The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [172]
3. “AT THE COMPAS D'OR ON RUE MONTORGUEIL”: To be precise, the inn was at numbers 64 to 72 rue Montorgueil. In his notes in preparation for writing The Belly of Paris, Zola described this inn, built in the sixteenth century, as “several buildings of different sizes united by a courtyard in the back.” He wrote of how the area was covered with straw for parking carts. “Chickens walked around,” he noted, “and the place had the appearance of a farm.” He also described a door on the ground floor that led to the Restaurant Philippe, which is mentioned later, in Chapter Four. In the 1870s, when Zola was writing this book, Restaurant Philippe was one of the most famous restaurants in Paris. Though the name Compas d'Or continues, the original complex of buildings was torn down in 1927.
4. BOULANGERIE: A boulangerie is a bread bakery, but because it traditionally had a huge wood-burning oven, such ovens have disappeared from Paris today. It rented out oven space to people in the neighborhood who wanted something baked. This is the origin of the many dishes, usually stews, with the adjective boulangére.
5. EAU-DE-VIE: Eau-de-vie is white alcohol made from fermented fruit that is distilled twice and quickly bottled to remain colorless and maintain its fruity character.
6. HE WAS A FORT: One of many examples of a particularly rich Parisan slang that came from the Les Halles market. A fort was a porter, literally a strong man, who hefted meat carcasses and crates in the market.
7. PEAL OF BELLS: Bells were used in each of the pavilions to signal work shifts in the market.
8. BARATTE'S: This restaurant in the Les Halles neighborhood, mentioned throughout the novel, was in vogue in the mid-nineteenth century, and the building is painstakingly described, floor by floor, in Zola's notes.
9. TRIPERIE: A type of shop that in France goes back to the Middle Ages, a triperie sells not only tripe but the full range of offal and inward products.
10. KÉPIS: Visored cylindrical French military caps originally invented in Algeria with a cane base to be lightweight. In 1852, six years before the action of this book, the képi became established in metropolitan France for both military personnel and some police units.
11. HIS CHARCUTERIE: One of the oldest types of French food shops, tracing its roots back to ancient Greece and Rome. The French word comes from chair, meaning “meat,” and cuit, meaning “cooked.” Charcuteries originally concentrated on pork products, but in Zola's time the repertoire was expanding and has continued to expand in our day. A charcuterie specializes in prepared foods, including cured meats, such as sausages, hams, and pâtés, predominantly but not exclusively pork products, and also predominantly but not exclusively meat preparations.
12. TO RUE RAMBUTEAU, ACROSS FROM LES HALLES: The significance of the Quenu charcuterie being moved from rue Pirouette to rue Rambuteau is that rue Pirouette was a winding old street from medieval Paris that somehow survived Baron Georges Haussmann's rebuilding of Paris, whereas the new location on rue Rambuteau was very much part of the new, rebuilt Les Halles district. This was of great symbolic importance to Zola, who correctly associated Haussmann's plan with the militarism of the hated empire.
13. RILLETTES: Rillettes are potted pork belly cooked down until it is a fatty meat spread. The belly is cooked for a number of hours; then the meat is separated from the fat and pounded into fibers, then mixed back with the fat and stored in earthen crocks, where it would keep for a very long time even before the age of refrigeration. It is also sometimes made from goose, chicken, or rabbit. In the case of goose, skin is sometimes added. But rillettes are supposed to be made exclusively from the meat and fat of a cut with salt as the only additive, though nitrates such as saltpeter, which is a salt, were sometimes added even in Zola's day. The earliest references to rillettes