In Memoriam Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

"The discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity, than the discovery of a new star." Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

February 2nd marked the 183rd anniversary of the death of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin the great 18th to 19th century gastronome. Brillat-Savarin was a renaissance man in the truest sense of the word having studied law, chemistry, medicine, and of course food in the context of living the good life. He had a command of five modern languages as well as Latin and used them frequently in both conversation and the written word. A good example of this was his fondness for the English word sip for which he did not find a suitable counterpart in French.

Brillat-Savarin's jobs included provincial lawyer (his family's trade), he was a deputy to the National Constituent Assembly, during the Revolution he was a political refugee living in Switzerland, Holland, and the United States where he tought French, gave violin lessons, and played in the Park Theater orchestra where he was the first violin. With the formation of the Directorate in 1797 he was welcomed back to france where he became a judge and author of several books on law, politics, and his most famous on food published just two months before his death: Physiologie du Goût, ou Méditations de Gastronomie Transcendante; ouvrage théorique, historique et à l'ordre du jour, dédié aux Gastronomes parisiens, par un Professeur, membre de plusieurs sociétés littéraires et savantes. Despite it's unwieldy title and occassionally unwieldy language the book has become a classic among gastronomes and the English translation by M. F. K. Fisher, published in 1949 is a classic in its own right.

His influence in food remains today with Brillat-Savarin cheese, a soft cow's milk cheese created in 1930's Normandy and named after Brillat-Savarin. And the often overlooked Gâteau Savarin cooked in a Savarin mold (see picture below). Many of his quotations live on, perhaps most famously, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." And one of my favorites, "A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye."

Here's a recipe I've been perfecting for a Gâteau Savarin inspired by one I had in Bruge, Belgium several years ago. Please forgive the absence of a photo as I have never photographed the process nor the finished product.



Tools:
9-10 inch Savarin (ring) Mold (or Bundt pan)
1 Large mixing bowl

Ingredients for the dough:
3 large eggs
120 grams white sugar
3 Tbsp whole milk
90 grams unsalted butter melted
210 grams cake flour
3tsp dry yeast

Ingredients for the syrup:
1/2 l water
1 black tea bag
250 grams sugar
Zest of 1 orange
1 vanilla bean
1/3 cup light rum (100 Cane or similar)

Instructions:
1. Cream the eggs and sugar together until smooth, add milk and melted butter.
2. Stir in flour and yeast, work for no less than 10 minutes until firm and well formed ball, roll ball into a log sufficient to coil into the Savarin Mold.
3. Put into a greased and floured Savarin Mold, cover with a towel, and put in a warm place until it doubles in volume.
4. Bake in an oven pre-heated to 375 degrees F for 25-35 minutes until golden in color.
5. While the cake is baking bring water to a boil, remove from heat and add tea bag. Let stand for 3 minutes.
6. Remove tea bag and return to heat and add sugar and split vanilla bean, simmer until sugar is completely dissolved.
7. Remove vanilla bean and add orange zest, continue to simmer for two minutes. Remove from heat and cover.
8. Remove cake from oven and immediately pour syrup evenly over the top of the cake. Let stand up to 8 hours.
9. One hour before serving pour rum over cake.
10. When ready to serve remove from mold and slice.

Tomorrow tips from Brillat-Savarin on hosting a dinner party.

The Widow Clicquot Reviewed

"I drink it when I am happy, and when I am sad.

Sometimes I drink it when I am alone.

When I have company, I consider it obligatory.

I trifle with it if I am not hungry, and drink it when I am.

Otherwise I never touch it - unless I am thirsty."

Madame Lilly Bollinger

The Widow Clicquot by Tilar J. Mazzeo was on my Christmas wish list this past year; I was excited about this book based on the promising subject matter, but I must preface this review by saying that this book was a major disappointment. Having said this I beg your patience to continue with this review as there were some diamonds among so much uninteresting rock.

Ms. Mazzeo started her quest to reconstruct the life of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot with a well intentioned zeal, and clear desire to extol the virtues of a businesswomen before the term had even been coined. Her initial premise was flawed in that Madame Clicquot, by her own admission, was like most businesswomen of the Napoleonic Era in that she stepped into the role as the result of a death of the patriarch either their fathers or husbands, in this case her young, fragile husband. Rather than take up the reins on her own she immediately embraced male business partners and professional sales and managerial staff to whom she delegated many of the major duties of running a wine wholesale business and ultimately a full production estate winery. While Clicquot’s accomplishments were many, as were her failures, they were not done by her alone as the precursor of the modern female entrepreneur. To expect this of a young widow in the mid 1800s was simply too much to hope for and an unfair imposition of our modern constructs; fighting against fact to prove so is unfair to Clicquot as it distracts from her authentic accomplishments.

The narrative is forced by Ms. Mazzeo with insufficient historical material leaving a story filled with awkward conjecture. Perhaps because of a lack of foresight in keeping the papers of the Widow Clicquot or simply because running a business and raising a family left precious little time for diaries and social correspondence there is precious little in the way of personal details beyond sales records and a few impersonal letters to her chief salesman during his travels.

What does come through from the facts and figures is that Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot was a brave and adventurous woman. The daughter of a wealthy textile merchant who married another Reims elite, another son of a textile merchant and wine distributor, she was destined for a comfortable provincial life until the Napoleonic Wars and the premature death of her husband interfered. Her aggressive expansion into Russia, running blockades, and out innovating her competitors showed a brilliant mind and an appetite for risk.

Bits of wine wisdom peppered throughout the book were not enough to propel the story along but included such interesting party knowledge as name for the wine cages (muselet) and the metal cork cap (capsulets) both invented by Adolphe Jacquesson in the 1840s. The fact that Dr. Jules Guyot “invented” the practice of growing grapes in rows to increase evenness in ripeness, prior to the widespread use of this practice they were grown in round clusters for support. And perhaps most interestingly and relevant that the widow Clicquot invented the riddling racks out of her kitchen table as a way to speed the disgorgement process whereby the yeast is cleared out of the wine and removed from the bottle. She was also on the forefront of our modern conception of branding by being among the first to use a signature color in sealing her bottles, adding labels, and marketing prestigious vintages.

While this book makes marginal gains in Champagne scholarship and will be a useful reference for future authors it fails in its primary task of informing and entertaining the reader. For this reason I cannot recommend cluttering your nightstand with The Widow Clicquot.

In Praise of Fat

I was checking Salon.com a few days ago to see if they had posted any new food related articles and found one on Jennifer McLagan on her new book Fat: Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, With Recipes. The article in the Q&A style, though not paricularly in depth, sparked my curiosity. Jennifer is a food stylist (one of those brilliant people who arranges food for the glossy photos in cookbooks and magazines), and from the looks of it a very good one, and the author of a previous book Bones: Recipes, History, and Lore.

It would seem from her bio and blog that her adoration for these foods lying somewhere between meat and offal comes from her love of French cooking enhanced by her frequent trips to Paris where she keeps a flat. Lest you think that Jennifer's love of fat is in any way personified in her physique here's her picture.

I ordered Fat and after a mouthwatering perusal of the recipes and pictures I can't wait to try out a recipe or two this weekend.

What's your opinion of fat? In looking for a witty quote to start this post, it was quite clear that fat hasn't been a word with a positive connotation for at least the last two hundred years.