Remembrance of Things Paris

by Gourmet Magazine Editors

  The time might come again when Maxim’s will offer truite vivante au bleu, gratin queues d’écrevisses, basrond d’agneau de Pauillac persillé pommes Maxim’s, médallion de ris de veau Grand Duc, coeur de filet bordelaise, and such things. M. Vaudable and his chef, M. Barthe, say that there is no grande cuisine today because of the lack of butter and cream. Until such things return one will be able to get along adequately, and the lack of such products makes unnecessary the only really efficacious waist-reducing exercise: pushing yourself away from the table.

  June 1947

  CHICKEN DEMI-DEUIL

  George Bijur

  “You must read Flaubert aloud, holding a pencil tightly clenched between your teeth,” Monsieur Thibaut, professor of phonetics at l’Institut du Panthéon, had always insisted. “If you wish to learn to pronounce the most beautiful language in the world correctly, this is the only way to make move your lazy American lips.”

  Now that I had at last returned to Paris, seven years later, the hectic day after la Libération, I kept wondering if my tyrannical teacher was still alive and well; if he would still make his American pupils perform violent setting-up exercises while reciting Géraldy’s poèmes d’amour—an ambidextrous athletics designed to remedy Western twang by making it impossible to breathe through the nose while conversing.

  After lunch I stuffed my pockets with Life Savers and K rations, gifts which famished Parisians seemed to find comparable to the little gondolas of gold that Marco Polo had once proffered to Kublai Khan, pushed through the crowds of girls with berets and guys with bottles, and headed for the university district.

  The Institut du Panthéon is around the corner from the Sorbonne, just behind the Café Dupont, “où tout est bon.” Its narrow entrance is guarded by a small glass slot in the door, through which a secretary may gauge the academic fitness of visitors before inviting them to enter. Resembling the peepholes in our erstwhile speakeasies, this reconnaissance slot is called by the French un vasistas, an onomatopoeic word satirizing the habit German soldiers had during the Franco-Prussian War of inquiring “Was ist das?” when they first saw so unfamiliar a contrivance.

  As I rang the bell, the face of the student behind le vasistas took on a startled expression. A uniformed Yank, perhaps a member of the U.S. Gestapo! “C’est un amerloque, un ’ricain!”

  There was barely a few seconds’ wait until I was ceremoniously ushered into that inner sanctum of phonetics, the office of M. Thibaut. The old man was sitting in the same dilapidated, overcarved armchair that I remembered so well, wearing the same enormous shell-rimmed spectacles that Disney might have designed for an animated owl, peering up at the same old cobwebs on the ceiling.

  When he stood up, you could see that his trouser cuffs were fringed and tattered, but his shoes, in honor presumably of the great victory, were polished until they had become brown leather looking glasses, worthy of a place in the newly emancipated Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. He shook hands with me as formally as General de Gaulle would have, no doubt, if welcoming President Roosevelt, then flung his arms around my shoulders and cried. Much later, after I had asked about his health, his family, his vineyards in Beaujolais, and above all the blue-ribbon snails he reared with the care of pedigreed pets, I asked if I might not have a lesson in phonetics. He nodded, obviously pleased, then got up and hobbled over to a huge mahogany filing cabinet, pulled open a drawer marked B, and all but disappeared from sight as he dived into its cavernous depths. When he emerged, he was triumphantly clutching a large manila envelope, deeply yellowed with age. “Now we shall see what we shall see,” he exclaimed, slitting open the flap to unearth a two-page list of my ancient faults of phonetics, preserved in the wood since 1937.

  For nearly an hour I paraded and auditioned all the Gallic noises in my repertoire. To an eavesdropper on the other side of the partition, it would have seemed as if some radio actor were rehearsing barnyard sound effects as I squealed, mooed, whined, barked, and clucked my way through the vowels, semivowels, and nasal vowels as laid down by Larousse. To squeeze out that half-explosive, half-mincing sound of pu, my reluctant lips would pucker to the shape of an ancient loudspeaker. For developing correct pronunciation of nasalized vowels as in faim and pain, there would be the tantalizing task of exhaling through nose and mouth at the same time, all the while bleating “ba-a-a-” like Bopeep’s sheep; for short a as in patte, the effort to open one’s mouth wider than Joe E. Brown’s, while touching the teeth with the tongue tip, an assignment that seemed harder than Arty McGovern’s old reducing exercise of touching the toes with the fingertips without bending the knees.

  When at last the solemn grandfather’s clock on the wall pointed to closing time, M. Thibaut shook his head sadly. “I am overjoyed,” he said, “to see an old pupil once more, especially as an officer in the American Air Force, but I am desolated at the deterioration in your diphthongs.”

  To cheer me up, perhaps, after this depressing news, he invited me to “Come and break a crust with us this evening. My daughter will be honored. And you must observe her diphthongs—they are fit to be framed!” At his home that night, we feasted on a rare Lyonese specialty, apparently chosen to symbolize the old man’s conflict of emotions: la poularde en demi-deuil, “chicken, half in mourning.” It is so named because truffles are carefully inserted just beneath the transparent skin, offsetting the golden hue of la poularde with flecks of somber black. A sort of culinary concerto with a split personality, it reminded you of that piano piece of Lord Bernes, “Funeral March of a Rich Aunt.” In this, you remember, the left hand thumps out a dutiful bass of the mourners’ procession, while the right hand goes off into irreverent trills of joyful anticipation, as a graceless young nephew imagines all the gay delights he will buy with his just-acquired legacy.

  So, with la poularde en demi-deuil, our palates simultaneously celebrated the liberation of Paris, and mourned the death of my diphthongs. M. Thibaut’s daughter, Claudine, dined with us, stuttering with excitement. Soon to be married, she wanted to fashion her wedding dress from the very Pennsylvania parachute that had borne her Maquis fiancé back to France, one nervous night long before D day. There was just one difficulty, and perhaps M’sieu le Commandant could solve that: The white parachute silk carried heavily stenciled blue numbers which no amount of secret nocturnal scrubbing had been able to remove. Was it possible that the quartermaster of the great American Army could lend her just a tiny bottle of ink eradicator?

  As her father poured glass after glass of warm Champagne, for August was hot and there was no ice in Paris, we clinked glasses and proposed toasts. We drank to General de Gaulle, General Eisenhower, and the girl next door, who had fulfilled a patriotic pledge by jumping into the Seine that morning wearing her very best clothes. We soon progressed to the drinking toasts of taxi drivers and students of the rue Sommerard. “Derrière la cravate” (“Down behind your necktie”). “Faites flotter le poisson” (“To float the fish you ate earlier”). “Pour tuer le ver” (“To kill the worm”). According to French bistro belief, a wicked worm lurks in every man’s intestines: Unless held in check by regular applications of wine, it may grow to enormous proportions. Thus the more you drink, the more you feel the virtuous righteousness of Saint George conquering a homemade dragon.

  In between sips, M. Thibaut would lecture me on snails. “A good eating snail is not soft. It is not lazy. It is not one of your stay-in-bed-all-days. Mais non! Snail flavor is concentrated in the muscles. That is why it is so easy to distinguish between a snail worth his weight in garlic and a snail hardly worth the pain of preparation. A champion snail has the instincts of a Percheron. You have only to place him on the kitchen table, tied to a weight, and he will leap to the challenge: He will pull and pull and pull.”

  You could almost picture the old man visiting his vineyards and exercising his herd of snails, making them do a hundred inches around a crawling track every morning, and perhaps perform setting-up exercises before their wine-leaf breakfast. �
�It is incredible,” he would sigh, shaking his head, “that in a great country like America you should prefer chiens chauds to snails.”

  As we continued to “undry the throat” with a Cognac de guerre, Claudine suddenly interrupted. “But, Papa,” she exclaimed, “something very strange has happened. It to me seems that your diphthongs have become just the least bit muddy, while those faults you referred to in le commandant’s pronunciation have cleared away entirely.”

  And so toward the end of the evening we made a compact: Each year on this anniversary, no matter where we might be, I would dine, if possible, on snails and poularde en demi-deuil (its very name a diphthong), while he, getting the raw end of the bargain, would feast on hamburgers or hot dogs, if available. Furthermore, I promised that whatever French I might unload during the evening would be delivered with double diphthongal diligence; M. Thibaut would deliberately slur his voyelles finales—an act of linguistic self-sacrifice equal to the dropping of h’s by the Speaker of Britain’s House of Lords.

  It is only a few days now since the anniversary of our own private D day (D for Dinner). Others may have celebrated the occasion of la Libération by marching in parades, laying wreaths, or chanting the “Marseillaise,” but I spent the evening inflicting my irregular French verbs (and are they irregular!) upon a defenseless chef on East 56th Street. Between courses, I browsed through M. Thibaut’s just-arrived letter, which ends with these interesting words: “Thanks to the help your so-noble country is sending, we may soon have a chicken, half in mourning, in every pot. Take care to remain strong, mon ami, for there are those who would like to dine on eagle.”

  August 1947

  CUISINE PARISIENNE

  Louis Diat

  See Paris and die? No, see Paris and eat. That is, or should be, the intention of the thousands of visitors who will go to Paris this anniversary year. The treasures of the Louvre, the grandeur of the Arc de Triomphe, the majesty of Notre-Dame, the swank shops of the rue de la Paix, and the calm serenity of the Bois … all this la Ville Lumière offers, and more, much more. Paris provides today—as it did fifty, one hundred, and several hundred years ago—an inimitable hospitality, expressed practically and pleasantly by the superb food one can depend on finding in Paris at every turn.

  Fine food is the tradition of Paris and has been since … I was about to say since the founding of the city, but the Gauls of Lutetia, which was the name of Paris under the Roman Empire, were no gourmets. Those gentry lived on game, fish, and fruit—raw. But for some centuries, at least, Paris has been the source and inspiration and heart of la grande cuisine. Now, in 1951, every menu, whether in one of the luxurious restaurants on the Place Vendôme or in a neighborhood bistro, reflects the ancient tradition. If a dish is served with one of the great sauces, it belongs to the era of Louis XIV, le Roi Soleil, whose reign gave France the utmost in gracious living. The mayonnaise on a contemporary menu is the same mayonnaise that Cardinal Richelieu devised early in the seventeenth century. Henry IV’Spot-au-feu with a chicken in it, petite marmite Henri IV, dates back a century more.

  In the time of the Louis—quatorze, quinze, and seize—Paris knew unsurpassed opulence, an endless succession of banquets notable for the quantities of food served and for the exotic and sculptured extravagancies of the kitchen artists. But when I came to Paris as a boy, fifty years ago, reform had begun. Then, it was fine shades of flavor and texture that spelled perfection; eye appeal had to depend upon natural beauty rather than upon artifice, and the food served at the Ritz, the Bristol, Prunier, Voisin, and such places was the finest in France.

  The Paris of 1951 is not too different from the Paris I knew before the First World War. The Bois de Boulogne, the Champs-Élysées, Les Halles, the gently flowing Seine, and the bridges over it are all the same. The changes wrought by the years are superficial, not basic. People dress differently, more simply, with fewer furbelows; and they go about their affairs differently, moving from place to place expeditiously in taxis and buses, instead of following the old, leisurely fashions.

  Food customs have followed a similar course. Fundamentally, the cuisine of the fine restaurants of Paris has not changed. The well-known hotels and restaurants still live and still serve the dishes that made their reputations. The perfectly seasoned soups and sauces made famous by great chefs are there—carefully, lovingly mixed and stirred, simmered, and stewed. But now they are less extravagant, have fewer flourishes, and the menus list more simple preparations and fewer elaborate ones than they did in my day.

  I am sure, however, that some of the dishes which we laboriously prepared when I was learning to be a chef will never be served again. The cost of the raw materials is too great; the labor involved, excessive. Take, for example, oeufs Reine Amélie. This dish was created in honor of the Queen of Portugal and became a favorite of royal visitors to the Bristol.

  I have never seen the recipe for eggs Queen Amelia in print, so I set it down here as a matter of history. Pieces of butter were cut and shaped to resemble hen’s eggs. Each butter egg was rolled in flour, in beaten egg, and in fine white bread crumbs. This process was repeated to obtain two coats à l’anglaise. A sharp cutter cut out a small plug at the end of each egg, and the eggs were put away to be chilled thoroughly. They were then fried in deep hot fat. The heat melted the butter, which was then emptied out of the hole in the end of the egg. The simulated shells were filled with eggs scrambled to a delicate creaminess with finely chopped truffles.

  In the meantime, the nests for the eggs were being made. Shoestring potatoes were used to line thickly the bottom and sides of a wire frying basket. A smaller frying basket set inside held the potatoes firmly until they were fried. When the baskets were separated, the crisp nest slipped out. The nests were apt to roll on the serving dish, so a supporting bed was made to hold them steady. This was done by forming a support from noodle dough shaped to look like part of a tree. It had to be baked in the oven right on the platter to give it sufficient rigidity to hold the nest. Then, some cooked noodles, colored green and yellow and cut in fancy shapes, were arranged on the dish.

  A tasty dish, this oeufs Reine Amélie. Even a small party could dispose of dozens of eggs; and there was the hazard of breakage, inevitable during the preparation of this finicking dish, to consider. In New York at today’s costs for food and labor, a portion could not be served for less than twenty dollars. Needless to say, oeufs Reine Amélie is not a menu staple nowadays.

  In Paris fifty years ago, we served many dishes which similarly did not lend themselves to shortcuts. Some of them are gone. Modern kitchen equipment has made others easier. No one pounds raw meat by hand to make the fine, smooth paste required for godiveau, quenelles, and mousses. Good grinders have replaced strong muscles. No one blanches and dries almonds and then pounds and pounds them with sugar, when almond paste can be purchased so easily. No one whips a batch of forty or fifty egg whites with a hand whip for the biscuits à la cuiller to make sponge cakes and ladyfingers. And for a bisque no one crushes lobsters and crawfish—shells and all—with rice to an unbelievable fineness in a huge marble mortar with the great wooden pestle swinging from the ceiling.

  Yet, the fine eating places of Paris still serve many dishes that give evidence of the painstaking cookery for which the French are famous. And there are other customs which differ from our American ways. The relaxed atmosphere is noticeable. Kitchens will not be hurried, and it will do no good to be impatient. Guests are expected to show their appreciation by eating slowly, savoring each mouthful well. In many restaurants, one ought to take the spécialité du jour or, at least, follow the suggestion of the waiter. The spécialité is usually made from the best the market offers, and consequently the chef considers that it is worth preparing properly, no matter how much time it takes.

  Try soup in a Paris restaurant. Even the most reluctant soup-eater will soon be converted to soups that never disappoint. There are, too, certain niceties of serving—the tiny daintiness of pastries, for instance,
that permits the diner to enjoy three, all different sorts, instead of the single pastry he would eat at home. I remember how infuriated Madame Ritz became when our pastry chef made any even a fraction larger than they should have been. Back they went to the kitchen, and a chef who thought his day’s work behind him had to begin all over again.

  Exacting employers like Madame Ritz were the secret of the success of the Ritz and other hotels that catered to the haut monde. As an apprentice chef in the kitchens of such hotels, I knew my survival—not to mention my advancement—depended upon my skill in satisfying the demands of those most sophisticated of kitchens.

  Much water has gone under the bridge since I first came to Paris at the turn of the century, a wide-eyed country lad with little in my pocket but the address of a pension and a few francs to live on until I should find a job. I recall eating my breakfast of brioche and café au lait at the sidewalk stall on the rue de Lille, near the Pont-Neuf where the statue of Henry IV stands. It was cheaper than in a café and was no detriment to my dreams of someday becoming a great chef. My first job was in a pâtisserie on the Place de la Bastille—not what I wanted, but a start. Then, M. Malley—sous-chef at the newly opened Ritz and, fortunately for me, from mon pays—found me a place at the Hôtel du Rhin, the Bristol, and, finally, in his own kitchen at the Ritz. Over the years, I have watched the changes time makes in the fashions of cuisine as in other fashions, and I am happy to be able to say that one can still see Paris and eat!

  The recipes that follow are the classic dishes that may be found in the Paris restaurants. They may be modified, this year, to conform with the limitations of the times, but they show how Paris cooks when the veal is white and delicate, the cream heavy and rich, the truffles fresh and fragrant, and the foie gras succulent.