Soubise
The Prince of Soubise is immortal in a renown that has spread round the world because he had a great cook, Bertrand, who gave the name of his master to one of his sauces. The Prince was meritorious, for he put infinite faith in Bertrand. On one occasion he proposed a supper, and requested Bertrand to prepare a bill. There was one little item in the bill of fifty hams. "What is this?" said the Prince. "You must be mad, Bertrand. Are you going to feast all my regiment?" "No, Monseigneur," said the chef-"only one ham will appear at table, but the rest are required for my sauces and garnitures." "Bertrand, you are robbing me," cried the Prince; "I cannot allow this." "Monseigneur," said the artist, quietly, "you do not understand our resources; I will, if you choose, put all the fifty hams which astonish you so much into a glass vial no bigger than my thumb." The Prince withdrew his objection: he had faith in genius; and that genius has immortalised him in the Soubise sauce. Most persons will read this story, and enjoy it as a piece of pleasantry. They are wrong. Bertrand, I have little doubt, was perfectly serious. He lived at a period when Spanish fashions, and with them the Spanish ham, were in high favour. This ham has a fine smoky perfume, which is not to be found in the half-smoked French ham. The cooks then were trying to produce a Spanish sauce with the flavour of the Spanish ham. It would probably require ten French hams to produce the result of one Spanish one; and a chemist in our own day could, out of Soubise a log of pinewood, provide us with a small vial of odorous pyroligneous essence which a cook in the time of Louis