The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [174]
9. BOUILLIES: This is a kind of porridge made by thickening a liquid with flour. It is often a dish for children, but it can also refer to any kind of thickened liquid. The word has the same origin as bouillon, which is a stock, bouillie, something boiled in liquid, and bouillabaisse, a Mediterranean fish soup. Here it appears to be some kind of thickened meat soup.
10. GALANTINE: The word traces back to the Middle Ages, and its origin is debatable. Gelatine, the Chinese spice galangale, which is related to ginger, and a medieval jellied fish dish mentioned in Chaucer are among the proposed etymological roots. Further complicating the debate, in late medieval England the word referred to a sauce. In eighteenth-century France it meant a whole stuffed pig. But by Zola's time the word had the same meaning it has today, a chicken, turkey, duck, or other bird, or even veal, boned, stuffed, wrapped tightly in a cloth, slowly cooked and pressed, and presented shimmering in the aspic made from it. A good charcuterie item, it looks elegant sliced on a plate, revealing an attractive mottled cross section, and though it requires considerable labor to make, it does not demand great skill.
11. CAUL FAT: This is the fat peritoneal layer over a pig's intestines. It can be softened in lukewarm water and stretched out to resembles a yard of white, airy lace, but it is made entirely of fat. Its delicacy is testified to by both the English name, caul, referring to a hairnet, and the French word, crépine, which eludes to crêpe, a light, crinkly type of silk. As a wrapping for pâtés, sausages, and meats, caul fat is an attractive and light way to both wrap something tightly and infuse it with a moderate dose of fat.
12. CHANGED HIS NAME TO SACCARD: An example of how Zola loved to have the Rougon-Macquart books make references to one another. This financier cousin, who had changed his name from Aristide Rougon, was the leading character in the novel published the year before, La Curée.
13. THE WORKERS HAD SOLD OUT, BUT HE NO LONGER EVEN ADMITTED TO HAVING SUPPORTED THE COUP D'éTAT BECAUSE HE NOW REGARDED NAPOLEON III AS HIS PERSONAL ENEMY, A REPROBATE WHO LOCKED HIMSELF UP WITH DE MORNY: In the people's revolution of 1848, the revolting working class put their faith in the man who later made himself Emperor Napoleon III, a significant betrayal of the ideals of the Revolution. Charles-Auguste-Louis-Joseph, duc de Morny, the emperor's half brother, who lived from 1811 to 1865, served as the emperor's minister of the interior, the cabinet minister in charge of policing and law enforcement.
14. CORPS LÉGISLATIF: In this period this was the name of the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies.
15. “THE CROWD UP IN THE TUILERIES”: During the empire, the Tuileries housed the imperial palace. After the empire fell in 1871, the rebels of the Paris Commune wrecked the palace.
16. PAINS DE FROMAGE AND FROMAGE DE COCHON: These have nothing to do with bread or cheese. Pain de fromage from Italy, sometimes called fro-mage d'Italie, is a very fine-textured baked pork pâté. Fromage de cochon is sometimes called fromage de tête, in English head cheese. It is, by tradition, though this is not always true, made from all the pig's head meats, including ears and tongue. It is chopped up, pressed together, and baked. The head meats are very gelatinous, so that once it cools, the hardened aspic holds it all together.
17. LARD DE POITRINE: This is essentially petit salé, except slightly higher into the spare rib part of the pork.
18. SAINDOUX: Saindoux is rendered pork fat that is melted and allowed to cool and congeal to the consistency of butter. It is kept in an earthen crock, which keeps fat from turning, and is used for cooking. In American English saindoux is called “lard,” but this leads to confusion because lard is also a word in French that means something entirely different. In French lard is a strip of salt-cured pork from the outer layer that is pure fat without any meat striping.
19. “YOU KNOW, FOR LARKS”: She