Home › From Carême to Dumas › From Carême to Dumas (Cate and presenting this)

From Carême to Dumas (Cate and presenting this)

cate, and presenting this additional information concerning its character: ""Ah! mon Dieu,' asked a lady of her husband, as they were looking at a babiroussa at the Jardin des Plantes, 'what kind of an animal is that, my dear, who instead of two horns has four?" "'Madame,' said some one who was passing by, 'that is a widower who has remarried." " There are recipes from Beauvilliers, Carême, the Marquis de Cussy, and the cook of King Stanislas; from the manuals of the times of Louis XIV and XV; from the cafés Anglais, Verdier, Brébant, Magny, Grignon, Véfour, and Véry; from Elzéar- Blaze, La Reynière, the Provincial Brothers, and Vuillemot, proprietor of the Tête Noire at St. Cloud. One's mouth waters as he reads the vast alphabet of dishes. There are, for example, thirty-one modes presented for preparing the carp, and fifty-six for dressing the egg, apart from the omelet, with sixteen recipes for artichokes and a dozen for asparagus.

There is the Java formula for cooking halcyons' nests, and that of the cook of Richelieu for godiveau, a dissertation on the hocco, and a prescription for bustards à la daube. No wonder that Dumas has defined the dinner as a daily and capital action that can be worthily accomplished only by gens d'esprit.