Napoleonic Pleasures

A frustrated cookAlexandre Dumas (father), the famous novelist, father of so many heros, had a true passion for cooking. He used to say this taste was a gift from heaven. He liked to choose ingredients, roast joints of meat, slow-cook vegetables in casseroles etc. in the same way that he liked to talk about it. […]

Madeleines – origins and myths  These little sponge cakes, still widely popular, bear a girl's name that was commonly given to little girls during the period. There are three Madeleines who might lay claim to having invented these sweetmeats.Might it have been the pastry-cook to the Polish king, Stanislas Leczinski, living in exile in the […]

The philosophy of the culinary artJean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) is one of the world's most famous gastronomic critics. His best known work was The Physiology of Taste, published in 1825, a few months before his death. On publication, his contemporaries proclaimed him a genius and ranked this work on a level with De la Rochefoucauld's […]

Chocolate: friend or foe?At the time of the First Empire, chocolate ventured out of the apothecary's. Up to that time it had been thought of as primarily a medication: chocolate was sold as a purgative, cough mixture, and also an aphrodisiac.From this time on, chocolate, still in liquid form, turned up at the morning meal […]