clafoutis in moderation…

“The children, eating clafoutis, smeared their faces with the cherries baked into the dense batter.” - Robert Burat, Jules Claretie, 1866

Clafoutis

1 pound (500 grams) dark, sweet/sour cherries

3 eggs, at room temperature if possible (each egg should weigh about 60-65 max grams)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ cup (100 grams) sugar

½ cup (70 grams) flour * see note below

1 ⅓ cups (300 ml) whole milk or a blend of low-fat milk and heavy cream, at room temperature if possible

* note : to measure flour correctly, stir up the flour in the sack or container to lighten; lightly spoon the flour into the measuring cup until it’s above the rim. Using a flat blade, gently level the top. Weigh, if possible.

Preheat the oven to 350° F (180°C). Generously butter a 10-inch (25-cm) pie or quiche dish, making sure to butter well where the sides meet the bottom. Dust lightly with sugar.

Stem and pit the cherries and spread the pitted cherries in a single layer in the prepared pie/quiche dish.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk the 3 eggs until very well blended and just starting to thicken.

Whisk in the vanilla extract and the sugar until very well blended and the sugar is no longer grainy.

Whisk in the flour : to guarantee a completely smooth batter, sift ⅓ of the flour onto the egg/sugar mixture, whisk carefully until the flour is just incorporated (to avoid spatter), then vigorously until blended and smooth. Repeat with the second ⅓ of the flour, and then the last ⅓. This should give you a thick and perfectly smooth batter in which to add the milk.

Whisk in the milk or milk/cream until the batter is well blended.

Pour and scrape the batter onto the cherries in pie/quiche dish. Lightly dust the top with about a tablespoon of sugar.

Carefully lift the dish and place in the preheated oven. Bake for about 45 minutes or until the clafoutis is puffed, just set, and a light golden brown.

Remove from the oven and serve hot — allow to cool briefly for 5 to 10 minutes only — or warm.

Store uneaten clafoutis in the refrigerator.

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“…a cheese-pie milk-and-honey-mixed was there, - a soft pie baked in a mould” - Deipnosophists, or, Banquet of the learned of Athenaeus, 228 CE

A short while back, someone asked if I had a recipe for a tarte au fromage blanc. A French cheesecake, if you will. I energetically, vehemently dislike American cheesecakes made with tangy cream cheese, but the tarte au fromage blanc, prepared with creamy, delicate fromage blanc, a fresh dairy product the consistency of sour cream but without the tartness, heavy cream, and egg whites, with just the right hint of vanilla, all whipped until light and ethereal, not dense and thick, baked in a shortcrust pastry shell, is absolutely divine.

But I had never made one before so had no recipe. Until now.

Tarte au fromage blanc — or tarte au fromage (cheese tart) — might very well be, I suspect, the first pastry to be created. Milk and cream, and thus all the various forms of cheesy by-products, have been part of the human diet since the domestication of animals during the Neolithic period; cheese likely emerged soon after, when milk carried in bladders made from the abomasums of ruminants naturally curdled due to the presence of rennet, the movement assisting the process of turning milk into cheese. This undoubtedly created a fromage blanc (“white cheese”) or a lait caillé (literally “curdled milk”) — as well as a “whipped” cream — as nomadic peoples traveled across Mesopotamia, these bladders strapped to the sides of cows, horses, camels, or whatever beasts jostled, lurched, and swayed across the uneven landscape.

It’s said by some that Anna Wecker wrote the first recipe for a tarte au fromage blanc in her landmark Ein Köstlich new Kochbuch (A Delicious New Cookbook) in 1597. Ein Köstlich new Kochbuch was a spectacular achievement being both the first cookbook published in Switzerland and the first cookbook written by (Anna) and published by (her daughter Katharina Taurellus) women in German. Wecker’s work wasn’t intended for aristocratic households with huge kitchens, professional chefs, and numerous household servants, like almost every cookbook written up to this time; it was written for simple, modest homes in which women prepared simple, home-style dishes, which made it truly unique. And yet, despite her stunning achievements, cheese tarts were already fairly common pastries in Europe by the time Anna put her recipes on paper.

Take a Syerziger (fresh whey cheese) or a cheese made from rich milk; when the whey has been well pressed out of it, beat it very smooth with eggs to the proper thickness. Sweeten it with sugar, and add good sweet butter to it, already in the pot. Bake it; while baking, sprinkle plenty of sugar over it, and cinnamon too, if you wish. It should become nicely crisp/browned. - Anna Wecker, Ein Köstlich new Kochbuchn 1597

The earliest known cheese tart, or so others say - a mixture of cheese with other ingredients and placed in a pastry casing — can be traced back to ancient Greece where it’s believed to have been fed to athletes in the first Olympic Games, several centuries before the Common Era, the cheese tart being considered highly nutritious and fortifying. It was also most likely an offering to the gods. A food of the gods? Divine! From there, the cheese tart spread, and hasn’t changed its essential form since.

Cato the Elder, most likely influenced by Greek culture, penned (penned?) De Agri Cultura (On Agriculture) in 160 BCE and offered not 1 but 2 recipes for a tart of this kind : the savillum is made with copious amounts of cheese blended with flour, honey, and a single egg , then baked in an earthenware pot. It is glazed with more honey and sprinkled with poppy seeds to serve. Cato’s placenta is a mixture of cheese and honey layered between thin sheets of pastry.

By the early Roman imperial period, a century or two after Cato’s treatise, the world of cheese pastries seems to have become more widespread and more elaborate. Chrysippus, an ancient Stoic philosopher from Tyana in Cappadocia (what is modern Turkey), appears to have written one of the earliest known specialized treatises devoted entirely to bread and cakes, The Art of Making Bread. His work survives thanks to Athenaeus, who, in his Deipnosophistae (The Banquet of the Learned), written around 228 CE, quotes Chrysippus’ writing, enumerating more then 2 dozen varieties cheese cakes and pastries of the ancient world. Some, we read, are made with groats and some with rye, some blended with wine or mead or flavored with sesame seeds, and

“this last,’ he says, ‘you will soften with sour wine, and if you have a little cheese you may mash the montianum up half with wine and half with cheese, and so it will be more palatable.”

“There is also,’ says Chrysippus, ‘a cheesecake made of rye. The phthois is made thus: - Take some cheese and pound it, then put it into a brazen sieve and strain it; then put in honey and a hēmina of flour made from spring wheat, and beat the whole together into one mass.”

Cheesecakes and cheese tarts were very popular, indeed.

By the Middle Ages — 2 centuries before Anna Wecker brought her fresh cheese tart into German and Swiss homes — and the Renaissance, this type of cheese pastry could be found in a slew of cookbooks in other parts of Europe, it’s popularity seemingly undiminished. And while the recipes may be more refined, they remain fundamentally rooted in the same ancient tradition. Forme of Cury, a collection of medieval English recipes compiled around 1390 by the master-cooks of King Richard II, included a recipe for a Tart de Bry (with just a little twist of flavor) : Make a pie crust an inch deep in a pie pan. Take yolks of eggs raw & Autumn cheese & mix it & the yolks together. Do there-to powder ginger, sugar, saffron, and salt. Do it in a pie shell; bake it & serve it forth.

Le Viandier by Guillaume Tirel (known as Taillevent), the first cookbook printed in France in 1486 though written roughly a century earlier and therefore contemporary with Forme of Cury, included not one but three recipes for fresh cheese tarts. The Bourbonnaise tart is a neutral pastry, neither savory nor sweet, the filling made simply of cream, cheese, and yolks. The Jacopine tart is a two-crust pie, the same as the other with the addition of a large quantity of sugar and eel. Yes, eel, sliced and well boiled, most likely adding both a savory and a rich, fatty element to the tart; the addition of both eel and sugar, an expensive ingredient, made this a more elaborate and luxurious version of an otherwise simple dish.

While those early Greek and Roman cheese tarts were often and commonly sweetened, in these later years in France it was highly unusual for cheese tarts to include sugar mixed into the batter; rather, it was only dusted on top just before serving, sugar being treated as a rare and costly spice or flavoring, suggesting that the pastry itself — with or without sugar incorporated into the filling — was nonetheless considered a dessert.

Taillevent’s third recipe was for a talmouse, a pastry described by Jean Nicot in his 1584 Dictionnaire François-Latin as a placenta triquetra caseata— a triangular cheese pastry — placenta for the pastry base, triquetra for its iconic tricorne shape, and caseata for its cheesy filling. The phrase itself preserves a culinary vocabulary — and influence — stretching all the way back to De Agri Cultura, where placenta already referred to a cheese-filled pastry. The talmouse would be popular for centuries, easily found in many cookbooks, the combination of ingredients of the filling varying from one recipe to another over time, but always, always centered around cheese.

Bartolomeo Scappi’s luxurious torta di capi di latte (in his 1570 cookbook Opera, the Art and Craft of a Master Cook, a quarter century before Wecker’s) is a sophisticated, regal blending of capi di latte, a fresh curd cheese like thick cream or the French fromage blanc or lait caillé, ricotta, a grated rich hard cheese, eggs, sugar, spices, pine nuts, and ground cookies for a thickener (the French often did this instead of using flour). This filling was baked in a pastry shell and served dusted with more sugar.

By the mid-17th century and François Pierre de La Varenne’s landmark Le Pâtissier François, the tarte au fromage or “cheesecake,” prepared with a soft fresh cheese, had become almost standard, and his recipe is a clear transition between the medieval cheese tart and the modern cheesecake, much like Wecker’s, although with some differences. But La Varenne has 2 versions of his “tarte au fromage” : the one I have given below in italics, using a mix of soft, full-fat cheese and, like Scappi, grated slightly aged dry cheese; this second might very well have been added to the tart as a flavoring agent. He creates a cream by beating in melted butter and eggs, indicating very precisely the consistency of the uncooked filling, then adding just a tad of flour to bind. The finished tart is dusted with sugar, making this tarte au fromage blanc, like the others, either a savory or a sweet dish.

Take an amount of full-fat soft cheese about the size of two fists, and one or two walnut-sized pieces of slightly aged dry cheese, crushed, grated, or cut into very small pieces, with salt to taste and about a quarter-pound of good unsalted butter, melted. Add the white and yolk of one or two eggs. Mix all these ingredients together thoroughly to loosen them, adding a little cold water if the mixture is too thick; but if the soft cheese is very soft and releases whey, no water should be added—instead, the whey should be drained off, otherwise the mixture will become too runny. Bring the mixture to the consistency of a thick cooked porridge or glue. Add also an amount of fine flour or white breadcrumbs about the size of an egg. Fill the tart with this mixture and bake it in the oven; when baked, it may be dusted with sugar. Note that good pork fat may be used instead of butter in making these cheese tarts. - La Varenne, Le Pastissier François, 1653

His second recipe, most definitely a dessert, in my opinion, sweetens the cheese tart in a rather unusual way: a layer of egg yolks beaten with sugar is first spread over the crust, then topped with the cheese filling before baking, creating a kind of sweet custard base beneath the creamy cheese.

Although the first mention I could find of the exact term “fromage blanc” was from 1581 — “Plus seven thousand one hundred and ten pounds of fromage blanc, not including the said covered persons and prebendaries, who are supplied elsewhere.” — mentioned a single time in a political book by Nicolas Barnard entitled Le Cabinet du Roy de France, as part of a long list of quantities of foodstuffs distributed, consumed, taxed, or provisioned, the term fromage blanc wasn’t used in cookbooks until 2 centuries later, or so I could find. Cheese tarts, darioles, and flans, when not made with simply cream, were made with fromage mol (or mou) non-écrémé (or gras) ou fin fromage — soft, full-fat cheese or fine or rich cheese, consistency unknown, and even possibly variable.

Until Joseph Menon finally pulls out the words “fromage blanc” in Les Soupers de la Cour in 1755. His tourte à la paysanne is interesting in that it is not only prepared with “un fromage blanc à la crême fait de la veille” — “a cream-based white cheese made the day before” — but that it is considered a “paysanne” confection, a peasant’s tart. Even though his recipes were, indeed, for the Court.

Fresh (frais) and soft (mou) cheeses such as Neufchâtel and Viryou à la crème; white cheeses or fromages blanc (à la pie): These cheeses, which can be endlessly varied by whipping them, mixing them with other ingredients, or flavoring them with rose or vanilla, etc., must always be eaten very fresh, as they turn sour quickly. The simplest way to serve them is to thin them with a little milk and add sugar. - Sophie Wattel, Les Cent Mille Recettes, 1800s

What I find so curious is the idea that kept coming up in my research: that the tarte au fromage blanc, or cheesecake, may have been brought into northern Europe — Germany, northern France, Alsace, and surrounding countries — through the Jewish community, the wandering diaspora carrying recipes from various cultures and traditions and adapting them into their own culinary world wherever they settled. What makes the theory so compelling is the importance of dairy dishes in Jewish cuisine itself, as well as the presence of Jewish communities in Ancient Greece and Rome, throughout the Middle East, and later in Russia and the Slavic countries, where fresh-cheese pastries existed long before the medieval tarte au fromage blanc. The idea that Jews may have embraced a dairy-based pastry and carried it with them through migration into the heart of Europe makes this idea, while difficult to prove directly, intriguing nonetheless.

And then, just like that, the tarte au fromage blanc seems to disappear from French cookbooks for nearly a century, eclipsed by newer and more elaborate pastries, as the 19th century ushered in a remarkable period of culinary innovation, from Carême to Gouffé and Garlin, not only in the pastries themselves, but in the techniques, utensils, and methods that transformed la pâtisserie française into an increasingly refined and technical art. The 19th century, perhaps with the rise of the bourgeoisie, seems to have moved momentarily away from simpler, homier desserts in favor of more elegant creations. It would only be with the rise of domestic cookbooks intended for modest households that these older home-baked traditions would re-emerge in print, or in regional cookbooks, often as a tarte alsacienne.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the tarte au fromage blanc seems to have settled into regional culinary traditions, as different regions gradually began claiming it as their own. The käskùche in Lorraine, käseküeche or käsekuchen in Alsace, flaune in the Massif Central, fiadone in Corsica, tarte au maugin or m’gin in Metz and Moselle, tarte au maugin or môjin in the Vosges, le tourteau fromagé in Poitou, all variations on the same fresh-cheese pastry, each using its own local fresh cheese and shaped by regional tastes and traditions. The tarte au fromage blanc also began appearing often in women’s publications and newspaper columns as an easy, nutritious, and economical homemade treat.

And so, yes, I now have a recipe for a tarte au fromage blanc. This simple treat with its simple history — I’m beginning to suspect that the simplest foods, humble or otherwise, often possess the longest and most far-reaching histories — has now found a place in my own kitchen. It’s long, winding history from Ancient Greece and Republican Rome to medieval Paris, from Renaissance Germany to the kitchens of Alsace and Lorraine, it remains a stunningly humble, ordinary, and yet very special dessert. I’m so glad someone asked me to make it.

I made the recipe twice, one in a smaller, shallower pie plate that did not hold all of the filling. The second I made in 9 ½ inch springform pan that was the perfect size for both the pastry crust and the filling recipe quantities. The texture for both tarts once baked was exactly the same — light and airy and delicate.

Tarte au Fromage Blanc

For a 9 ½ to 10-inch (25/26-cm) tart.

Pâte brisée - sweet shortcrust dough:

1 ¾ to 2 cups (260 grams) all-purpose flour

¼ cup (50 grams) sugar

8 ⅓ tablespoons (125 grams) unsalted butter, chilled but slightly softened, cubed

¼ cup (65 ml) cold water

Filling:

3 eggs, separated

500 grams full fat fromage blanc

¾ cup (200 ml) full fat heavy cream

¾ cup (150 grams) sugar

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

6 tablespoons (60 grams) flour

Prepare the pastry crust:

Toss the flour and sugar together in a large mixing bowl. Add the butter in cubes, tossing in the dry ingredients to separate them. Using your thumbs and fingertips, rub the butter and dry ingredients together until there are no more chunks of butter visible (it’s fine to have tiny bits of butter left), all the dry ingredients are moistened with the butter, and the mixture looks like damp sand or ground almond meal. Using a fork, vigorously stir the cold water into the mixture until everything is moistened and a dough starts to form; add another tablespoon of cold water if necessary. Using a soft bench/dough scraper and then your hands, scrape and gather the dough together into a ball then knead lightly until you have a smooth, homogeneous dough. Gather the dough into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).

Butter the bottom and sides of a 9 ½ to 10-inch (25/26-cm) pie dish or springform pan at least 2 inches (5 cm) deep. Dust the buttered dish or pan with flour and shake out the excess.

Prepare the filling:

Separate the eggs, placing the yolks in a small bowl and the whites in a medium-sized bowl for beating, preferably plastic or metal. Add a small pinch of salt and (if you have one on hand) a couple of drops of lemon or lime juice to the whites and set aside.

Put the fromage blanc and the heavy cream in a large mixing bowl; using an electric mixer, beat on low speed to blend, then increase speed to medium-high and continue beating for about 2 minutes until thick and creamy. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time until well blended. Beat in the vanilla and then the sugar.

Scrape down the side of the bowl and beat in the flour in 3 or 4 additions until you have a thick, smooth batter.

Using very clean beaters, beat the egg whites on low speed for 30 seconds, then increase speed and beat until the whites are opaque, no longer foamy, and just hold soft (not stiff) peaks. Gently fold the whites into the batter in 3 additions.

Personally - I like to beat the eggs whites, then prepare the rest of the filling, then roll out the dough and line the pie tin and THEN fold the whites into the batter just before pouring into the lined pan. Either way is fine.

Prepare the tart:

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and discard the plastic wrap. On a lightly floured board, roll the dough out to fit the prepared pie dish - gently lift it to the plate or pan and fit the dough into the dish; trim before or after adding the filling. Prick the bottom of the pastry crust all over with a fork.

Gently pour the filling into the pastry crust and lightly even the top, making sure the cream fills the dish all the way to the sides. The filling should come up to the top edge of the lined pie dish and pastry shell.

Bake the tart in the preheated oven until puffed up and a deep golden brown; don’t worry if the tart cracks. The crust should also looked golden and baked.

Mine both baked for 1 hour 15 minutes. Check yours often as different pie plates and ovens can affect baking time.

Remove the tart from the oven and allow to cool on a rack before removing from the pan (if baking in a springform pan) and slicing. Enjoy this tarte au fromage blanc warm, at room temperature, or chilled. Serve dusted with powdered sugar and with fresh summer berries or a nice berry or plum coulis, sauce or compote.

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I was sitting with two *older* gentlemen over coffee, just done with the morning marketing. Both of them are on the verge of retirement, straddling the world of working full time and whatever they want their new life to be. One of them made the remark : “I’m ready to begin my fifth life.”

He, like the other gentleman (who happens to be my husband) — and I, if we’re going to be exact — have lived many lives, changing professions, moving to new cities, slipping into new personas. It wasn’t about having no fear of change, but rather a compulsion to change, born of restlessness, wanderlust, and curiosity.

And it often had as much to do with being ready to move away from something as much as towards something else. We’d get bored of the familiar, of the predictable, the routine and other people’s expectations, the aspects of life that, quite frankly, we were fed up with. Who has the time (and by time I mean counting the years) to waste with unhappiness?

I suddenly blurted out something I’ve been telling myself for decades: “We have the possibility to do anything with our life that we want to. We set our own rules. We only have one life and how we live it is completely up to us. Most people live a well-ordered life, following a straight path from A to B to C to D to E to F to G… as society dictates (or maybe “facilitates” is a better word). It’s the unspoken rule.”

The first gentleman answered : “It’s easier when life is ordered; It’s reassuring to live our life “au carré” - structured, disciplined, by the book - to know what to expect, whether or not we enjoy it.”

Most do just that. But I’ve never been able to. Circumstances change and I follow not so much opportunities but whatever happens to present itself. A little bit of instinct, a lot of impulse. I know that I have never fit in, so I never quite got from A to B in the first place.

“Being able to change my life as I see fit, whenever I want to, setting my own rules” is a cliché I’ve embraced and repeated to myself ad infinitum, ever since that day I found myself standing on a New York City street telling my cousin I was quitting my job and moving to Paris. “I wish I could do that,” he replied, slight heavy hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Maybe I would if I didn’t have a real job.” His stress on the “real” was a stab, as if my working in an art gallery 11 to 7 was a hobby that could easily be dropped on a whim. Not serious. And he clearly saw my leaving to “move to Paris” as a whim, another frivolous impulsive decision by someone who had yet to choose her path and settle down.

“Maybe I would if I didn’t have a real job.” I remember thinking to myself : “Oh, how wrong you are. You could if you wanted to. You can do whatever you want to do.” But I didn’t have the heart to argue or the energy to defend myself.

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” — George Eliot

It’s an awfully strange thing to think about where I am now, so many years later, owning a business in the middle of France. Writing about French food. None of it was planned. None of it was expected. Many of you know my story — I’ve written about it before : three years out of college and my life was in shambles. I was unhappy, working a job I didn’t like for less money than I needed to live decently in the city that never sleeps. I had flushed my antidepressants down the toilet and was holding on day to day, trying to figure out how to pull it all together. I didn’t know where to go or how to get there; I didn’t know what to do or how to do it. After a terrifying health crisis and an even worse run-in with the American healthcare system, I decided to run. I quit my job, gave notice to my landlord, packed 2 battered old suitcases (one had what mysteriously looked like a cigarette burn in it, and I never figured that out), and dumped everything else I owned on the street in front of my fifth-floor ungentrified Brooklyn walkup, most of it stuffed into black trash bags. But that’s okay…I didn’t have very much anyway.

And I walked away. Correction : I ran away. With those 2 suitcases and $400 cash, everything I owned.

And I struggled. For 2 years, strolling through the streets of Paris, seeing art, eating croissants and the best summer fruit imaginable, counting my meagre stash of francs to see what I could afford, flying back to the USA when my money would dwindle down to the cost of a one-way ticket back, and temping until I earned enough to return to Paris. And then I did it again. And again. Several times. I wasn’t particularly drawn to Paris — I had never really had that enchanted vision of the city of lights. That might be because I was running from something more than I was running to something. I was trying to escape the old me.

It was neither romantic nor adventurous. It wasn’t even particularly enjoyable. It was just something I had to do.

Haven’t you ever felt like starting over? Running away and starting over, I’ve discovered, are the same thing, just looking at it from different angles. As Jacques said sitting over coffees on that terrace in the sunshine : “I’m ready to begin my fifth life.”

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” ― Oscar Wilde

I’ve read so many memoirs of young women who have dropped everything and moved to Paris or Rome. It’s so wildly romantic, don’t you think? Leave a husband, quit a job, reject a career, forsake the life everyone expected of you. Start over. And like any good novel, every memoir must have tension, conflict, struggle, transformation, desire. And a happy ending. Oh, and it should be aspirational, so not too much of the tension, conflict, and struggle (but one might add a touch of friction or worry when there is none, just to keep things interesting). It should be relatable, every reader must be able to see herself in the author’s shoes. I imagine there are good editors everywhere guiding an author’s hand, tempering the story, keeping the narrative compelling but not too bleak. Aspiration doesn’t thrive on despair.

Mine won’t be anything like any of those I’ve read because my story is unlike any of them. Mine is full of despair, messy, resistant to moving cleanly from one state of normalcy to another. But I could say my story has a heroine that more people might recognize, one that has lived a life more familiar to readers — and that ordinary life, with its upheavals, bad choices, grief, unexpected adventures and unusual outcomes, might, in fact, be more aspirational than all those pretty little fairytales.

Oh, sorry—I’ve gotten completely off track. These thoughts were triggered by that conversation at 10 a.m. last Thursday morning, at a sidewalk café in Chinon. And by the dozens of astrology accounts I seem to follow on Instagram, each one trumpeting that 2026 is the year for Aquarians — which I am. They each promise a year of success and riches, my wildest dreams coming true. A lifetime of feeling strange and out of sync with the world, they predict, years of struggle and anguish, suddenly blooming into something magnificent — everything I’ve lived and experienced leading up to this moment and the exceptional woman I am about to become.

It’s not hard to let myself be convinced that greatness is just around the corner, the idea that everything — the confusion, the false starts, the years of feeling misplaced — has been building toward something, and that it will all resolve into a story that makes sense, that happy ending. I’ve been working so very hard, yet sometimes it just feels like movement, back and forth, pitching side to side, one step forward and two steps…you know how it is.

But now I have allowed myself to believe the astrological hocus pocus, and I actually feel like there has indeed been a shift. I just went through a reckoning: I was offered something I thought I really, really wanted and, after a long struggle, turned it down, only to be offered something else — something that I may have wanted even more, and this is only just dawning on me because of this unforeseen turn of events.

My life has been a series of impetuous, impulsive decisions, unanticipated detours and experiments, surprises and unexpected trajectories. I haven’t always felt like I was moving forward, but looking back I know I have. I don’t always feel like my hard work is justly rewarded — sometimes I don’t even feel like I work very hard (I’m the queen of procrastination, taking on too many projects at the same time, and just plain laziness), and yet it has led me here.

I know I have been neglecting my Substack - I’ve been neglecting my Substack readers…. Hotel season got off to a bumpy start, having to hire one new full time employee (and train him) and two new seasonal workers; we renovated room 21 by ourselves — I was called in to hang wallpaper, the tv, artwork, and select new deco; two of our employees each took a week off this month of April and I am filling in. So I have had no time to devote to my Substack. But the news is I am starting a new project that I hope will turn into a book if I am able to gather enough information, and I already have someone interested in helping me get it published. If I write it in French. We’ll see.

By May 1, things should begin to calm down and I’ll get back to developing new (old) recipes for you. I have been working on one that I know you will love.

Today I decided to go all-American and share a favorite classic layer cake with you, a golden vanilla yellow cake, stacked to impress, and frosted with my favorite - and easiest - buttercream frosting.

Classic Yellow Layer Cake with Creamy Mocha Frosting

2 cups (400 grams) sugar

3 ¼ cups (420 grams) flour

2 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

12 tablespoons (170 grams) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

1 ¼ cups (300 ml) milk at room temperature

2 teaspoons vanilla

4 large eggs at room temperature

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).

Grease (I brush with softened butter) three 8-inch round cake pans and line the bottom of each with a round of parchment paper.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the softened butter in large chunks all at once and beat on low speed until the butter is well and evenly blended in and it resembles sand.

Combine the milk and vanilla and add to the bowl all at once; beat on low speed for 30 seconds then increase the speed to medium and continue to beat for another 30 seconds. Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating first on low speed for 30 seconds to blend then on medium speed for 30 seconds after the addition of each egg, scraping the bowl as needed. Once all four eggs are blended in, beat at medium or high speed for an additional 30 seconds.

Divide the batter evenly among the 3 prepared cake pans and bake in the preheated oven until the cake is set in the center and lightly golden, from 25 – 35 minutes, depending on your oven (keep close watch). The cake should just be beginning to pull away from the sides of the pan either in the oven or as you set it on a cooling rack to cool. Allow the layers to cool for about 10 minutes or so before turning out onto cooling racks to cool completely before frosting.

Creamy Mocha Frosting

Old faithful — my favorite buttercream frosting is so simple to whip together and the variations are endless. I beat in a small amount of ricotta to this recipe, but you can replace the ricotta with fresh mascarpone, if you prefer. You can replace the brewed/prepared coffee with very hot water; if you do, beat in a little vanilla to the frosting.

12 ounces (350 grams) powdered/confectioner’s sugar

8 tablespoons (120 grams) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

1.8 ounces (50 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder

4 tablespoons very hot, strong brewed/prepared coffee

2 - 4 tablespoons fresh ricotta cheese, optional but sublime

Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and the powdered sugar together. Add the cocoa powder and the hot coffee and beat, scraping down the sides as necessary, until well blended and fluffy. Beat in the ricotta (or mascarpone, 1 tablespoon at a time until desired consistency.

Chill in the refrigerator until beautifully spreadable but firm enough so that when the cake is frosted the layers does not slide when stacked.

Frost the tops of each of the three layers then stack, placing the bottom layer on a cake or serving plate. I slip strips of waxed paper or parchment under the edges of the bottom cake layer before frosting the sides in order to keep the plate clean and frosting-free. Smooth the frosting on the sides of the cake. Gently slide the strips of parchment out from under the cake and retouch as needed.

Chill the cake in the refrigerator until the frosting has firmed, if needed. Because the frosting contains butter, it is best to store uneaten cake in the refrigerator.

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In the September 15, 1777 issue of La Gazette (Paris), it was reported that 42 bricklayers, having dined on fricasseed meat and green beans, also fricasseed, at an innkeeper’s table in the Old Market of Aguesseau, Faubourg Saint-Honoré, suddenly and immediately fell ill, suffering from acute stomach pains, accompanied by general discomfort and violent cramps. Monsieur Coste, master surgeon of Paris, and Monsieur Ters, the King’s surgeon serving in the district, were consulted. “After inquiring about the nature of the food and inspecting the copper (cooking) vessels in the house, which they found to be in fairly good condition, they decided to provide some relief for the suffering of the unfortunate workers, without being able to determine the immediate cause.” Their remedies (which included white soap in milk and theriac diluted in wine) induced a complete (and somewhat violent) purging of their sorry bodies which did calm the pains and their suffering. “The next day, oily potions and rice water enemas were prescribed, and this method proved so successful that of the forty-two patients, none perished.”

Fricassée is truly a delightful dish, despite the misadventure that befell 42 bricklayers in the year 1777. Their misfortune could have been due to anything.

Fricassée is a fairly common word, both as a verb (to prepare as a fricassee) or as a noun (stewed meat, especially chicken or veal, and vegetables, served in a thick white sauce). It is, in fact, an extremely old word, already common in 16th century France. Livre Fort Excellent de Cuysine Tresutille & Proffitable, written in the most elegant gothic script in 1542, may be the first French cookbook to offer a fricassee recipe. The author slices both livers and onions, his focus ingredients, seasons with salt, and fries them in saindoux, or bacon grease, serving the dish dusted with “poudre blanche” or white powder, possibly a blend of cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and sugar - white foods and white ingredients were often associated with purity and high social standing, so used and prepared them often when one’s status could afford it.

The dish called fricassée appears to have emerged in France in the sixteenth century. The word itself may derive from frire (“to fry”) or from friture, a fried preparation, possibly influenced by Burgundian dialect. The dish itself, however, is thought to be older. Earlier medieval dishes such as cominée de gélines — a cumin-seasoned chicken stew — suggest that similar poultry preparations existed well before the term fricassée came into use.

The word fricassée itself took on a dizzying array of meanings: proverbially, as Antoine Furetière explained in his 1690 dictionary, a fricassée was a chaotic mix of a whole bunch of different things, a fricassée of words or objets, such as “Fragonard’s fricassée of angels” from Denis Diderot’s biting criticism of the artist’s new-fangled style, as well as a military term to refer to the tumult, noise, and precipitation made by war drums to quickly gather the troops specifically upon the arrival of a person of special rank they wish to honor. Mme de Sévigné, in her famous letters of this same period, used the word fricassée to mean a light, informal meal eaten in the countryside or away from home, a hodgepodge of dishes probably from leftovers or prepared quickly with what was on hand. La fricassée was also a rustic folk dance dating from the 16th century, slowly evolving into something for the stage, a lively, chaotic medley of steps that sometimes bizarrely imitated real-life actions.

This makes me wonder: were these definitions taken from the dish, or was the dish taken from the meaning? A classic chicken and egg conundrum.

The earliest example I could find of the word fricassé appears in the 1530 text Summaire Trés Singulier de Toute Médecine et Cirurgie. This is a fascinating example because it shows the word fricasser used in a medical context, which helps confirm the word’s secondary meaning — to heat or fry vigorously — rather than the later culinary dish. The text instructs: “One should apply hot cloths to the head and make a preparation of honey and coarse salt, fricasseed together in a pan…” François Rabelais referred to a piece of clothing looking like a “paelle à fricasser chastaignes” - a pan for frying/fricasseeing chestnuts - in his 1553 tales of Pantagruel.

We see this strictly technical use continue into the next century; in 1604, Lancelot de Casteau uses the word fricassée in dozens of recipes for fish, birds, veal, poultry, or fruit in his Ouverture de Cuisine strictly as a verb, to mean “fry in butter or olive oil.”

In the late Middle Ages and the early French Renaissance, the period that it first appeared in the Livre Fort Excellent, the dish might very well have been defined by its movement. Meat cut into pieces — often chicken, veal, or even fish — though sometimes vegetables or fruit, was first sautéed in a pan with fat (the frire part, the verb and the action “to fry,” which also came to mean the frantic tossing and sizzling of the ingredients) before being simmered in a liquid. But the opposite could also be true : the many cultural meanings of the word — the military drums and the chaotic mix of objects or people, the crazy dance and the jumble of dishes offered at a casual meal — may very likely have come from this physical act in the kitchen. The way meat or vegetables were cut into pieces and tossed around willy-nilly in sizzling butter, oil, or fat created a scene of constant movement and fragmentation. It wasn’t just a recipe; it was a state of agitation.

François Pierre de La Varenne’s landmark Le Cuisinier François, a 1651 cookbook that marked the shift from medieval spiced cooking (pouldre/poudre blanche) to butter-or-cream based sauces and reductions, contains what I believe may be approaching the first modern version of the dish, cooking chicken pieces in broth, “fricasseeing” the drained pieces, seasoning them with fresh herbs, and thickening the sauce with yolks. In 1656, Pierre de Lune takes one step forward in Le Cuisinier by frying the piece in bacon grease, adding white wine with butter and seasonings, adding flour to thicken, and broth and lemon juice as a finishing, flavorful touch.

But it’s François Massialot, in his wonderful and important Cuisinier Roïal et Bourgeois published in 1691, that completed the recipe, the final steps in the evolution of the dish.

In his fricassée de poulets au blanc & au roux, the chicken pieces are first browned in bacon fat or lard, then simmered in butter with broth or water, white wine, and seasonings. The dish may be garnished with mushrooms, artichoke hearts, or kidneys, and the sauce is finished with egg yolks and brightened with lemon juice or verjus. A variation, fricassée de poulets à la crème, adds cream to the sauce before serving. We now have all of the elements of the dish cooked in French homes today : chicken pieces, butter, white wine, mushrooms, egg yolks, lemon juice, and cream; the sauce becomes what we would recognize as a velouté-based preparation that we’ll find in similar dishes, fricassée, blanquette, and coq au vin blanc.

The title of Massialot’s book Cuisinier Roïal et Bourgeois — “royal and bourgeois” — is significant, as well. It suggests a transition from purely courtly cuisine to something that could be reproduced in wealthy households, reflecting a deliberate shift in culinary culture. He even includes the phrase “very useful book for families” in the title itself, placing our fricassée de poulet not only on noble tables, but also in the homes and kitchens of the prosperous bourgeoisie.

Little by little, the dish descended the social ladder, spreading from upper-class kitchens into the homes of a broader and more modest public, where it would become an everyday, economical preparation. As early as 1757, the recipe appeared in Cuisine et Office de Santé Propre à Ceux Qui Vivent avec Oeconomie et Régime, “for those who manage their health and their pocketbook.” Louis Liger explains in his cookbook OEconomie Générale de la Campagne, ou Nouvelle Maison Rustique in the year 1700 that when “the chickens are a little too tough and gamey, we make a fricassee with them.” La Cuisinière du Bon Marché pour la Ville et la Campagne (The Economical/Thrifty Cook for Town and Country) by Mme Victorine de Blancmesnil, 1850, La Petite Ménagère (The Little Homemaker) by Madame Dufrénoy (1816), M. Burnet’s 1936 Dictionnaire de Cuisine et Économie, Le Cuisinier Parisien ou Manuel Complet d’Économie Domestique (B. Albert, 1812), La Véritable Cuisine de Famille by Tante Marie (1922), Henri-Paul Pellaprat’s Les Menus Détaillés de la Ménagère (The Housewife’s Detailed Menus, 1937), all contained recipes for chicken fricassée, which has now not only been standardized in both ingredients and cooking method, but it illustrates how this recipe went from high end to every day, an easy-to-prepare and economical family-style dish.

As Alexandre Dumas wrote in 1873 “In some provinces, a very appetizing and comforting fricassee is made.”

By this time, chicken had become the default fricassée; it was readily available throughout the year and accessible to people across all economic classes, as well as simple to separate into pieces. In his 1938 Larousse Gastronomique, Prosper Montagné confirms “In modern usage, the word fricassée is used almost exclusively to refer to a method of cooking poultry in white sauce”. You might see frogs’ legs or eels, rabbit, calve’s foot, or beef “fricasseed in the style of chicken”, as well as fricasée of pumpkin, mushrooms or onions, eggs or livers, with the cooking process, if not the ingredients, to be understood. By the end of the 19th century, you will also find variations of the classic now adapted by different regions of the country, fricassée de poulet à l’alsacienne or mode de Bresse or lyonnaise or à la dauphine or à l’angevine (from Anjou).

There was a story told in the August 1948 issue of Le Moniteur des Théâtres that illustrates perfectly how this dish moved from being a high end and, eventually, a high end restaurant dish to being a preferred family meal prepared in kitchens across France. This story is about a provincial lawyer, serious and educated, who traveled to Paris where he remained for several days. During his stay, he invited friends to dine with him at a celebrated restaurant where they ordered the fricassée de poulet - the chicken fricassee. The discussion turned to cooking. “ I must admit I know nothing about it,” declared the lawyer. “but if I were to speak purely from personal taste, I’d say that this Parisian chicken fricassee seems far inferior to the ones I’m served at home…..the recipe for which is simple and easy.” The group of gentlemen called over the garçon and demanded he have a fricassee prepared for them following his own cook’s instructions. When served the dish, the group unanimously declared this version delicious! They returned to following evening to have the dish prepared for them once more.

This is a classic fricassée de poulet and as delicious and comforting as it is to prepare, even if there are a few steps.

Fricassée de poulet

2.2 pounds (1 kilo) or slightly more skin-on chicken, either in pieces or cut into pieces

3 - 4 tablespoons flour seasoned well with salt and pepper

5 ounces (140 grams) champignons de Paris, white or brown

10 or 12 fresh small boiler onions or large pearl onions (oignons sauciers)

1 tablespoon vegetable oil, a little more if needed

1 tablespoon butter, a little more if needed

2 tablespoons (20 grams) flour

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Large pinch ground nutmeg

½ bottle - 1 ½ cups (375 ml) dry white wine * (see note)

1 bay leaf and a few branches fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves

2 egg yolks

½ cup (125 ml) heavy whipped cream or crème fraîche

1 lemon

*note: the best white wine for this recipe is a dry French wine, a Chenin blanc from Anjou or Chinon, or a chardonnay, such as a Bordeaux blanc.

Prepare the chicken pieces by trimming off and discarding any large pockets of fat and flaps of skin; leave the skin on the chicken. Pat the chicken pieces on all sides with paper towels. Lightly flour the chicken pieces in the seasoned flour; or roll and lightly press each chicken piece in the seasoned flour, coating all sides, then shaking off the excess flour. Set aside.

Clean the mushroom caps with paper towels and discard the stems (or save them for making vegetable broth). Slice smaller mushroom caps in half, larger ones in quarters. Trim and peel the onions. Set both aside.

Heat a tablespoon of oil and about a tablespoon of butter in a large heavy pot, Dutch oven or skillet, over medium heat. When the fat is very hot, lightly brown the floured and seasoned chicken pieces on both sides; this is best done in two batches to avoid crowding and takes only 6 or 7 minutes per batch. Remove the browned chicken to a plate and continue with the rest of the pieces.

Once all the chicken is lightly browned and set aside, add the onions to the sizzling fat in the pot and cook until browned on both or all sides; this should only take a couple of minutes.

Return the chicken pieces to the pot with the onions and dust with an additional tablespoon or two of flour, a generous dusting of salt and freshly ground black pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg. Add the wine, scraping the bottom of the pot as best you can, and then bring the liquid just up to a boil. If needed, add a little water (or broth, if you like) just to barely cover the chicken pieces with liquid. Add the thyme and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, place a lid on the pot slightly ajar, and allow the fricassée to simmer for 40 minutes.

At the end of the 40 minutes, add the mushrooms, pushing them under the surface of the liquid. Continue to cook for an additional 15 to 20 minutes until the chicken is cooked through and the onions and mushrooms are tender.

Using a slotted spoon, carefully lift the chicken and onions out of the pot and onto a plate. If there is too much liquid for a nice, slightly thick sauce, leave it to simmer uncovered for several minutes then take the pot off the heat.

Just before serving, whisk the egg yolks into the cream then stir into the cooking liquid off the heat. Return the chicken to the pot and return to a low heat just to heat through. Squeeze the juice of about half a lemon into the sauce, taste, correct seasonings, and serve immediately.

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It’s worth making this just for the name.

Flamusse.

An unusual and enjoyable name. Flamusse.

Like the tôt-fait, the millas, crêpes, the clafoutis and the flognarde, the flamusse is a simple, homely treat made when time is short and fancier ingredients are wanting — or just not affordable. A dessert born of necessity and pantry staples. The flamusse is a rustic household preparation, a specialty of the region of Burgundy in France, made with basic ingredients found in every kitchen: eggs, milk, flour, and sugar. Sometimes savory and sometimes sweet, today it is most commonly found made with apples, when apples are grown locally and easy to come by in season, of course.

But the flamusse wasn’t always this delicious sweet egg-and-milk batter confection. In older Burgundian dialect glossaries, flamusse is described as a flat baked preparation made from maize — or corn — a galette or flatbread. In 1787 — the earliest written mention I could find of this curiously-named cake — Artus Bertrand grouped flamusse among enriched maize “cakes,” noting that in Burgundy such preparations were made by mixing toasted corn flour with milk or cream. This wasn’t a refined dessert, or even a dessert at all, but a rustic baked good, a compact, unleavened, unsweetened cross between a cake and a bread, a daily staple of the rural or peasant diet.

FLÀMUSSE, FLÉMUSSE, FLAMEÙSSE: small bread, country cake, kneaded with flour, corn or buckwheat, and seasoned with eggs, milk, and sometimes squash. All these local pastries have a most pleasant flavor. Housewives make them wonderfully well. - Dictionnaire du Langage Populaire Verduno-Chalonnais (Saône-et-Loire) by François Fertiault, 1896

Like those other baked goods, you won’t find the flamusse in many cookbooks, if at all, and certainly not in epicurean writings. To understand its origins and its place in French homes requires looking elsewhere — to studies of rural economy, agricultural reports, and sociological treatises that took an obviously intense interest in what ordinary people ate. Readers often ask how I can possibly trace the history of a home or peasant recipe when cookbooks — until the late nineteenth century — were written for noble or bourgeois kitchens. This is how.

In 1879, Dr. Lucien Guillemaut, describing daily life in the Bresse Louhannaise region of France, part of the historic region of Burgundy (today part of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté), notes that farmers ate flammusse alongside bread, milk, soup, cheese, and gaudes, another type of corn cake, daily — not as a dessert, but as part of their ordinary meals or refreshment — clearly everyday food, basic sustenance, rather than something special or celebratory. Corn first appeared in Franche-Comté during the 17th century. Its cultivation spread rapidly because this new cereal was exempt from tithes, was easy to grow, and kept well once the ears had been roasted in an oven. It was easily accessible and cheap, particularly a great source of flour before wheat became readily available in the mid-19th century, and thus a reliable source of nourishment.

Corn remained important in Bresse and parts of eastern France, but in Burgundy proper, wheat gained dominance in domestic baking in the latter half of the 19th century. Maize gradually became socially coded as “poor people’s food,” and yet the two variations of flamusse continued to coexist into the 20th century — by which time recipes began to appear in both cookbooks and newspapers. As late as 1909, the Journal d’agriculture pratique observed that corn was still eaten in the form of flammusse, “a thick pancake,” though its popularity was declining with the spread of white bread in rural areas — evidence of how gradually, yet slowly, culinary habits evolve.

Perhaps it was this shift from corn to wheat that subsequently transformed the flamusse from a sustaining flatbread into the sweet dessert we recognize today.

Or maybe it’s because — as was written in the 1928 Bulletin de la Société des Naturalistes et des Archéologues de l’Ain — “the fact is that this (corn) cake or flammusse is an unappetizing food and is difficult to digest. Sometimes, in modest households, a small cornbread is made on a whim when the oven is hot, declaring it to be pleasant to eat.”

Culinary traditions are tricky things.

In the 1929 quarterly historical journal Annales de Bourgogne, the flamusse was mentioned in an article on corn and millet, stating that a corn paste was used “to make a kind of flatbread, the tasty flamusse with a brown crust and golden crumb, which is still eaten today.” A few years earlier, the 1926 Larousse Ménagère (illustrated dictionary of domestic life) includes flamusse with 2 distinct definitions of this traditional baked good: a “Burgundy cake made with cheese, butter, eggs, and flour, similar to a gougère” and a “corn cake from Franche-Comté.” A mere ten years later, Prosper Montagné included flamusse in his newly written Larousse Gastronomique, describing this pâtisserie bourguignonne as “a kind of flan, made in a shortcrust pastry shell and filled with a cheese custard blended with eggs. Flamusse (a type of cornbread) is a specialty of Franche-Comté. Among the sweet treats of the Nivernais region, such as pâtis series and confections, we would mention: apple flamusse (a type of clafoutis).” Montagné applies the name flamusse to both versions.

The flamusse eventually took on the form of what was described as a “thick pancake,” made from the simplest of batters — the same foundation used for crêpes, tôt-fait, and clafoutis: milk, eggs, a little flour, and sugar to taste. When it finally began to appear in newspapers and the occasional cookbook in the early twentieth century, the recipe was strikingly consistent from one source to the next. And by then, apples had become an integral part of it.

I decided to make the recipe found in Austin de Croze’s 1928 Les Plats Régionaux de France, in the March 1950 issue of La France à Table, and in several other twentieth-century publications, reducing only the quantity of sugar. It was delicious, but thicker than I expected — closer to a lighter, creamier clafoutis or flognarde than to the “thick crêpe” a flamusse is traditionally said to be. So I made it a second time with less milk.

The second version, I believe, is closer to what I understand as authentic. Both are wonderful, absolutely delicious, so I’ll give you the two quantities of milk and let you decide. With more milk (2 cups / scant 500 ml), the flamusse custard bakes up thicker — thicker yet very light, very creamy, and delicately sweet. Using less milk (1 ½ cups / 300 ml), the custard bakes up thinner, like a thick, light and creamy crêpe, and, because there is less custard, the apples and the sweet, fruity apple flavor are more pronounced.

Perhaps the simplest description remains the best. In 1940, Le Républicain du Gard described the flamusse aux pommes as “an entremets from the Nivernais that makes a pleasant dessert. It is easy to prepare.” Nothing more elaborate was needed then — and none is needed now.

Flamusse aux Pommes

6 tablespoons (60 grams) flour

2 cups (scant 500 ml) milk OR 1 ½ cups (300 ml) milk

3 eggs

½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

4 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon (60 grams) sugar

4 medium-sized apples — I love Golden apples for this

1 tablespoon butter

Place the flour into a large mixing bowl; whisk the flour with just enough of the milk to form a smooth, lump-free paste. Whisk in the eggs, vanilla, and sugar vigorously until well blended. Whisk in the rest of the milk. Set aside at room temperature while you preheat the oven and prepare the apples; whisk the batter occasionally.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C°).

Generously butter the bottom and sides of a 9- or 10-inch (23- or 25-cm) pie plate or similar volume round can pan or baking dish.

Prepare the apples: peel and core 4 apples then slice thinly. Heat the tablespoon of butter in a large skillet, sauteuse, or frying pan and cook the apples over medium or medium-low heat, carefully stirring and turning often, for 10 minutes. The apple slices will be very tender yet retain their shape.

Whisk the batter to blend well and pour into the buttered cake pan, pie plate, or baking dish.

Arrange the apples in the batter, nudging them toward the center so that a ring of batter remains around the edge to bake into a rim.

Carefully place in the oven to bake for about 1 hour 10 minutes or until set, puffed, and a deep golden brown.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool and settle for about 10 minutes before serving — and eating warm. Dust with powdered sugar or serve with ice cream, if you like, to turn a snack into a dessert.

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It’s strange to think that I’ve lived more of my life in France than in the United States.

Does that make me French? Or am I American? Am I neither? Or maybe I’m a little bit of both. If a passport tells me who I am, then I am most definitely American. But identity is rarely as simple as a passport.

I was recently talking with a good friend — a Swedish woman who has spent almost as much time living in Italy as I have in France, married to an Italian, as I am, well, to a Frenchman — about roots. It’s such a complicated, multifaceted notion, and immeasurably personal. Roots means something different to each of us, doesn’t it? We feel it differently, define it differently.

I call the United States — Florida, where I grew up — home. I also call France, wherever I happen to be living at the moment, home. But the word carries a different weight in each place. And yet, if I am honest, I have never felt entirely at home in either country. Not fully natural in the United States — which is, perhaps, why I left — and not entirely belonging here in France. I exist comfortably enough in both, but I do not completely fit in either.

Living between countries creates a peculiar condition: you are always slightly foreign.

But there is an advantage to that, and one I embraced long ago: not fitting in is liberating. It frees you from society’s expectations — how you should look, how you should dress, how you should act, what you should talk about, who you are meant to be. Once I freed myself from the way others saw me, and from who I was supposed to be, the possibilities of (re)inventing myself felt endless. I would never be properly French, so my faux pas, small and not so small, were indulged and forgiven; those blunders and my oddities were racked up to my being American.

So why not inhabit that space entirely?

I have always lived fully immersed in French society rather than on its outskirts, never within an expat community. And yet, no matter how I try or what I do, I know I will never completely fit in. I will never be considered French by the French.

But, to be honest, I don’t want to be. I’m not even sure I’ve ever tried.

In a society that dictates conformity — with its strict, if elegant, social codes and unspoken but rigid cultural structures — my refusal to fit the mold, my otherness, has paradoxically allowed me a lot of wiggle room. Once I accepted that I would always stand slightly apart, there was only one thing left to do: embrace it. Lean into it. Perhaps even flaunt my uniqueness (or individuality?).

I never wanted to be “an expat,” just as I was never entirely happy living in the States. I have never felt like I fit in expatriate circles — even among fellow Americans, I felt oddly foreign. My unwillingness to conform has often been interpreted as strangeness, messy, and impossible to place. Expectations, after all, are tidy. Predictable. Safe. People feel comfortable with someone they understand, whose behaviors they can anticipate, who is like themselves. While extremely polite and kind, they rarely include someone they can’t easily categorize. But I have never been particularly interested in safe and predictable, and expectations are boring. If rejecting both meant that I was myself kept at a distance, then I’d be okay with that.

Identity, then, is less about citizenship or even acceptance and more about comfort with that in-between space where you are fully yourself. I move easily between the two cultures, yet wholly inhabit neither. And perhaps that is precisely where I belong.

I’d been working on this piece for a few days when I was suddenly reminded of the strange story of my younger son, and as I don’t think he reads my Substack, I’ll share it here, as briefly as I can. It’s a story of identity and roots: My sons have two passports — French and American — and were raised between two countries — France and Italy — Italy, where we moved when they were 3 and 1 years old. As daycare didn’t exist (or didn’t at the time) in Italy — everyone, apparently, has a nonna — my younger son stayed at home with me until he was 3, hearing, but not yet speaking, English and French. When he was 3 (his brother 5) and ready for pre-school, we decided to put them both in the Italian school system. Why choose to live in another country if you’re not going to completely immerse yourself in that country and culture, right? So my son, who hadn’t quite yet begun to fully speak either English or French (his brother spoke both), was suddenly thrown into the Italian deep end of the swimming pool. I’ll make this long story short, just saying that it took him more than 2 years before he seemed comfortable with his situation.

When he was 8 and about to enter the 3rd grade, we moved back to France. Because of logistics, we unwillingly put him and his brother into the French school system. At that point, we knew he was quite fluent in all 3 languages, but in school, he struggled on so many levels until he graduated high school, developing a hard, angry shell and a defiant antagonism toward France and its school system, as if defining himself against it were the only way to survive it.

We don’t know how he got through the school system but, with infinite thanks to a private tutor that we give all credit to, he did. Over the years, we tried to uncover what was causing his anger and his problems in school (language, communication, attitude) by taking him to a series of specialists. None helped. Just after his high school graduation we finally found a professional who could help. Our son was asked to take an IQ test, which he did. The results astounded the professionals helping us. One explained: never before had they seen such a huge disparity between performance and verbal IQs.

They explained that this split suggested he had rejected a primary language and that, somewhere along the way, he had subconsciously rejected embracing an identity, or a primary identity, because with language comes identity. Our son had long felt that others had been deciding who he was for him, telling him he was Italian or American or French, rather than allowing him the space to choose his identity on his own terms. It is through a primary language and our accepted inner identity, the therapists told us, that we filter every other language and culture we encounter. It is how we learn social cues, how we grasp nuance, navigate cultural codes and norms, no matter how subtle. It becomes the internal framework through which we function in the world.

So we learned, alongside our son, that identity is partially given to us - shaped by where we are born, where we live, by whom and how we are raised and educated - but it is also something we must claim for ourselves.

I do love living in Chinon. Odd how I have felt more comfortable and accepted in a small, conservative town the size of Chinon than I ever did in a larger, more diverse city. But I do like it here. Beyond my enduring fascination for this medieval city and its wildly compelling history, I’m happy living in a place where I know everyone and everyone knows me. The gossip, the conviviality, the daily rhythms and rituals of a small tourist town.

In a small town, difference is visible but manageable. I move in and out of recognition — a peculiar kind of local notoriety and curious anonymity — greeting and being greeted by restaurant owners, shopkeepers, neighbors, while also remaining just another body out for a stroll. People know who I am, and yet they don’t really know me — the intrigue of being an unknown quantity. There is something thrilling about standing at the threshold between notice and obscurity. I have always loved living there, out on the edge. Being mysterious might be part of the persona I embrace. And there is less pressure to perform Frenchness.

And yet — comfort has its limits. Comfort is not the same as fulfillment.

I have always been drawn to the energy of unpredictability and change. After five years or so in one place, I begin to feel the sameness. I start itching for a new city, a new country, a new culture — to discover the people, the food, the noise, the particular way life arranges itself and is lived elsewhere. Curiosity, for me, has an expiration date when it needs to be recharged.

But if I’m being honest — and that’s what this space is for, right? — it isn’t only curiosity. It’s restlessness. It’s anxiety. It’s an urgency I feel deep down in my gut to reinvent myself over and over again. I know it’s an illusion, a very seductive illusion, the idea that I can move to another city and become another version of myself.

I have spent a lifetime confusing movement with transformation, believing that a new address might succeed where I had not, that geography could somehow outrun whatever imagined failures trailed behind me. That I’ll find the place where I don’t feel out of step, where I can succeed at all of my projects where I hadn’t before. Start afresh whenever I unpack all the moving cartons. The conviction that somewhere else might feel more aligned not with who I am but with who I want to be, and with the way I want to live, think, and create.

So is roots and identity more about how we see ourselves, how we feel with ourselves, rather than how we interact with where we are at any given moment? Maybe it’s always being challenged and tested when we allow ourselves to think beyond our given place. But then, maybe I think too much about it.

So then why do I feel so passionate about — fiercely protective, almost territorial over — French cuisine?

I grew up in a culture in which food came with stories and carried deep symbolism. Even before I understood the word “culture,” I felt cultural differences. I knew that what my mother cooked at home was not what my friends were eating in theirs. I understood that food told a story about who we were and where we came from.

Later, raising sons with multiple passports, multiple languages, several cultures, food became something more deliberate. Each dish we prepared was served with stories, history, folklore and legends, gestures and memories. Food was the perfect vehicle for imparting each of their separate inheritances, to help them comprehend and accept who they are, every beautiful part of them.

Perhaps that is why French cuisine feels personal to me. Not because it is “mine,” but because I understand what cuisine holds. It is history and culture made tangible. Living in France, living totally immersed in a traditional French family, I came to understand this cuisine not as spectacle, but as daily practice. Not as something elevated, iconic, romantic, but as something ordinary, structured, rooted in rhythm and repetition. I paid attention for years — in markets, in neighbors’ kitchens, in the ritual organization of meals that were neither grand nor performative. And when I later began writing about food, I found myself frustrated by the way French cuisine was often presented to Americans: placed on a pedestal, flattened into romantic cliché, reduced to icons of sophistication, technique, and luxury.

What I knew — what I had lived — was something far more textured. More practical. More human and everyday. And I wanted to show that. No — I felt like I needed to share that.

Do I feel responsible? Hmmm, maybe. Sometimes. The cookbooks that come out each year are set against impossibly beautiful backdrops, their recipes polished into something almost unrecognizable, either complicated restaurant versions or modern dishes that could be found in any nice kitchen anywhere. The dishes I learned in real, often humble French kitchens are simple, economical, generous — rooted in season and symbolism rather than elegant show — dishes meant to be cooked in every home, every day of the week, for family and friends.

I may not feel French, but I am now rooted in this culture and understand it so well, its rhythms, rituals, habits; I understand this cuisine because I have lived with it — day after day, year after year. And I want others to see it that way too. To experience it as it is and as it is lived, not as it is imagined.

I may never belong in the way others expect belonging to look, I may never feel entirely French, but I am rooted here nonetheless, in the ways that matter. I understand this culture because I have lived it for so long, in the rituals of daily life, the attention to cultural details, both large and small. I might not claim all of it as my own, but I know it and understand it well enough to translate it. And like my other home, the country that I left, I care enough to stand up for it; I feel a part of it enough to insist on its nuance when it is reduced to myth and cliché. That is something I can do through its food.

On a side note:

The hôtel has just reopened after our three-week winter closure, though vacation it was not. We spent the time watching television, making orange marmalade, and listening to the steady soundtrack of workers renovating the second floor. They repainted the woodwork, doors, and ceilings, recarpeted the two stairwells and the hallway, and finally ripped out the fifty-year-old fabric clinging to the walls, replacing the faded and stained cloth with elegant paper. Everything feels fresh and beautifully transformed.

My husband is renovating the last of the twenty-seven rooms. And finally, for the first time since we bought the place, everything will be done.

* my husband actually called me this today, so….

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Join me this December in Chinon, France for the second edition of our unforgettable Winter Escape getaway, from Monday, December 7 through Saturday, December 12.

We’ve put together a fabulous program blending history, architecture, local culture, food and wine to create a 4 day/5-night unique retreat in the heart of the Loire Valley.

Immerse yourself in the region’s rich heritage as we visit majestic châteaux steeped in history and adorned in their most festive Christmas splendor.

Indulge in meals at my favorite local restaurants and brasseries, experience a real truffle hunt followed by a sublime 3-course “all truffle” lunch at a Michelin-Green-Star restaurant, and experience a world-class wine tasting at a renowned family domain.

We’ll wander the medieval streets of Chinon with an expert guide who will bring the town’s centuries-old history to life as we take in its ancient timbered façades, uneven cobbled streets, and the Royal Fortress perched on the hillside above.

A carefully curated selection of activities will immerse you in the holiday charm of the Loire Valley, blending culture, gastronomy, conviviality, and seasonal magic. And I will be personally leading and hosting each step of the journey.

Find the program here!

Space is limited—reserve your spot today!

(Save € 100/person if you register by May 15, 2026)

Discover the details on our website = WINTER ESCAPE CHINON

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Like clafoutis and flognarde, the bettelmann belongs to a long tradition of modest home desserts. The name — bettelmann in the local dialect from the German, mendiant in French, “beggar man,” — in itself is revealing, an unambiguous marker of its origins as a dish of prudence and thrift, created to use up stale bread so that absolutely nothing went to waste, a reference to the dessert’s humble simplicity and its reliance on basic ingredients or leftovers — frugal, ingenious, and rooted in a domestic tradition that stretches back to the very beginnings of home cooking.

“I know a man from Strasbourg who lives in Paris. He likes

To go to Knôpfelfritz from time to time to eat

Sauerkraut and bacon, or delicious Knôpfles,

Or Knackwurst from Flamm. But this fellow countryman

On a certain holiday, unfaithful to his host,

Went to feast in a good restaurant Near the Palais Royal. Our man is brought

The menu, which he scans distractedly. But when

He suddenly sees this beautiful word: Mendiant!

He says to himself: “Well, well, well! In our dialect

We say a Bettelmann! Ah! Well! I delight

In remembering how my mother made

This dish, using small milk rolls,

Adding milk, butter, eggs, not forgetting cinnamon

Or sugar, or great care. She made them

So that each of us could enjoy them.

This memory touches me from my childhood days,

And just thinking about it makes my mouth water.

Waiter! Un mendiant!”

He rubs his hands together,

Believing he will feast and satisfy his hunger.

- from the Revue D’Alsace - 1 January, 1882

Whether this classic poor man’s dish is ancient or a more recent invention remains open to debate, though it hardly matters. What we do know is this: the bettelmann was originally a German pudding that slipped into Alsace, becoming French along with the region itself.

We’ve seen this kind of home baking before — uncomplicated, deeply and deliciously comforting — from the tôt-fait to the soufflé au pain. The bettelmann belongs squarely in this family of dishes, prepared for intimate household gatherings or for well-behaved children, and served warm from the oven. You won’t find recipes like these in many cookbooks, yet the bettelmann is an important element of Alsatian cuisine. Like riz au lait, it was also a practical way to fill bellies and plump up children at times when meat was scarce.

I won’t say much more about the bettelman, because, frankly, there’s not been much written about it across the centuries. I have already traced the very interesting history of bread pudding, what the French call pouding, a sweet dish who’s origins are less than sweet. Puddings were originally little sausages called boudins - think “blood pudding” or “white pudding” - a way to preserve and easily transport meats as early as the 4th century (its first appearance in a cookbook). By the Middle Ages, versions of boudins, white sausages, were made of bread, fat, milk, starch, and either ham or chicken, originally a type of porridge then simply pushed into pork casings. Sugar was often added as a persevering agent, dried fruits and spices added as seasonings. Little by little, the meat was replaced by more and more bread, the dried fruits and sugar increased, and somewhere along the way, the word boudin transformed into pouding or pudding.

This is easily explained by Jean Nicot, whose Dictionnaire François-Latin (1584) translates boudin as botellus or farcimen (farce meaning stuffing). Little changed — either in language or in preparation — for nearly two centuries, until the Dictionnaire Universel Français et Latin of 1752 includes an entry for poudin, defined as “the same thing as boudin, whose English name changes the B to P. They write puding.”

See?

We then see the evolution of boudin into poudin — and from primarily savory to sweet — illustrated in François Massialot’s Le Nouveau Cuisinier Royal et Bourgeois (1730), perhaps the first published recipe in France for a poudin, or pudding. Massialot offers a poudin cuit au four (a pudding baked in the oven) and poudin boüilly (boiled porridge pudding). Both are sweet, yet the base is “4 pounds of beef fat.” Both are flavored with chopped candied lemon peel, a pound of Corinth raisins and a pound of seeded Spanish grapes, and bound with 15 raw egg yolks, half a pound of white bread soaked in milk, and half a pound of sugar. No longer stuffed into a sausage casing, the first pudding is spread and baked in a pan; the poudin boüilly is wrapped and tied tightly in a “white napkin” or cloth and boiled.

With this, the modern bread pudding can be said to have been born.

This, too, seems to be the moment when puddings prepared with bread began to enter British cookbooks, starting with The Complete Family-Piece; And, Country Gentleman, and Farmer’s, Best Guide, 1737, with a rye-bread pudding, and Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy, 1737, with “To make a bread pudding” using a “penny white loaf” and “To make a fine bread pudding” using “a stale penny-loaf”. Both Glasse’s orange pudding and Oxford pudding uses grated biscuits for a starchy thickener.

And yet, this evolution was by no means linear. Bread was only ever one variation among many. In both France and Britain, puddings continued to be prepared primarily without bread, relying instead on flour, eggs, cream, fat, or fruit for structure. Bread entered the repertoire as a practical and economical thickener, as it had long been used for sauces, soups, and stews, not necessarily as the defining feature of the dish.

Point of fact, I want to note here that Joseph Menon’s English Pudding or Pouding à l’Angloise from his 1755 cookbook Les Soupers de la Cour is made with flour, eggs, cream…then “pralined orange blossoms, chopped green lemon peel, six eggs, beaten egg whites, a pound of chopped beef fat, melted but not browned, a small handful of currants or raisins from Provence, twelve dried figs, all well mixed.” It is then placed “in a pan that is the right size for the dish you are going to serve; bake in the oven for an hour; serve drained of its fat.” Half a century later, Antonin Carême’s Le Pâtissier Royal Parisien is filled with recipes for puddings of all sorts, almost all fruit based.

No bread in sight.

And yet, it’s here at the period, finally, that the name pouding entered into the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Françoise, in 1762, and defined as the “name of a dish made from breadcrumbs, beef marrow, currants and other ingredients. Pudding is an English stew.” In the same year, the Dictionnaire Domestique Portatif describes it as a pastry.

For all this — for all the high-end cookbooks aimed at fancy kitchens — if we’ve learned anything from studying French home cooking, it’s that recipes at this time were still passed down orally, from mother to daughter, and would not appear in French cookbooks for at least another century. In modest and rural homes, cooking remained above all practical, shaped by necessity, availability, and a careful domestic economy. Dishes designed to use up stale bread were part of this everyday logic. It’s more than likely, then, that bread-based puddings were being made long before they ever appeared in those high-end kitchens — perhaps even influencing their creation.

And this is exactly where the bettelmann comes in.

What we do know is that this particular bread pudding arrived in Alsace from Germany. But like French bread-based puddings, the bettelmann (or Apfelbettelmann) does not appear in major printed cookbooks before the 19th century, and then primarily in regional ones. In France, its earliest mentions appear only in German-language publications — and only in Alsace.

What makes the bettelmann unique is that it was most commonly made using leftover enriched sweet breads such as pains au lait or kougelhopf, both deeply rooted in Alsatian home baking and staples of the kitchen. And because these breads - rich with eggs, butter, and milk - were costly to begin with, it was all the more imperative they not be thrown away once stale.

To make it an even tastier, more special treat, the bettelman is and always has been, sweetened with apples and raisins in the autumn and winter, and local plump black cherries in the summer months.

Creamy when warm, the bettelman becomes denser and chewier at room temperature. Eaten either way, it’s the best bread pudding we have ever eaten. I can’t wait for summer to make it with cherries.

Bettelmann

Alsatian Bread Pudding with Apples and Raisins

While the bettelmann can be made with any plain stale bread, baguette or white bread, the brioche does offer more sweetness and richness to the dish. I imagine as the origins of the bread are German and Alsatian, a lightly sweetened, enriched kugelhoff or brioche-style pains au lait were traditionally used.

10.5 ounces (300 grams) stale brioche or bread

2 cups (500 ml) milk

2 or 3 small or medium small apples (Reinettes, Boskop, Melrose, Idared, or similar)

¾ cup (100 grams) plump raisins

3 eggs

½ cup (100 grams) granulated white sugar

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon, or up to 1 teaspoon

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon (15 grams) or a bit more softened unsalted butter

1 - 2 tablespoons fine breadcrumbs (you can grind or grate the crusts of the stale bread)

About 1 tablespoon dark brown sugar, optional

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Butter a 9 ½ - inch (24 cm) wide x 2-inch (5 cm) deep baking pan.

Cube the stale brioche or bread and place in a large mixing bowl. Bring the milk just to a simmer, without allowing it to boil, then pour it over the bread. Using the back of a tablespoon, press the cubes firmly into the hot milk until the bread has absorbed all of the milk and is beginning to form a thick, soft mixture. Continue to press and stir the bread occasionally while you prepare the apples, allowing the bread time to completely soften and meld almost into a purée.

Peel, core, and cut the apples into cubes or thin slices.

Whisk the eggs and sugar together until smooth and slightly creamy. Whisk in the vanilla.

Dust the cinnamon evenly over the softened bread and stir vigorously to combine. Pour the whisked eggs, sugar, and vanilla over the mixture and stir until fully incorporated. Add the raisins and apples, then stir until evenly distributed throughout the batter.

Pour the bettelmann batter into the buttered baking pan and smooth the top. Dot with butter, dust with fine breadcrumbs, and, if you like, dust with dark brown sugar.

Bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour or until the bettelmann is puffed and the surface is golden and slightly crisp. The pudding should have begun to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Allow to cool for several minutes before slicing and enjoying. Wonderful with whipped cream.

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France is still, at heart, a Catholic country, despite its strict laws of — and commitment to — laïcité. The calendar remains punctuated by religious feast days and saints’ days, whether or not the French still go to church or even remember the origins and significance of these dates. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as each of these holidays is marked by pastries — traditional, local, and regional — that go hand-in-hand with celebrations or have outlasted observance itself. Galette des Rois or Gâteau des Rois for Epiphany; Bûche de Noël, Pompe à l’huile, Zimtsterne for Christmas; gaufres or beignets (bottereaux, merveilles, bugnes, etc) for Mardi Gras; le Colombier for Pentecost; les corniottes for Ascension, crêpes for Candlemas, or various specialties for saints’ days, like croquendoules for Saint Martin’s feast day. To name a few.

La Chandeleur, or Candlemas, the feast of candles, is one of those holidays whose religious rituals have largely faded, their memory preserved instead through the foods that continue to be made and shared. In France, the holiday, celebrated on February 2, endures above all in the ritual of making and eating crêpes.

And yet, while French homes all across the country are whisking eggs, milk, and flour, pulling out jars of jam and chocolate cream, the southern city of Marseille marks la Chandeleur with navettes, slender, boat-shaped biscuits perfumed with orange blossom water and local olive oil.

Candlemas, like Christmas and Epiphany, was originally a pagan and Latin festival before it was embraced and adopted by early Christians. The Romans celebrated Lupercalia from February 13 to 15 in honor of Faunus, the god of fertility and livestock; candles were burned to honor and protect the dead, to purify and mark the light of the new year as the days began to grow longer. In the latter half of the 5th century, the Christians used the celebration to mark the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, celebrated forty days after Christmas, on February 2. According to the Gospel of Luke, this was when Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus to Jerusalem, and when Simeon recognized him as the “light to enlighten the nations” — a moment that gave rise to the blessing of candles and candlelit processions. In 494, candles were associated with Candlemas by Pope Gelasius I, the first to organize torchlight processions on February 2. In a letter to Senator Andromachus, he expressed his desire to restore the Lupercalia and argued for their purifying power.

La Chandeleur also sat at the pivotal point in the agricultural year, when households were nearing the end of their stored grain from the previous year, and before the fate of the wheat crops, which had been planted in the autumn, could be assessed. And so, by the Middle Ages, this festival became charged with prayer and rituals, linking the religious calendar with the rhythms of wheat cultivation and rural survival. Making crêpes with wheat flour was therefore highly symbolic: an offering of thanks for what remained, a hopeful gesture toward the next harvest, and a way of ritually “setting wheat in motion” again before the agricultural cycle resumed in earnest. And like the galette eaten on Epiphany, the roundness of crêpes represent the sun, light, purification, and hope for the new season.

But Marseille, a bustling southern French port city rather than a farming town, followed a different rhythm and a unique custom. Candlemas traditions reflect the city’s maritime character instead.

In Marseille, Chandeleur is inseparable from the Abbey of Saint-Victor and its Black Virgin, La Vierge Noire, a medieval statue carved in the 13th century from dark walnut wood, which anchors the feast firmly in the city’s religious and cultural history. On Candlemas, pilgrims traditionally gathered at Saint-Victor — one of the city’s oldest churches — to venerate the medieval statue associated with protection, fertility, and safe passage. Candles were blessed in her presence, reinforcing the day’s symbolism of light, purification, and renewal.

But why navettes instead of crêpes? Marseille, a singular city with a singular history, follows a unique religious story. According to one of Provence’s most enduring legends, a boat landed on these shores, on the banks of the Old Port in Marseille, in the first century carrying Mary Magdalene, her sisters Marthe, Jacobe, and Salome — the Saintes-Maries — along with Lazarus and other early Christian figures, fleeing persecution after the Resurrection. The navette’s elongated, boat-like shape is said to commemorate that arrival, an echo of Marseille’s ancient, maritime origins.

“All the assistants carried green candles in their hands, which were blessed by the celebrant and then lit from the new flame, blessed on that day in the church of Marseille as on Holy Saturday. On leaving, everyone hurried to buy cookies called navettes at the abbey gate, which were shaped like little ships, perhaps in memory of the miraculous voyage of Saint Lazarus and his blessed sisters.” - Saint-Victor de Marseille et Notre-Dame de la Garde, Théophile Bérengier, 1892

According to the professional publication Le Boulanger-Pâtissier, “On November 24, 1781, the chapter of Saint-Victor Abbey authorized Antoine Lauzière, a baker and pastry chef, to build an oven at 136 Rue Sainte. He made navettes for Candlemas in 1782, an easily portable, long-lasting cookie to provide sustenance for pilgrims. These cookies soon became so popular that people came from all over the city to buy them. All the bakers in Marseille soon followed their colleague’s example. Soon, it became common practice to make navettes for Candlemas.”

Like the gâteau nantais — and like many confections with religious origins — navettes belong to the family of gâteaux de voyage: baked goods designed to keep well and for a long period of time, to travel, and to nourish those on the road or at sea, like macarons, madeleines, and financiers. The navettes were indeed well suited for pilgrims visiting Saint-Victor, coming from near or far.

The February 5, 1914 issue of Les Tablettes Marseillaises, made the claim that 250,000 navettes are produced by the ovens of this same ancient bakery every day on and following the Chandleur “while we let the “Black Madonna get some fresh air”…and as the festivities last a week, it means that more than 2 million navettes are baked in that oven, “a tradition is all the more enduring when it is dear to the palate of our fellow citizens.” The good people of Marseille must stock up on these fragrant little biscuits, storing them away to be eaten over the course of the whole year until the following Candlemas when the ritual begins again.

Navettes are true gâteaux de voyage, made with local olive oil rather than butter, which gives them their characteristic firmness — a texture best softened by dipping them in milk, coffee, or tea, or, for adults and sailors, rum or Madeira.

Navettes de Marseille

First published in my cookbook Orange Appeal (Gibbs Smith, 2017)

½ cup (100 grams) granulated white sugar

1 large egg

1 rounded teaspoon fine orange zest

3 teaspoons orange blossom or orange flower water

3 tablespoons olive oil

¼ teaspoon salt

1 ¾ cups plus 2 tablespoons (250 grams) all-purpose flour

Milk for brushing the cookies before baking

In a medium mixing bowl, beat the sugar and the egg on medium-high speed until pale, thick, and creamy, about 2 minutes. Beat in the zest, orange blossom water, and olive oil.

Stir the salt into the flour and then beat about ⅔ or so of the flour into the batter in 2 or 3 additions.

Finish folding the flour in by hand, kneading until all - or as much is needed for a smooth dough - of the flour has been added and a smooth dough has developed. Form the dough into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 350° F (180° C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Take the dough out of the refrigerator and slightly flatten the ball into a disc. Cut the dough into 12 even wedges.

Roll each wedge into a 3-inch-long (7 cm) oval log and place on the prepared baking sheet.

Shape the pieces of dough into small “navettes” or little boats by pressing to flatten just a bit, and pinching the 2 ends into rounded points. Make a 2-inch (5 cm) slit down the center of each with a sharp knife, cutting only halfway down into the dough, and carefully push the slit open slightly.

Brush each cookie lightly with milk.

Bake for 20–25 minutes, or until golden; the tips and undersides should be a deeper golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow the cookies to cool on a rack. Store in a covered container.

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“The little ones, and the very smallest ones still, Will have cramique and butter in Paradise, With fine violin music.” - Contes Flamands et Wallons (scènes de vies nationales) - Flemish and Walloon Tales (Scenes from National Life) by Camille Lemonnier 1873

What a special food, indeed, if all the children — even the tiniest, even the poorest — will feast on cramique and butter to the sounds of beautiful music in Paradise, the very image of heaven. In Camille Lemonnier’s nineteenth-century Belgium, cramique was not just any bread; it was a rich, festive loaf, a light brioche made with white flour, eggs, butter, and sugar, dotted with sweet raisins. Eaten with butter — still more butter — it became even more luxurious. The author continues: “Eat, people — the animals too — sweet cakes and baked bread. Christmas! Christmas! Amen.” Cramique was a rare treat, reserved for special occasions: Christmas, saints’ days, and Epiphany, Three Kings’ Day.

“Cramique, well known in Brussels, is, by its origins, a word that belongs to the vocabulary of regional French.” As Albert Henry confirms in his 1960 Étude de Lexicologie Française et Gallo-Romane (Study of French and Gallo-Roman Lexicology), the cramique is most likely a Belgian confection, and is certainly widely found in that country today, much more so than in France, and yet, the word has a decidedly French ring to it. Some do claim “cramique” comes from the Flemish “kraammik” which comes from the Middle Dutch “cramicke,” while Germanists are perplexed when it comes to explaining the origin of the word, whose ancient forms are diverse and varied, spread out through their own language: cramic, credemicke, krickemicke, kermieken, kraemmicke, credemicken, each words for a sweet, enriched bread or cake. In fact, the Belgian Florimond Parent, in his 1891 Manuel de la Conversation, ou Recueil Complet des Locutions, states unequivocally about cramique: “This word is not French; say gâteau instead.”

Whether Flemish or French, cramique is, at its core and all the way to its crust, fundamentally a Belgian bread. But how can I, who writes about French foods, be discussing the cramique? When did this bread cross into French territory, and how did it become rooted in the culinary traditions of northern France, especially in regions bordering Belgium? Let’s get back to the name, the etymology of the term itself possible pointing to a French connection. Because I am determined to find one.

In the highly respected Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, historian Marie-Guy Boutier defines cramique as “a wheat bread, not a brioche, weighing between 500 and 800 grams, enriched with milk, butter, and sugar, and garnished with currants. As for the origin of the name,” he continued, “the most fanciful hypotheses circulate, starting with the one that claims that “cramique” comes from the (French) verb cramer (to burn).” - one could certainly see why people would think this as the loaf is baked until the crust is a deep golden brown. “Cramique is actually a deformation of cramiche, an Old French word that appears in 14th-century texts from Reims, and is thought to be a contraction of crème (cream) and miche (loaf). Originally, it was therefore a loaf made with cream.”

Well, in fact, we have access to some of those ancient texts. Frédéric Godefroy, in his Dictionnaire de l’Ancienne Langue Française et de Tous ses Dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle, 1881 - 1902, offers 3 mentions of cramiche found in the Administrative Archives of the French city of Reims (best known for Champagne) and the Livre Rouge de l’Échevin, the magistrates’ or aldermen’s Red Book, from the decade 1380-1390:

1. Esquelles trois mines est L. pain blancs, chacun pesant une cramiche tout cuit. (1380, Livre Rouge de L’Echevin, Arch. Admin de Reims, III, p723)

2. Premiers, quant froment vault .IIII s par le sextier, denrée, pain doit peser XXVIII onces et demi et est une cramiche.

3. Les fournies du Pont Notre Dame et d’autres églises de Reims faire pain blanc de cramiche pour leurs seigneurs leurs rentiers a qui ils doivent pain du rente (1389)

1. Of which three mines make fifty white loaves, each weighing one cramiche when fully baked.

2. First, when wheat is worth four sous per sextier, by regulation, a loaf must weigh twenty-eight and a half ounces, and it is a cramiche.

3. The baking houses of the Pont-Notre-Dame and of other churches of Reims are to make white cramiche bread for their lords and for their rent-holders, to whom they owe bread as rent.

In the first text, cramiche refers to a weight or object used as a reference. In the second, it refers to a loaf of bread weighing 28 and a half ounces (i.e., both the weight and the resulting loaf of bread). In the third, it refers to a type of white bread.

As we see, the cramiche - today’s cramique - was being made, offered, sold, and eaten in France - at least in Reims - in the Middle Ages. Godefroy, in his 1901 Lexique de l’Ancien Français, defines cramiche as “a type of bread commonly found (or eaten) in Reims.” It seems to have been a form of measure, possibly strictly applied to flour or bread, which eventually lent its name to this special loaf distinguished by its weight, quality, and composition.

Beyond these obscure texts and references, cramique is little mentioned and rarely found in French books, newspapers, or cookbooks, except in the occasional advertisement for bakeries or eateries in northern France. Urbain Dubois is the odd French man out, including a recipe for cramique in his 1933 La Boulangerie Aujourd’hui (The Bakery Today) under the description “Originally from Belgium, cramique is made in Paris using brioche dough with California raisins added. Fill round cake tins, leave to rise, brown and make two cross-shaped cuts with scissors.”

Foreign observers, by contrast, were quick to label it Belgian, and often more attentive to its cultural role. A telling example appears in the Revue Britannique in 1897, which presents cramique not as a French bread, but as a distinctly Belgian - indeed Flemish - specialty. “In Brussels, on the eve of Three Kings’ Day, all bakers, without exception, distribute cramiques to their customers, weighing between 2 and 5 pounds, depending on the size of each family. Cramique, a fine dough mixed with raisins, is the Flemish cake par excellence.”

I have written about galettes des rois and I have written about the gâteau des rois. As we approach Epiphany, or Three Kings’ Day, I present to you this Belgian, or, as I like to think, Franco-Belgian speciality, the cramique.

But our stomachs were growling with hunger, so we set off in search of an inn. We couldn’t think of anything better than to go to De Kroon, a tavern and community center where we found bread rolls, butter, and cheese for breakfast. But dessert awaited us in the form of a magnificent and appetizing cake, a large cramique. Everyone who was there will remember the travels of this much-desired cramique, and it was certainly not without difficulty that we were able to cut into it. - Bulletins de la Société royale de botanique de Belgique, 1891

Cramique

For 2 large loaves or 3 smaller loaves

5 tablespoons (75 grams) sugar, divided

2 ¾ teaspoons (8 grams) active dried yeast

¼ cup (65 ml) warm water

3 ½ cups (490/500 grams) flour + up to 1 more cup, as needed

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup (250 ml) warm milk

2 eggs, preferably at room temperature

7 tablespoons (100 grams) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

Raisins and/or mini chocolate chips, about ½ cup per loaf, or pearl sugar

1 egg yolk + 1 teaspoon milk for glaze

In a small bowl, lightly whisk together 1 teaspoon of the sugar, the dried yeast, and the warm water and let rest until foamy, about 10 minutes.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the 3 ½ cups (490/500 grams) flour, the salt, and the rest of the sugar. Make a well in the center.

When the yeast has been allowed to activate, whisk together the warm milk and the 2 eggs and pour into the well in the dry ingredients. Add the foamy yeast water and, using a wooden spoon or a whisk, stir until all of the dry ingredients are wet and the mixture is well blended and fairly smooth. It will be wet. Using a wooden spoon or your hands, fold/stir/knead in enough flour until a smooth, sticky dough is formed (I use about ½ cup/70 grams using soft French flour) ; this will take a few minutes - the dough will be very sticky, a bit wet, and you won’t really be able to handle it easily as a regular dough, but it will hold together so you can move it to a clean bowl to rise (see photos).

Let the dough rest in the bowl 10 minutes then knead in the soft butter in cubes until the butter is completely blended in and the dough is smooth. Again, your dough will be very sticky.

Transfer the ball of dough to a lightly oiled, large mixing bowl, cover with plastic wrap and a clean kitchen towel and allow it to rest at room temperature until doubled in size, about 2 hours.

Once the dough has risen, scrape the dough from the bowl onto a floured surface and divide into 2 or 3 equal portions (I use a kitchen scale, but you can eyeball it). The dough does not need to be kneaded. Using a rolling pin or your hands - I pressed the dough out with my fingers - spread each portion of dough out into a round or rectangle. Spread the raisins or chips out over the dough, fold the dough up around the raisins/chips and knead lightly to evenly disperse these ingredients in the dough and shaping each into a round loaf. You’ll want to fold in more raisins or chips than in my photo, more than you think you’ll need because the cramique really swells.

Place the loaves onto a parchment-lined baking sheet, allowing space around each to rise. Lightly cover the loaves with the plastic and kitchen cloth and let rest for about 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).

Whisk the egg yolk and milk together until well blended. Uncover the risen loaves and brush fairly generously with the egg wash. Using kitchen scissors, snip into the dough, cutting regularly around the top half perimeter of each loaf, angling the cuts inward and downward, to form a scalloped or star-like design all around the top of the loaf. This is the distinctive mark of the cramique.

Bake the 2 larger loaves in the preheated oven for 30 minutes; the loaves will be well risen and the crust a marvellously deep golden brown. If making 3 smaller loaves, the baking time may or may not change.

Remove the loaves from the oven and slide each onto a cooling rack.

Like any fresh, homemade brioche or enriched bread, the cramiques are best eaten warm and fresh.

If you like, you can omit the raisins and chips and, instead, top each egg-washed loaf with a generous dusting of pearl sugar before baking.

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Poires à la Bourdaloue, like the gâteau Trois-Frères and the fanchonnette, was a pure pastry-shop creation — a late 19th century invention of a Parisian pâtissier who worked on Rue Bourdaloue in the 9th arrondissement, from which the dessert takes its name. As I mentioned in my earlier post about the illustrious Julien brothers, this was a period when pastry chefs, watching with undisguised professional jealousy the spectacular rise of the frères Julien, were eager to become celebrities in their own right, fighting for recognition through each new signature dessert.

It was the golden age of French — and therefore Parisian — pâtisserie. Competition for fame and clientele was fierce, playing out in the back rooms of pastry shops, around worktables and ovens. Imagination surged, and pâtissiers raced to outdo one another by inventing ever more refined, original, and visually stunning pastries, often trying to copy and build on another chef’s already popular creation. Each new confection was then given the most alluring, distinctive name designed to be instantly recognizable, often named after well-known and influential gourmets, popular society or artistic personalities, or fashionable locations, in an effort to spark the curiosity of passersby and attract new customers. Poires à la Bourdaloue emerged from this creative fever — a testament to the era’s exuberant craftsmanship and the rivalry that fueled it.

The origins of this dessert, as well as the name, not to mention the exact composition of the Bourdaloue, have long been debated. At this time, the ambroisie, a simple almond cake, was all the rage. Pierre Lacam and Antoine Charabot explained in their 1893 Le Glacier Classique et Artistique en France et en Italie :

“Once Chiboust’s (of Saint-Honoré fame) Ambroisie became popular, all the major establishments wanted to have their own almond desserts. Let’s start randomly with Lesserteur, on Rue Bourdaloue, whose chef Nicolas Bourgoin created the “Bourdaloue.”

Arthur-Charles Bourdon illustrates this point beautifully while giving us absolutely no clue about, well, any of these desserts. Bourdon published La Pâtisserie Pour Tous (Pastry for Everyone) in 1874 and gives this explanation for his biscuit aux amandes, almond cake: “With this dough, you can make Breton, Imperial, Island, Sicilian, Richelieu, Solférino, Malesberbes, Mignon, Mexican, Magenta, Bourdaloue, Victoria, Amandine, Viennese, etc., etc. All these cakes are made from the same dough, the almond biscuit (cake): they come in different shapes, there is no set name, and the dough differs only in terms of slightly more or slightly fewer almonds, a particular flavor, etc. It’s always pretty much the same composition.”

The base of the ambroisie was an almond cream made of finely ground almonds, butter, and eggs. While most other chefs recreated this in cake version, Maison Lesseteur — it’s debated whether the creator was Fasquelle, Bourgoin, or Lesserteur himself — smoothed the creamy filling into a tart shell and topped it with fruit. And baptised it La Bourdaloue. Or at least we are led to believe. Joseph Favre has his own opinion — for that was what it most likely could be seeing as there were so many competing stories of the day — claiming in his 1890 Dictionnaire Universel de Cuisine et d’Hygiène Alimentaire that the Gâteau à la Bourdaloue was created by M. Fasquelle, rue Bourdaloue in Paris, and named after the “distinguished lecturer,” most likely referring to Louis Bourdaloue, a Jesuit preacher and teacher, for whom rue Bourdaloue is named. “His version is an almond cake layered with pastry cream made with almond milk and scented with kirsch, the cake decorated with royal icing.”

Urbain Dubois offered a recipe for Tartelettes à la Bourdaloue in Tome 1 of his Grand Livre des Pâtissiers et des Confiseurs in 1883. While his individual tarts were indeed filled with a luscious almond and vanilla frangipane, the baked tartelettes were then completed not with pears, but with poached-apricot purée then decorated with meringue. Alexandre Dumas mentions both an apricot and a peach à la Bourdaloue in his Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine of 1873. Pierre Lacam mentions a plum-cake Bourdaloue, a Bourdaloue ice cream, and simply La Bourdaloue, in his various cookbooks. Ground almonds, eggs and egg yolks, potato starch, stiffly beaten egg whites baked into a cake and frosted with curaçao makes his Bourdaloue.

It took a while to actually come to the pastry we know today as Poires à la Bourdaloue. In fact, it took pastry chefs a while to come to pears in any other form than cooked and puréed.

As ancient as the pear is, the French were surprisingly late in welcoming it into their pastry repertoire. Long considered difficult to digest, it was eaten almost exclusively cooked. The influential École de Salerne wrote in the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum (12th–15th centuries): “Hard before dinner—for all pears tighten the stomach before eating—laxative after dinner; cooked, it serves as medicine or food.” Jacques Dalechamps wrote of pears in 1615 “raw pears tighten the stomach and should never be eaten on an empty stomach, yet cooked, they are healthy and safe to eat, as well as very delicious. All varieties of pears cooked in honey are good for the stomach. Pears buffer the malice of pumpkins and mushrooms and push them down with their weight. Moreover, the virtues and properties of pears are known by their flavor and taste.

A century later, Louis Lémery (Traité des Alimens, 1700) agreed that while “pears are fruits that are highly valued for their good taste, care should also be taken to ensure that they do not precede other meats. The juice of pears is coarse, so it takes time to digest and ferment in the stomach. This is why its long journey causes wind and colic. To make pears easier to digest, they are cooked and mixed with sugar; in this way, they become more beneficial.”

Although pears had long been cultivated and enjoyed in France, primarily in monasteries and seigneurial orchards, their popularity truly blossomed in the 16th century. It was the particularly fruitful collaboration between Louis XIV and his royal gardener, Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie that brought this luscious fruit to the attention of the country and truly elevated it to national prominence. La Quintinie perfected their cultivation, showcased the elegant little trees, and bestowed upon their varieties evocative names that promised sensual delight—Muscate, Frangipane, Cuisse-Madame.

In 1715, François Massialot wrote of the pear “Here is the fruit of which there are the greatest number of species.” By the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the cultivation and breeding of new fruit varieties, particularly in France and the Netherlands and Belgium, was highly fashionable among the aristocracy and early farmers and cultivators. This era saw a dramatic proliferation of new varieties, with France being the world leader; by the late 1600s La Quintinie and other royal gardeners were already working with 200+ named varieties.

And yet we continue to see pears chiefly prepared by poaching and sugaring before drying, roasted in embers and dusted with sugar, or transformed into jams, marmalades, compotes, syrups, fruit purées, and pâtes de fruits. (Joseph Menon gives five distinct recipes for pear compotes in Les Soupers de la Cour, 1775.)

Not much had changed as the nation moved into the 19th century; pears were still rarely found in French cookbooks. Carême employed them sparingly: as a marmalade for tartelettes, in tiny dice (macédoine) for gelled entremets, or as poached slices enclosed in brioche pastry “beignets”—really a kind of chausson, and his contemporary André Viard likewise confined pears to marmalades, grilled preparations, compotes, or spirits, by mid-century, chefs began to experiment using pears in pastries in forms other than purées, marmalades, or compotes, or macerated in eau-de-vie. It was only mid-century that cookbook authors such as Louis Bailleux and Belon began tentatively adding whole or poached pears to tartelettes, often pairing them with apple compote. Menon offers two early pear tarts, poaching the fruit in syrup before baking in puff pastry; in one, notably, he places the pears on a marzipan base — the first recorded pairing of pears and almonds.

By the later nineteenth century, the pastry kitchen grew more inventive. Jules Gouffé (Le Livre de Pâtisserie, 1873) devised pear flans and tartelettes by setting halved or quartered poached pears atop apple compote, and included the rustic rabotte of apples and pears wrapped in pastry. Gustave Garlin (Le Pâtissier Moderne, 1889) offered a timbale de poires: a baba-like dough baked in a Charlotte mold and filled with vanilla-scented riz au lait, crowned with poached pears.

And then, on October 1, 1885, the professional journal L’Académie Culinaire published what may be the first printed recipe for Poires à la Bourdaloue: pears poached in a syrup sharpened with apricot jam, blended with a vanilla-scented frangipane, set in a brioche crust, baked, and served with an apricot sauce. The tart was later included — complete with an illustration — in Salles & Montagné’s La Grande Cuisine Illustrée (1902), making it the first major cookbook to feature the recipe.

The modern classic was born.

This is the best pear tart you will ever eat.

Tarte Bourdaloue aux Poires

Pear and Almond Bourdaloue Tart

There are 3 parts to this beautiful tart: sweet almond pastry crust, the poached pears, and the frangipane almond cream. It looks daunting, but it’s rather easy. Feel free to do each element on its own as you have the time, and then just put them all together to bake.

Sweet Almond Pastry Crust

1 ½ cups (200 grams) flour

¼ cup (50 grams) sugar

½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ cup (25 grams) finely ground almonds

7 tablespoons (100 grams) unsalted butter, chilled but slightly softened, and cubed

1 large egg, preferably at room temperature, beaten just to blend

Toss the flour, sugar, baking powder, and ground almonds together in a large mixing bowl. Drop in the cubes of butter, tossing to coat them with the dry ingredients so they don’t clump together. Using just your fingertips and thumbs (keep the palms of your hands towards the ceiling so you lift up the mixture from the bottom of the bowl), rub the butter into the dry ingredients until the butter almost completely disappears into the dry and the dry is the color and texture of damp sand (or damp ground almonds). Pour in the lightly beaten egg and, using a fork, stir until all of the dry ingredients have been moistened with the egg - yes, keep stirring - and a dough starts to pull together.

Scrape the dough together and press into a ball. Knead briefly on a floured surface, pressing and kneading, just until you have a smooth, soft, perfectly homogenous ball of dough. Wrap lightly in plastic wrap and put in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes to chill before rolling out.

Butter a 9 ½ inch (24-cm) round pie plate or dish.

While the pears are poaching, remove the slightly chilled dough (you only want this butter-rich dough to easily roll out without sticking to the rolling pin, but not rock hard or it will be impossible to roll out) from the refrigerator to a floured work surface. Roll out the dough and line your buttered pie dish. Prick the bottom all over with the tines of a fork, cover loosely with the same plastic wrap, and stick back into the refrigerator while you prepare the filling.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).

Vanilla Poached Pears

3 small ripe pears - I use Williams or a similar variety

4 cups (1000 ml / 1 litre) water

¾ cup (150 grams) sugar

Juice of half a small but juicy lemon

1 vanilla bean, carefully split lengthwise, the seeds scraped with the point of a knife

Place the water, sugar, lemon juice, and both the split vanilla bean and the seeds into a medium saucepan and bring to the boil; leave at a low rolling boil for 10 minutes.

Trim and discard the stem end and the bottom of the 3 pears. Peel the pears. Slice each pear in half from top to bottom through the center core. Carefully remove the core from each half, including the fibrous part that runs from the center core up to the top of the fruit, careful not to slice through or break the pear halves.

When the poaching liquid has boiled for 10 minutes, carefully slide the 6 pear halves into the liquid and allow to boil for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the variety and ripeness of your fruit. A knife should easily pierce and slide into the flesh. Remove the saucepan from the heat.

Using a slotted spoon, lift each pear half from the liquid and allow to cool on a plate or - as I do, cut side down on a baking rack placed on top of a plate.

While the poached pears are cooling, remove the pastry-lined baking dish from the refrigerator and prepare the almond cream filling.

Almond Cream Filling

6 ½ - 7 tablespoons (100 grams) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

⅓ cup + 1 tablespoon (75 grams) sugar

2 large eggs, preferably at room temperature

½ teaspoon vanilla

2 tablespoons good quality dark or amber rum

1 ¼ cups (125 grams) finely ground almonds

Garnish & Glaze

1 or 2 tablespoons slivered almonds

About ¼ cup or a few tablespoons reduced poaching liquid or apricot jam, slightly warmed

Prepare the filling by creaming together the softened butter and the sugar with an electric mixer until smooth and creamy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until well blended, adding the vanilla and rum with the second egg.

Beat in the ground almonds until well blended, smooth and creamy - this is easier in 2 or 3 additions.

Smooth the almond cream evenly in the prepared pastry crust all the way to the edges.

Carefully slice each pear half (flat side down) in about ¼-inch (½-cm) slices. Using a long blade, preferably an offset palette knife, carefully transfer the sliced pear halves to the tart, rounded side up, delicately placing each one on the almond cream, fanning the slices slightly.

Sprinkle slivered almonds across the top of the tart as you like.

Bake the tart in the preheated oven for 40 to 45 minutes or until puffed and a beautiful golden brown.

Remove from the oven to a rack to cool and immediately brush with one of the 2 glazes.

To Glaze: I poured about ⅓ of the poaching liquid into a very small saucepan and boiled until it reduced to a syrup. Keep a watch on the pot. Understand that the syrup, once reduced, will continue to thicken as it cools; if it gets too thick to easily spread, warm slightly and add a little of the reserved syrup to thin it slightly.

If using apricot jam, place a couple of tablespoons in a very small saucepan and warm just enough to make it easily spreadable.

If you want to glaze the tart once it has cooled, that’s fine, just make sure the glaze is warmed to a consistency that is easy to brush and dab on.

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“Although eggplant does not have any great virtues, it is widely eaten in Provence.”

This made me laugh out loud.

Finding the focus — the thread that turns a disparate tangle of research into a story — usually takes me a couple of weeks. The history of a dish or an ingredient is rarely straightforward; it’s scattered across centuries of recipes, medical theories, political debates, and old newspaper stories. Or maybe the accepted version is just a bit too straightforward, which is either boring or awfully suspect. Sometimes, a surprising detail emerges, shifting the story in a way I never expected. I keep reading, moving my notes around on the page, getting up for walks and snacks (or making jam) — and suddenly, I see it: that one thing that makes me laugh, or something so irresistibly strange and curious, one or the other probably repeated over the course of decades or centuries … and I know I’ve found my entry point and the story waiting to be told.

This single line in the 1906 Les Vertus des Plantes, a book outlining the descriptions of 918 species of plants, “a very simple way to learn them without making mistakes,” describes the eggplant - melongène, melongèna, mayenne, eventually aubergine - as “not (having) any great virtues”. I love coming across sentences like that, casually dismissing an entire vegetable with the stroke of a pen and a slight handful of well-chosen words, so matter-of-factly.

Eggplant has long gotten a bad rap. Most likely originating in Arabia or India, the eggplant was transported to Europe, making its way up from the warmer countries of Spain and Italy into France in the 12th or 13th century, happily settling in Provence with its southern clime, finally becoming somewhat more popular by the 15th. While the unusual fruit wouldn’t find its way into a proper cookbook for another 2 centuries, it was well discussed in both botany and medical books, while finding its footing in language dictionaries. And from its earliest appearance in these learned tomes, and for the years that followed, it seems, eggplant had a reputation to live down.

Early French commentators approached the eggplant - mala insana, the “mad apple” - not so much with suspicion, as with distaste.

Leonhart Fuchs, in his De Historia Stirpium (1542), makes it clear that, while the fruit is not deadly like its poisonous relatives, it is difficult to digest: “sensitive or delicate eaters”, he warns, may find themselves immediately affected: “For those with a delicate constitution and a desire to sample everything, the eggplant is an unhealthy food. Hence, anyone cautious about their health will be quickly affected… and should weigh carefully whether to eat it.” Thomas Corneille asserts “It is a rather bland food,” in Le Grand Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française, 1695. Even the 1762 Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française could only muster faint praise, noting that ‘its flesh tastes a little bland, but when well seasoned, it is not unpleasant.’

“Its flesh tastes a little bland, but when well seasoned, it is not unpleasant.” - Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française, 1762

The eggplant’s reputation for being bland or mediocre, difficult to digest, or otherwise unremarkable continued to be well documented…consider the following excerpts, which illustrate the ambivalent attitudes toward this curious fruit-vegetable that no one seems to quite know what to do with:

“But we do not advise anyone who values their health to consume it in large quantities, as almost all authors agree that it is not only a cold and insipid food, but also as bad as mushrooms; it causes flatulence, indigestion, and fever. It is therefore better to voluntarily deprive oneself of a pleasure that comes at a high price when it could affect one’s health.” - Suite de la Matiére médical de M. Geoffroy by Antoine Bergier 1750

“Melongène or its fruit is of a nature that should neither be overly praised nor overly despised: it is delicate, but at the same time has a slightly wild and bland taste.” - L’Art de Préparer les Alimens, Suivant les Différens Peuples de la Terre. Tome 1 (The Art of Preparing Food, According to Different Peoples of the Earth) by M. Buc’hoz,... 2e édition 1787

“This fruit, originally from Arabia and then transported to America, although eaten in India, Provence, Italy, etc., is not healthy; those with delicate stomachs should refrain from eating it. It is, in fact, bland, completely lacking in nutritional value, and very difficult to digest, and it is only with the help of very stimulating condiments that it becomes tolerable.” - Le cuisinier et le médecin et le médecin et le cuisinier ou Le cuisinier médecin et le médecin cuisinier. 1885 M. L-M Lombard

As we see, it wasn’t just the flavor - or lack thereof - that drew criticism from these esteemed scientific and medical men. They couldn’t quite decide whether the eggplant did more harm than good. It was accused of causing flatulence, indigestion, fever, and even laziness; of provoking bilious humors and endless obstructions (blockages of all sorts), headaches, sadness, melancholic dreams, and finally, long, lingering sweats - “so it should be avoided,” warned Estienne and Liébault. Dalechamps went even further, attributing melancholy, canker sores, leprosy, hemorrhoids, flat boils, glandular swellings, headaches, and, as he concluded, “foul breath” to the consumption of the eggplant. Why even bother eating such a bland and nutritionally meager food?

And yet, for all those dire warnings, it was widely acknowledged that the eggplant did have its medical uses, although not necessarily ingested or eaten as food. Most agreed that while it was unwise to eat too much of it, it could be beneficial as a medicine. In Traité Universel des Drogues Simples (1698), Nicolas Lémery described both the plant and its fruit as “cleansing,” and recommended external application “for inflammation, cancer, burns to relieve pain, and hemorrhoids.” A century later, the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Françoise (1762) echoed this advice, noting that “eggplants applied externally are good for inflammation, cancer, burns, and hemorrhoids.” Similarly, La Botanique Mise à la Portée de Tout le Monde (1774) observed that though “rarely used in medicine,” both fruit and leaves “are sometimes used to make poultices or balms applied externally to soothe hemorrhoids, inflammations, cancer, and burns.”

By the nineteenth century, these treatments had become quite prolific. The Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales (1867) described the “varied external applications of eggplant,” its pulp used to create poultices for “boils, whitlows, phlegmons, bruises, and burns.” And “the colorful outer layers of the eggplant,” which was said to contain “a pungent, irritating sugar… had been used to destroy excessive skin growths” - even questioning “might this juice be worth trying on warts?” Half a century later, these natural remedies were still lauded as calmants for hemorrhoids, burns, and eye diseases, as well as to “resolve cancers.” (Les Vertus des Plantes, 1906)

“By reason of their elegance and beauty, they are worthy to be loved.” - Leonhart Fuchs, 1542

Beyond its medical uses, the eggplant also drew admiration for its beauty. Long before it found its way into the kitchen, amid the uncertainty of whether the fruit was indeed a poison or not, it was planted simply as an ornament, a curiosity in the garden. Fuchs praised its appearance, noting that “they are called apples of love (pommes d’amour) because, by reason of their elegance and beauty, they are worthy to be loved.” De Combles echoed this two centuries later in his Traité de culture potagère (1749), observing that in France “it is cultivated in this climate only for curiosity.”

But beyond its beauty - and while the most common eggplant for quite a long time was small, round, and white (hence the English name “Egg Plant”) - the purple and red varieties were long and gently curved, their form suggesting certain associations that botanists and writers were quick to notice. The eggplant, which we all recognize as - dare I say - a phallic symbol, once found itself linked, however rarely, with love and desire.

Jacques Dalechamps, in his Histoire Générale des Plantes (1615), wrote with a mix of mocking wit and warning: “Some eat them in order to make themselves vile champions with the women. Perhaps they have this effect because, being difficult to digest, they produce wind.” His tone is unmistakably disdainful, suggesting that those who believed in its power to enhance virility and sexual potency were, in his view, crude and base. And anyway, their reward for such devilish impulses was a bad case of gas, sure to thwart any amorous ambitions.

A few decades later, Estienne and Liébault repeated this theme, where they described the fruit’s beauty “which is as large as a cucumber and reddish in color” and its supposed power to “render one prompt at the ladies’ game.” But, they warned, whatever virtue it might offer was “rather spoiled by its tendency to cause wind (flatulence).” Indeed.

So, for all its problems, its bland flavor, its soft, fleshy pulp, its incitation to flatulence, the mala insana - the “mad apple” - the pommes de fureur - “apples of fury” in Germany, according to Dalechamps, the French began to accept that the eggplant was eaten and even enjoyed by those who lived where it grew abundantly. “It is a very pleasant food, and we have observed no adverse effects,” declared the 18th century botanist (with the very fancy name) Marc Antoine Louis Claret de La Tourrette.

Though any praise was often grudging and accompanied by warnings about its effects on the body, almost all of these books referenced cooking methods and recipes. As Dr. Pierre Jean Baptiste Chomel noted in his 1712 Abrégé de l’Histoire des Plantes Usuelles, “Its internal use is not entirely harmful, because in Italy, its fruit is pickled in vinegar like that of the parent plant and eaten in salads in the same way as cucumber,” and in Egypt it is roasted in the ashes or boiled and served at meals daily. “But all authors agree,” he couldn’t keep himself from concluding, “that it is as bad a food as mushrooms.”

M. Buc’Hoz, while admitting that eggplant was bland and difficult to digest, did provide detailed advice on how to make it enjoyable: “The way to eat it in southern countries is to cut it in half lengthwise, remove the slimy substance where the seeds are attached, and cook it on the grill over low heat, gradually basting it with fresh butter and a little pepper and salt, to which fine herbs are sometimes added. Some people add an anchovy, which melts with the oil; this accompaniment greatly improves the blandness of the fruit. Here, it is more commonly eaten fried in batter like artichokes.” Dr. Bergier begins his chapter on melongena, today’s eggplant, with a description of this plant which is “cultivated both for curiosity and utility” and explains that it is, indeed, “eaten in warm countries, including the southern provinces of France, in salads (pickled) or cooked, like cucumbers,” balancing out his otherwise harsh assessment of the fruit. Claret de La Tourrette affirmed “We ate it every day in Montpellier without experiencing the slightest discomfort. They prepare the eggplants after boiling them briefly in water, cutting them lengthwise and sprinkling them with herbs and breadcrumbs; after pressing them a little, cook them with oil.”

In 1755, the eggplant finally makes its official entry into a French cookbook, Les Soupers de la Cour. Joseph Menon included 2 ways to treat eggplants, a vegetable that did not make an appearance in his 3 previous books : “This vegetable resembles a small cucumber, except that it is purple in color.” He begins with this explanation, cluing us in that it is not yet widely known or common, even in the upper classes. “They are common in Languedoc, but in Paris they can only be obtained by importing seeds from Languedoc. Simply cut them in half lengthwise, without peeling or scooping out the seeds, marinate them in oil, salt, and coarse pepper, coat them in breadcrumbs, and cook them over low heat for half an hour.” He also includes a deliciously intriguing recipe for aubergines frites: halved eggplants (we are still assuming the common eggplant was tiny) are soaked for half an hour in a spiced batter, fried, and served with fried parsley.

And once Menon, a prolific and well-respected cookbook author, formerly chef to Queen Marie Leczinska, wife of Louis XV, showed the French culinary world that he valued this odd garden curiosity as a foodstuff, it would soon be embraced by other chefs.

André Viard, Le Cuisinier Imperial,1806, makes a fine stuffing for his eggplants with the chopped flesh, lard and butter, mushrooms, shallots, parsley all sautéd in oil and seasoned with salt, pepper, and spices. This stuffing is blended with chopped fines herbes and anchovies, bound with an egg, put back in the eggplants, topped with breadcrumbs, and baked. A. Beauvilliers, still thinking it necessary to describe the eggplant in 1814 in L’Art du Cuisinier, prepares his either on the grill or “à la tourtière” in which some of the flesh is scooped out, chopped and blended with chopped shallots and parsley, then cooked in butter before using it to fill the cavities of the eggplants which are then baked.

So, while our good friend — the impressive and endlessly inventive Marie-Antoine Carême — does mention the eggplant, primarily aubergines à la Provençale, in his cookbooks of the early nineteenth century, he includes them only as items in his menus, offering no instruction. A proper recipe doesn’t appear until Volume IV of his L’Art de la Cuisine Française au Dix-Neuvième Siècle, written and published posthumously in 1844 by M. Plumery, possibly one of Carême’s former students. And Plumery does rather rain a bit on the parade of this emerging vegetable by opening with “In Paris, eggplant is not highly regarded, as it is naturally watery and bland, but the people of Provence think very highly of it. Eggplants that arrive in Paris from Provence, picked before they are ripe, are often bitter... (but ripe) the flesh of the eggplant is then refreshing and aids digestion.” So, a mixed review. But he goes on to include recipes for aubergines à la Provençale, à la Toulousaine, à la Milanaise, and grillées à l’Indienne.

“Only purple eggplants should be grown for cooking; the white-fruited variety is highly toxic and can cause serious accidents; it should only be considered as an ornamental plant.” - Cora Millet-Robinet, La Maison Rustique des Dames, 1844

By the mid-1800s, the aubergine had finally made its way onto the menus of Parisian restaurants — gratin à la Provençale, aubergines farcies, or farcies à la Provençale among the early favorites.

And yet, as early as 1867, Léon Brisse noted in his Sunday Chronique Gourmande (Le Baron Brisse): “Eggplant is not yet widely available in Paris; however, this excellent vegetable is best served fried or stuffed. Perhaps people think it is expensive? That would be a mistake; a dozen beautiful eggplants sell for between 2.50 and 3.50 francs depending on their size and, above all, their freshness. A wilted eggplant is worthless.”

Barely available, and yet the aubergine, we know, had been cultivated and more readily available if not abundant, since the beginning of the 1800s. A hundred years later, Joseph Favre seemed to still be trying to convince the French that the eggplant was worth the effort; in his Dictionnaire Universel de Cuisine Pratique, he wrote “Without wishing to detract from the reputation of this fruit, which is extolled by southerners with a certain lyricism, we can say without fear of contradiction that this dessert, to be exquisite, requires preparation and an accompaniment that is twice as valuable as the main ingredient. Worthless in itself, this food is defined entirely by its condiment.” He then follows with a huge array of recipes, aubergines à la parisienne, à la marseillaise, à la provençale (en salade), à l’italienne, à l’américaine, à la napolitaine, as well as en purée and farcie (filled or stuffed).

“Worthless in itself, this food is defined entirely by its condiment.” - Joseph Favre, 1890

By 1912, Auguste Escoffier’s Le Livre des Menus: complément indispensable du “Guide Culinaire” lists an impressive range of eggplant dishes - aubergines à l’Orientale, meunière aux aubergines et tomates, homard à la Française, selle de pré-salé aux aubergines, aubergines au gratin, frites, farcies, gratinées, à la Turque, à la Provençale, and even aubergine soufflée - that were appearing on restaurant tables across the capital.

Larousse Gastronomique, Prosper Montagne’s 1938 original tome, offers a whopping 21 recipes for aubergines, from purées, soufflées, frites, sautées, grillées, au gratin, and à la crème, from à la catalane, à l’italienne, à la languedocienne, à la portugaise, à la toulousaine, à la turque, à la grecque, to à l’oranaise or à la reine.

Of course, Montagné did feel compelled to add one final, gentle note of moderation, echoing generations of reluctant defenders of the eggplant : “Eggplant is not very nutritious, but it is diuretic, calming, refreshing, and easy to digest.”

Aubergines farcies à la Viard

Stuffed eggplants after André Viard

I decided to make the most simplest version of stuffed eggplant, echoing the earliest recipes for this savory, vegetarian dish, primarily that of the esteemed André Viard, for whom I named this recipe. Those of us used to adding loads of flavorful ingredients, including meat, bacon or lardons, or cheese, might find the first mouthful or two….well…bland, but you’ll come to fall in love with the delicate flavors. No wonder this is how they cooked it.

But feel free to mix in a bit of lard (pork fat or bacon), or anchovy or anchovy paste to the cooking vegetables.

I did add a nice layer of finely grated Parmesan cheese with the fine breadcrumbs. While the early recipes never made it with cheese, Parmesan was used in French cooking, and mentioned in French cookbook recipes, since the Middle Ages.

2 medium-small eggplants

Salt

Olive oil

8.8 ounces (250 grams brown (or white) champignons de Paris

2 large purple shallots

2 cloves garlic

2 small tomatoes

Salt and pepper

Pinch or 2 Cayenne pepper

Flat leaf parsley

Fresh fines herbes, optional

Finely grated Parmesan cheese, about 1.7 - 2.4 ounces (50 - 70 grams)

Fine breadcrumbs, a few tablespoons

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Lightly oil a baking sheet.

Rinse and dry the eggplants. Slice them each in 2 halves lengthwise down the center. Lightly salt the eggplant flesh and leave for about 25 minutes. Wipe the salt off the eggplant and use a knife to score the flesh.

Place the eggplant halves, skin side down, on the lightly oiled baking sheet. Brush the flesh with olive oil. Bake in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes.

While the eggplant is roasting, prepare the mushrooms, shallots, garlic, tomatoes, and herbs: Rub or brush any dirt off the mushroom caps until clean; remove and discard the stems from the mushrooms. Dice the mushroom caps and set aside. Trim and peel the shallots and chop or dice. Do the same for the garlic. Rinse and dry the tomatoes then coarsely chop. Finely chop the parsley and any other fresh herbs you would like to blend in.

Remove the baking tray from the oven. Using a small paring knife, carefully loosen the flesh from the skin (leaving a thin outer rim of flesh), making sure not to pierce the skin. Using a spoon, scoop out all of the flesh, again making sure not to pierce or break the skin. Chop the now soft eggplant (do not worry if the flesh isn’t completely cooked).

Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet over medium to medium-high heat and saute the onions and garlic until just translucent. Add the diced mushrooms and continue cooking until the mushrooms begin to get soft, a few minutes, stirring often. Add the chopped eggplant, salt and pepper, and a nice pinch of Cayenne, and continue cooking until the eggplant is cooked completely and very tender. Stir in the chopped tomatoes, parsley, more salt and pepper, and any other fresh herbs, and cook for a few minutes. Remove from the heat.

Divide the vegetable filling between the 4 eggplant shells (which are still on or you have returned to the baking sheet). Top each with a generous amount of finely grated Parmesan and top with breadcrumbs. Drizzle olive oil over each stuffed eggplant and return the baking tray to the preheated oven and bake for about 30 minutes or so, or until the eggplant shells/skins are very soft and the topping is lightly browned.

Remove from the oven and serve hot.

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