The Perfect Meal (16 page)

Cèpes mushrooms Bordelaise style

Green peas with butter

S
WEETS

Rice pudding with preserves

D
ESSERT

Gruyère cheese

With these exotic dishes, the restaurant offered Mouton-Rothschild 1846, Romanée-Conti 1858, Château Palmer 1864, and, as a digestif, Grand Porto 1827—wines sufficiently fine to make even rat palatable.

Choron’s skill backfired on him. His clients developed a taste for elephant. After Christmas, Voisin bought the animal of the Botanical Garden for fifteen francs a pound. Elephant trunk in
sauce chasseur
and
Éléphant bourguignon
went on the menu. Even the blood wasn’t wasted. Edmond de Goncourt wrote in his diary on New Year’s Eve 1870. “Tonight, at the famous Chez Voisin, I found elephant black pudding and I dined”—presumably with pleasure.

Fortunately for any surviving animals, at the end of January 1871, Napoleon capitulated and abandoned his throne. The government and army, in disorder, had fled from what they feared could be a hand-to-hand battle for Paris against the vastly more competent Prussian troops. However, after an orderly victory parade through the conquered city, the Prussians returned home, leaving Paris in the hands of its dazed but elated citizens. In the power vacuum that followed, the more radical Parisians, particularly those who lived in Montmartre, seized the city and proclaimed the Commune—an anarchist community, with total equality for all.

The changed diet forced on Parisians by the siege played a small but decisive role in the political ferment. Once it became acceptable to eat horse, plentiful in a culture where horses hauled almost every load and provided the main means of transport, a rich source of protein was suddenly available to the poor. This brought greater energy and stamina, better health, and the spirit of revolution.

Imagery of the siege even celebrated the importance of horse meat. An allegorical engraving shows Paris as a defiant woman, sword in hand, with the city burning behind her, while, in the sky, hawks attack a pigeon. She’s supporting a shield with eight symbols of the siege: a flaming torch, a balloon, a pigeon, a sword, a set of manacles, an artillery shell, the Croix de Genève (or Red Cross, founded only seven years earlier), and a horse’s head. A caption lets the horse itself explain, acquiescing in its own sacrifice. “I have been besieged in Paris, and have fed it.”

I
t’s very French that one of the events most remembered about the siege of Paris was the night the patrons of Voisin ate camel, wolf, and elephant. The Voisin banquet was not simply a culinary event but a social and political one. Significantly, the menu is headed “99th Day of the Siege.” It made the point that Paris remained defiant.

Much as I admired the French, both for their patriotism and their culinary skill, I couldn’t help being a little suspicious about this famous feast. Given that the meal was, in part, an act of propaganda, how seriously should we take the menu? Did they eat what was claimed?

Some dishes sound authentic. A stew of kangaroo is one of the few ways to eat this muscular animal. The tail makes a tasty soup, and the rump is as good as venison, but the remaining meat is so tough it’s usually ground up for pet food.

Rat is still a delicacy in China, where it was sampled during the 1990s by British TV chef Keith Floyd. He found it “not in any way repugnant. It tasted similar to duck.” Floyd, who specialized in demonstrating exotic dishes in remote places, also roasted a leg of bear for a series about cooking next to the Arctic Circle. In cooking his Bear Chops with Pepper Sauce, Choron probably followed a similar recipe to Lloyd’s, larding the meat with slivers of bacon and inserting pieces of garlic. It tasted, Floyd said, like the best roast pork.

But not even Floyd would have suggested roasting the notoriously tough camel, or serving wolf at all. Modern food writer M. F. K. Fisher published a book called
How to Cook a Wolf
, but in her case, the wolf was metaphorical—a symbol for hunger. She never suggested eating one, although during the time she lived in France, she did develop a taste for pâté made from lark, the songbird whose tongues had been a delicacy at medieval tables.

As for the rest of the Voisin menu, Stuffed Donkey’s Head sounds dubious, particularly since it appears, incongruously, among the starters, next to sardines and radishes with butter, both traditional pre-dinner savories. A donkey’s head has little edible meat, so the head was probably papier-mâché, perhaps borrowed from a theatrical warehouse, which would have kept it in stock for productions of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
.

Cat Flanked by Rats also sounds suspicious. No chef would place such an unappetizing oddity next to Antelope Terrine with Truffles, clearly a dish of distinction. On the other hand, it would not be beyond the skill of Voisin’s kitchen to create a cat and rats in aspic, or in shortcrust, enclosing a
pâté en croûte
.

T
o have staged such a patriotic event made Voisin more famous than ever. It even opened a branch in New York. Until the original closed in 1930, its customers included kings and princes, as well as the greats of politics and the arts. It no longer served elephant and camel, but “if the owner looks upon you with eyes of favour,” wrote one client, “you will be presented by him with a little pink card, folded in two, on which is the menu of a dinner given at Voisin’s on Christmas Day 1870.”

Choron himself lived until 1924, content to coast on his reputation. Aside from the 1870 dinner, he’s best known for sauce Choron, a mayonnaise flavored with tomato and tarragon, which, according to rumor, he invented by accident when he spilled tomato purée into some Béarnaise sauce. About any fakery connected with his famous banquet, however, he had the good sense to keep his mouth shut.

Twelve

First Catch Fire

The story of barbecue is the story of America: settlers arrive on great unspoiled continent, discover wondrous riches, set them on fire and eat them.

Vince Staten, in
Real Barbecue

A
s Vatel and Choron realized, a formal dinner must be both a meal and a show. At the banquets they supervised, a dish’s appearance meant as much as, if not more than, how it tasted. From Roman times, cooks were valued for their ability to create a meal that was also a spectacle. If my
repas
was to be a true success, it must be at least partly a piece of theatre.

Trimalchio, the party-giver of Petronius’s
Satyricon
, mixed food and theatricals on a grand scale. At the feast Petronius describes, a huge pig is carried in.

One and all, we expressed our admiration. Presently, Trimalchio, staring harder and harder, exclaimed “What! It’s been cooked with its guts still inside? Call the cook.”

The cook came and stood by the table, looking crestfallen and saying he had clean forgot.

“What? Forgotten?” cried Trimalchio. “Strip him!” he ordered, reaching for his whip.

We all began to intercede for him, saying, “Accidents will happen. Forgive him this once.”

Trimalchio, a smile breaking over his face, told the cook, “Well, as you have such a bad memory, gut the beast now, where we can all see.”

With trembling hand, the cook slashed open the animal’s belly. Out tumbled quantities of sausages and black puddings made from the pig’s organs and entrails. At this, all the servants applauded like one man. The cook was rewarded with a goblet of wine and a silver wreath.

Medieval chefs had to be able to present a cooked swan or peacock in its plumage, and build fragile palaces of spun sugar. Some dishes were no more than party tricks; a huge pie, carried to the table by a team of servants, might prove to be filled with live birds that flew out as it was cut, or a turkey would be stuffed with a chicken, the chicken with a guinea hen, the guinea hen with a spatchcock, the spatchcock with a quail, and so on, down to an ortolan, the smallest edible bird, the size of one’s thumb.

These creations, after being paraded for the guests, were placed on show for the commoners to gawk at. Nobody at the royal table actually ate them. But even uneaten, they trumpeted prestige. To have cooks who could prepare such dishes was impressive enough. But to care so little about the cost that you just let them sit there—that showed real wealth.

Fragments of this ostentation live on in our own Thanksgiving and Christmas turkey or sucking pig, served whole, and carved at the table. The classic multistory wedding cake belongs to the same tradition. With each such cake my father made, he supplied a few small boxes of thin silvery metal, their lids embossed with wedding bells. If a friend or relative couldn’t attend the reception, he or she was sent a slice of cake as a souvenir—a distant echo of commoners being invited in to admire the feast. Pieces of royal wedding cake in similar tins turn up occasionally. A survivor from the ill-fated wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana sold in 2008 for $1,830.

A
more flamboyant survival from the days of spectacle is the Piping in the Haggis. This traditionally takes place on the twenty-fifth of January, birthday of Scotland’s revered poet, Robert Burns. In a miniature variation on the Roman roasted pig stuffed with its own sausages, haggis is made from a sheep’s stomach crammed with oatmeal, onions, spices, and the sheep’s chopped kidneys, heart, and liver. This is then steamed until it reaches the consistency of a slightly crumbly meat loaf. It may not excite the appetite of every gourmet, but Burns loved it, and even composed a poem in its honor.

“Address to a Haggis” is the most passionate tribute ever penned to any dish, let alone one made with what American supermarkets call “variety meats” but the British frankly label “offal.” Describing haggis as the “great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race,” Burns, writing in dialect, suggests that a true Scot would cheerfully subsist on nothing else:

Ye Pow’rs wha mak mankind your care,

And dish them out their bill o’ fare,

Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware

That jaups in luggies;

But if ye wish her gratfu’ prayer,

Gie her a Haggis!

Which translates roughly as:

You powers who make Man your care

And dish them out their bill of fare,

Remember Scotland doesn’t care

For gravied dishes.

But if you wish her grateful prayer

Give her a haggis!

At a Burns Night banquet, “Address to a Haggis” is traditionally recited as the dish is paraded around the table, preceded by a bagpiper. After a lengthy dedication—Burns dictates “a grace as lang’s my arm”—the host carves it up and serves his guests. This, at least, is how it should go, but as Burns himself remarked, “the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley”—the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

At a Burns Night in an Australian university in the 1960s, a giant haggis was much admired for the way it conformed to Burns’s description of juices oozing through the skin: “while thro’ your pores the dews distil / Like amber bead.” The college chef confided to friends that he’d cooked it in his latest acquisition, an industrial-size pressure cooker. Somebody in the physics department, overhearing, started to explain that a permeable membrane—a sheep’s stomach, for example—can absorb an enormous amount of pressure, which has no way to escape. Just then, the chaplain concluded his grace. The college president rose in his formal gown, picked up a carving knife, and cut—

The explosion was audible all over campus. For days, cleaning staff were scraping sheep’s entrails off the walls.

F
or my part, I sympathized.

I once decided to liven up an Australian barbecue by serving a kebab, not on the conventional metal skewer but with the meat impaled on a sword, and carried to the table in flames.

As
shashlik
, this dish had been served in Russian restaurants in the 1920s—the
shashka
is a kind of sabre—but became familiar during the 1960s as a specialty of certain American restaurants. Once I’d seen the drawing of a waiter in a white jacket coolly carrying such a flaming sword through a crowd of diners in Chicago’s Pump Room, I wouldn’t be satisfied until I’d tried it.

Fencing friends were surprisingly unwilling to lend me their weapons after I told them what I had planned. The old foil that one did find in the back of a closet was both rusty and bent. I removed the worst of the rust, but nothing could be done about the bend. Nor was the point sharp—understandable for a sporting weapon but a problem if you were skewering cubes of lamb.