French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [27]
There is little, it will be noticed, in this full-flavoured cookery to indicate that, in the manner of the English wine connoisseur, you must eat nothing but a grilled cutlet or a mushroom on toast with your fine vintages of the Côte de Beaune and the Côte de Nuits. The menus of the Burgundian wine-growers’ dinners read like something from the age when the Dukes of Burgundy feasted in royal state in the Palace of Dijon where the great vaulted kitchen was also the banqueting hall.
On January 29, 1949, for example, while we were struggling with our little bits of rationed meat and our weekly egg, the Burgundy wine potentates sat down to a meal of boudin and andouillettes (blood sausage and chitterling sausage) with real Dijon mustard; sucking pig in jelly flavoured with Meursault; the matelote of freshwater fish called Pouchouse , with pounded garlic stirred into the sauce, a haunch of wild boar with a rich Grand Veneur sauce and potato croquettes; roast chickens; and cheeses. The sweet was a confection called a Biscuit Argentin in honour of the Argentine Ambassador who was present at the banquet. The wines were a white Aligoté from Meursault, a Beaujolais or two from the previous year’s vintage, two admirable wines from the Côte de Beaune, three great vintages from Nuits-Saint-Georges, Clos Vougeot and Musigny respectively, and a sparkling Burgundy from the Côte de Nuits (the chronicler of the event is reticent about this). The liqueurs were Burgundian Marc and Prunelle. To the Burgundians their wine is the most important consideration. But they are not niggardly eaters either.
The Lyonnais, their neighbours, are inclined perhaps to think more about their food than their wine; not that it could be said of them that they are niggardly drinkers, for their beloved Beaujolais flows in rivers, and it has indeed been said of Lyon that it is situated on three rivers, Rhône, Saône—and Beaujolais. But delicious and fresh as a genuine Beaujolais can be, the wines of this district do not pretend to aspire to the heights of the great wines of Burgundy, and the majority are drunk very young, the draught wine being sold locally by the ‘pot,’ a measure or bottle containing a little under half a litre.
Lyonnais cooking has a very great reputation. It is not, however, of a kind which I find very much to my taste. It is sometimes said that one must be a Lyonnais properly to appreciate the local cookery, and this is probably true. It would also, I think, be fair to say that the cooks of Lyon have given out so much to France, to Europe and to the Americas, that when one actually reaches this fountain-head of French provincial cookery one is conscious of a sense of anti-climax. Of the renowned charcuterie, only one product, the cervelas truffé, comes up to expectations. This is a large, lightly cured pork sausage, liberally truffled, which may be eaten sliced as an hors-d’œuvre, or poached and served with potatoes, or even used whole as a stuffing for a piece of boned and rolled meat. The ordinary everyday cervelas is quite a different product, a smooth sausage more like a large version of the Vienna and Frankfurter sausage, lightly smoked. Then there is the saucisson de Lyon, the cured sausage of the salame type (although it does not at all resemble a salame in flavour) studded with the characteristic little cubes of fat, and a big cooking sausage also lightly salted and cured; both this and the cervelas truffé find their apotheosis in the cervelas