Chambord
The name of a royal castle near Blois, built in the most florid style of the renascence by Francis I. (1526) on his return from captivity in Madrid. It was here that he wrote with a diamond on a pane of glass the couplet- Toute femme varie- Bien fol est qui s'y fie, which his descendant, Lous XIV., put away to please Mademoiselle de la Vallière. The castle is remarkable in many ways. It is a splendid specimen of architecture, and some of the most famous scenes in French history were enacted in its precincts. But, after all, it is most widely IIO Chantilly Basket known throughout the world for one little detail of cookery which was first practised in its kitchen. Before the time of Francis there was no special merit in French cookery. It was no better than English or Flemish.
The French, with all their strength, were barbarians as compared with the Italians. It was in the Italian cities that the arts revived, and that all the refinements of wealth and commerce were best cultivated. Francis the First married his son to Catherine of Medici, who brought with her to Paris and to Chambord all the graces and muses of Florence. Through her the Italians taught the French manners, enlightened them in criticism, schooled them in art, showed them how to cook. They brought the fricandeau with them from Italy, and when they were installed in the kitchen at Chambord they applied the principle of the fricandeau to the fish which abounds in the neighbourhood. The commune of Chambord has more than a dozen considerable ponds, all abounding in carp, a fish which is sometimes poor in flavour. But veal also is apt to be insipid, though it adopts and appropriates extraneous flavours with rare docility and with beautiful results. The Italian artists determined to lard the carp as they larded the cushion of veal to make a fricandeau. The effect was so good that the method of dressing carp à la Chambord spread over France, thoroughly established itself in the French kitchen, and is celebrated over the world as among the triumphs of French art. Unhappily the later French cooks make the most dreadful blunders in the application of the Chambord method. Some are quite ignorant of what the method really is; and those who seem to be aware of it are weak enough to apply it to fish which are not of the same character as the carp and do not need to be larded. See Carp.