French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [19]
The Île de France
A HOUSEHOLD IN THE EIGHTEEN-SEVENTIES
My own introduction to French cookery came about, as I have written in the foregoing notes on Paris household cooking, through a family of which every member appeared to be exceptionally food-conscious. That was in the nineteen-thirties. Mrs. Belloc Lowndes’ quotation below from the diary of a young English girl staying with French friends in the seventies of the last century reveals that the carefully cooked and delicious food which made such an impact on myself was in precisely the same tradition as that served in a well-ordered household some sixty years previously. The kind of food, in fact, which constitutes the core of genuine French cookery, but which to us seems so remarkable because it implies that excellent ingredients and high standards are taken for granted day by day, whereas in our own kitchens the best efforts tend to be made only for parties and special occasions.
‘Before Angust 1914, France was in very truth the land of Cocaigne. The war of 1871 had lasted less than a year, and though during the Siege of Paris the Parisians of all classes had ended by eating dogs, cats, rats and mice, the greater part of the country remained untouched by the fearful scourge; what is now called ‘total war’ was undreamed of. By the summer of 1872 everything connected with the preparation and serving of food, though the prices of most things had increased, had returned to normal. This was even true of a household as devastated as had been my home at La Celle St. Cloud.
‘This beautiful little hamlet between Versailles and Marly-le-Roi is curiously untouched, or was the last time I was there, in the spring of 1939. Our house stands on a hill, and commands a magnificent view of the Valley of the Seine. That view is bounded on the left by the Terrace of St. Germain, and on the right by the haze which always hangs over Paris.
‘Where almost all my childhood and my early girlhood were spent, the head of our family, my grandmother, Madame Swanton Belloc, ruled as Queen. The household was not large, but as her friend of fifty years—Adelaide de Montgolfier, daughter of the inventor of the balloon—who always lived with her in the summer, brought her own personal maid, there were three servants, and a boy of about sixteen who ran errands, and made himself generally useful. Each of the servants could cook, and cook well, and there was none of the formality below stairs which then existed in every English household of the same type.
‘In addition to a considerable circle of friends, my grandmother constantly entertained her daughters and their children, and her great-nephews and great-nieces. They were always welcome, and as there was no telephone, and the coming of a telegram would have been regarded as heralding a disaster, my aunts and my cousins frequently appeared without having given any notice. There were few days when we had not one or more guests to luncheon and dinner.
‘I do not recall any discussion taking place as to food, good or otherwise, but a good deal of thought and care, and, what would have seemed to the mistress of an English country house of moderate size, a great deal of money as well, must have been spent by the even then aged mistress of the establishment, and that though there was never anything served in the way of primeurs.
‘By an odd chance I quite lately found a diary kept by a young English cousin of my mother, during a visit to La Celle St. Cloud in 1876. She was the only daughter of a well-known London lawyer, and when at home lived in a way many English people would have thought luxurious—but she was evidently astonished and impressed by the déjeuners and diners to which she sat down each day. So much was this the case that she often took the trouble to put on record what had been served on a certain day. Her diary, which is meagre, contains little of interest apart from what I am about to quote.
‘I find under the date of 19 July, the following entry:
‘ “Today old Monsieur Barth