The gastronomic meal of the French, figure of the intangible heritage of is the heritage of an ancestral and unrecognized know-how, which has been refined as the story progresses.
By Jean-Robert Pitte
It is in November 2010 that Unesco has registered on the representative list of intangible heritage of humanity The gastronomic meal of the French. This ritual, deeply rooted in the French identity, in all walks of life, includes first and foremost the quality-oriented production sectors of agriculture, livestock, hunting and fishing. Added to this are the techniques of transformation, conservation, culinary implementation, the crafts linked to the table, the ways of consuming, talking about and writing about them, the social practices, the rituals and the festivals that feature them. In its organization, the French gastronomic meal includes specificities among which its order (aperitif, hors d’oeuvre, starters, main courses, cheeses, desserts, coffee, digestive), its use of sauces elaborated from funds and smells (today no longer juices or extractions), its concern tended towards the harmony of marrying dishes and wines.
Tableware is also essential. A gourmet meal involves a lot of effort in terms of tablecloths, choice of dishes, glassware and cutlery. It is all this that makes the ways of eating and drinking, much more than a means of sustenance and maintaining good health, a source of pleasure, an invitation to share, a moral and spiritual enrichment, a refinement as shared as possible, in a word a culture. To achieve this, we need to talk about it and enhance the pleasure of a good meal with a conversation that is as natural as it is cheerful and spicy. What is the origin of this major facet of French culture?
The word gastronomy, first of all. His story is not an ordinary one. This is the name of a cookbook written in Greece five centuries before Christ by Archestrate, a poet of the time of Pericles, most of which has been lost. Its title means the law of the stomach, which is apparently not very engaging, but our author had a sense of humor and it was rather a work written for the pleasure of his readers in the glory of good food elaborated with art and care. This title is exhumed by a Frenchman. The French Revolution had not killed the art of eating well, since the rise of restaurants dates back to that time. The cooks of the great houses, unemployed because of the guillotine or emigration, had opened establishments in which they continued to exercise their talents for the sans-culotte. Nevertheless, the splendor of the great banquets revives only under the Directory, the Consulate and, especially, the Empire.
At the end of this troubled period, Joseph (de) Berchoux (1760-1838), a pleasant and greedy Burgundian lawyer of small nobility, rhymer at his hours, published in 1800 a long bantering poem in alexandrines which he titled: “La gastronomie ou l’homme des champs à table”. This new and slightly pedantic word made people smile; the era being one of joie de vivre after the decade that had just passed, it was to meet with great success, passing very quickly into the everyday language of gourmets, then into all the languages of Europe. Today, it is used in China, Japan and Russia and immediately evokes France for those who pronounce or write it.
Since the reign of Louis XIV, France has built a solid reputation for refined cuisine and table arts. It is the result of the will of the Sun King who wanted to invent a new style in all the fine arts, to impose it to the elite of the country, then to all the courts of Europe. His taste for good food made him ask his cooks to imagine new ways to prepare the dishes served at his table. Less spices, acidic sauces, sweet and sour flavors, more butter, cream, white and fatty meats, vegetables. The meal “à la française” of this time foresees three or four successive services during which the table is covered with innumerable learned dishes arranged in silver or gold dishes, sometimes provided with lids. This sumptuous crockery has almost entirely disappeared in the smelting of precious metals to finance the wars.
One of the rare 18th century Parisian silverware services still in use is that of Christian VII of Denmark, the pride of today’s sovereigns at their state dinners. On the other hand, many princely services in Sèvres porcelain remain, some of which are used at the Élysée Palace. Nostalgic for the Ancien Régime, Berchoux described this splendor well. Of the first service, that of the “appetizers”, he says that they must be legion to the point of embarrassing the host who does not know where to put the fork, while in the second service, appear imposing roasts. Some calligraphy menus from the Ancien Régime have been preserved, for example, those of Louis XV’s dinners at Choisy or Versailles in the 1750s: the list of dishes is impressive! We often eat standing up at this time, for example during balls or hunting stops. These abundant meals are called ambiguous. They have become simpler, but have never disappeared and are the ancestors of the buffets prepared by today’s caterers.
(to be continued…)
