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From Carême to Dumas: Brisse

With Jules Gouffé, Urbain-Dubois, a chef of the highest order, and author of six important works on cookery, will be known to posterity as one of the greatest masters of the range of the second half of the nineteenth century. In marked contrast to those of Gouffé and Dubois are the numerous culinary works of Ildefonse-Léon Brisse, more familiarly known as Baron Brisse, and who was sometimes termed the Baron Falstaff. Two of his manuals, moulded on somewhat similar lines, are excellent mentors for the modest household "The 366 Menus" (1868) and "La Petite Cuisine" (1870), of which many editions have appeared. In these a large number of good, uncommon, and simple dishes are presented, and both works may be comprehended by all who have a fair practical knowledge of cookery at command. According to Théodore de Banville, Baron Brisse was "at once an accomplished cook, a fine and delicate gourmet, and a gourmand always tormented with an insatiable hunger." It may therefore be assumed that all his recipes have been personally tested, and that those he particularly recommends are well worthy of trial, bearing out the sentiment he expresses in the preface to "La Petite Cuisine," - "This book is a good action for which I will be duly credited in this world or the other." Besides his numerous volumes on cookery, he founded and contributed to several culinary journals. He laughed and ate. He was of enormous stature, and always was obliged to secure two places in the diligence between Paris and his home at Fontenay-aux-Roses, where he resided previous to his death in 1876. With Jules Gouffé he instituted a series of dinners where the guests were expected to dine in white frocks and round white caps, like the fat old cooks that Roland has painted-dinners presided over by the baron, whose bonhomie was proverbial, and executed under the directions of Gouffé himself. But apart from his excellent cookery-books, Baron Brisse should be held in abiding reverence by all entertainers that are worthy of the name, if only for his splendid axiom,--- "The host whose guest has been obliged to ask him for anything is a dishonoured man!" 2