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POILÂNE

1945. Lionel Poilâne, who would bridge the gap between the quality and quantity in the production of bread, is born in Paris. At fourteen he began work in his father’s bakery and soon came to scorn mechanical production. He revived traditional methods, making his signature loaf a large, round country boule, kneaded by hand and baked in wood-burning ovens. After inheriting his father’s bakery, he spent the next thirty years turning it into a ten-million-dollar business that produced fifteen thousand loaves a day by hand for Parisian shops, restaurants, and customers in twenty countries around the world. His success helped encourage French legislation that bans the use of the word boulangerie unless the bread is made by hand entirely on the premises, and caused as many as five thousand shops in France to change their signs.

NOT COMPLICATED DINNER

1977. June 11. Dinners need not be complicated to make. Gordon and Greta Forbes, Thorny and Liz Penfield, and P. C. Harper, who had a wonderful forehand and loved to dance, come.

Brie; a caviar pie; Caesar salad dressed at the table as in showy restaurants; eggplant parmigiana; fresh strawberries and peaches in rum; and coffee, tea, cognac, chocolates, cigars. The wine (unidentified) was in a carafe and was “drunk fiercely,” according to our dinner book. Huge helpings, it was noted. “They simply wouldn’t go home.”

CAVIAR PIE (AS AN HORS D’OEUVRE)

½ white onion, finely chopped

2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

Sour cream

Black lumpfish caviar (available in supermarkets)

In a rather small, shallow serving dish, layer the ingredients: first the onion, then the egg, then the sour cream (put dollops on top of the egg and smooth the dollops together), then the caviar in a thin layer. Serve with crackers to spread it on. Serves about six.

STRAWBERRIES

Strawberries, though not depicted in the art of ancient Egypt or Greece, were familiar to the Romans and thought to have healing powers. The French philosopher Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) attributed his exceptionally long life to them and ate them every day they were in season.

A symbol of the delights of summer—highly perishable—strawberries are low in calories and rich in vitamin C and potassium. The cream—either fresh or, as preferred in some parts of Europe, sour—that so naturally goes with them is probably less beneficial.

Strawberries grew wild in both the Old and New Worlds. They have been cultivated since about the 13th century. Wild strawberries are smaller and darker with greater flavor and fragrance. Called fraises des bois, they can sometimes be found in shops.

Thérèse Cabarrus was the stylish ex-wife of a marquis and a prisoner under the charge of Jean Tallien, an organizer of the dreaded Reign of Terror after the French Revolution. He saved her from execution when she had become his mistress. Later he married her. Her salon became famous, as did her habit of adding the juice from twenty-two pounds of crushed strawberries to her bath to keep her skin smooth and silky. She divorced Tallien in 1802 and married a banker.

FRUITS WITH LIQUEURS

Fresh fruit in season, cut up and with an appropriate liqueur poured over it makes one of the best desserts. The choice of liqueur is important, and the best is often an echo of the fruit itself.

These suit one another:

ORANGES Orange liqueur (such as Grand Marnier)

APPLES Calvados

PEARS Pear brandy

PEACHES Orange liqueur

PINEAPPLE Rum

RASPBERRIES Framboise

STRAWBERRIES Orange liqueur or kirsch

ITALIAN PLUMS Slivovitz

CHICKEN MARENGO

Chicken Marengo is one of the few, if not only, dishes named for a battle. It was created during one of Napoleon’s by his steward, from limited ingredients he had at hand, notably using olive oil instead of butter.

Napoleon was a man who ate merely as a matter of necessity. The outcome at Marengo, one of those battles when his destiny flickered and nearly went out, was in grave doubt on this day in 1800 when he told one of his generals,