The Decadent Cookbook by Jerome Fletcher Alex Martin Medlar Lucan Durian Gray Page B
Book: The Decadent Cookbook by Jerome Fletcher Alex Martin Medlar Lucan Durian Gray
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finally invading it completely. Hallucination, that strange guest, had come to stay…
Théophile Gautier, ‘Le Club des Hachichins’, Revue des Deux Mondes , 1846.
C HAPTER 4
T HE G ASTRONOMIC M AUSOLEUM
One morning in February 1783 a card arrived at the houses of various Parisian notables. The card was bordered in black and bore a picture of a sarcophagus surmounted by a crucifix.
Grimod de la Reynière, one of the great gourmets of 18th century France and editor of the Almanach des Gourmands , not only invited guests to this dinner, but 300 spectators as well. When the guests arrived, they found the dining room draped in black. The centrepiece of the table was a sarcophagus, and the proceedings were a grim theatrical joke. One course consisted of nothing but pork dishes, which Grimod proudly announced to have been supplied by a member of his family. This shocking revelation of low social connections was untrue (although his grandfather had been a pork butcher and notorious glutton), but Grimod’s aim was to humiliate his arrogant mother by pointing out where her family had made its money. His parents were duly offended and had him exiled from Paris. He took his revenge a few years later with a second funeral dinner, where the pork-trade theme was even more heavily underlined: the black velvet hangings on the walls were embroidered with symbols of charcuterie, and the ivory handles of the cutlery were carved in the shape of pigs.
This meal was almost certainly the model for another black meal - that given by Jean Des Esseintes in Huysmans’ novel, A Rebours .
The dining room, draped in black, opened onto a garden swiftly transformed for the occasion. The paths had been dusted with charcoal, the ornamental pond filled with ink and edged with black basalt, and the shrubberies replanted with cypresses and pines. The black tablecloth on which dinner was served was decorated with baskets of violets and scabious. Tapers flickered in chandeliers and green-flamed candelabra cast a strange glow.
To the accompaniment of a hidden orchestra playing funeral marches, guests were waited on by negresses, naked but for slippers and silver stockings embroidered with tears.
The guests ate off black-bordered plates and enjoyed turtle soup, rye bread from Russia, black olives from Turkey, caviare, mullet botargo, black pudding from Frankfurt, game served with sauces the colour of liquorice and boot-polish, truffle purées, chocolate creams, plum puddings, nectarines, black grape jellies, mulberries and dark-fleshed cherries. They drank wines from Limagne and Roussillon, Tenedos, Valdepeñas and Oporto out of glasses tinted black. After coffee and walnut cordial, the evening was brought to a close with kvass, porter and stout.
On the invitations, which looked like funeral announcements, the dinner was described as a memorial banquet for the host’s virility, lately but only temporarily deceased.
Grimod de la Reynière, however, was not the first to combine the banquet and the grave. Cassius Dio relates just such an occasion when Domitian entertained various senators and nobles. In the dining room walls and furnishings were all in black. At each guest’s place his name had been carved onto a stele , or grave marker. They were treated to a frightening dance performed by naked boys painted black and offered food normally presented at sacrifices for the dead. None of the terrified guests dared to talk during the meal, and the Emperor spoke of nothing but killing and death. It was with great relief that they were allowed to return home.
D EATH ON THE N ILE
If you’re planning a fête macabre give some serious thought to location. Setting is all important. The necropolis of Sakkara in Egypt would be most appropriate. There you could find a suitable 2nd dynasty tomb and reproduce this menu, provided for an Egyptian Princess who was buried about 3000 B.C.
A TRIANGULAR LOAF OF BREAD MADE FROM EMMER
WHEAT ON A POTTERY DISH .
B
Théophile Gautier, ‘Le Club des Hachichins’, Revue des Deux Mondes , 1846.
C HAPTER 4
T HE G ASTRONOMIC M AUSOLEUM
One morning in February 1783 a card arrived at the houses of various Parisian notables. The card was bordered in black and bore a picture of a sarcophagus surmounted by a crucifix.
Grimod de la Reynière, one of the great gourmets of 18th century France and editor of the Almanach des Gourmands , not only invited guests to this dinner, but 300 spectators as well. When the guests arrived, they found the dining room draped in black. The centrepiece of the table was a sarcophagus, and the proceedings were a grim theatrical joke. One course consisted of nothing but pork dishes, which Grimod proudly announced to have been supplied by a member of his family. This shocking revelation of low social connections was untrue (although his grandfather had been a pork butcher and notorious glutton), but Grimod’s aim was to humiliate his arrogant mother by pointing out where her family had made its money. His parents were duly offended and had him exiled from Paris. He took his revenge a few years later with a second funeral dinner, where the pork-trade theme was even more heavily underlined: the black velvet hangings on the walls were embroidered with symbols of charcuterie, and the ivory handles of the cutlery were carved in the shape of pigs.
This meal was almost certainly the model for another black meal - that given by Jean Des Esseintes in Huysmans’ novel, A Rebours .
The dining room, draped in black, opened onto a garden swiftly transformed for the occasion. The paths had been dusted with charcoal, the ornamental pond filled with ink and edged with black basalt, and the shrubberies replanted with cypresses and pines. The black tablecloth on which dinner was served was decorated with baskets of violets and scabious. Tapers flickered in chandeliers and green-flamed candelabra cast a strange glow.
To the accompaniment of a hidden orchestra playing funeral marches, guests were waited on by negresses, naked but for slippers and silver stockings embroidered with tears.
The guests ate off black-bordered plates and enjoyed turtle soup, rye bread from Russia, black olives from Turkey, caviare, mullet botargo, black pudding from Frankfurt, game served with sauces the colour of liquorice and boot-polish, truffle purées, chocolate creams, plum puddings, nectarines, black grape jellies, mulberries and dark-fleshed cherries. They drank wines from Limagne and Roussillon, Tenedos, Valdepeñas and Oporto out of glasses tinted black. After coffee and walnut cordial, the evening was brought to a close with kvass, porter and stout.
On the invitations, which looked like funeral announcements, the dinner was described as a memorial banquet for the host’s virility, lately but only temporarily deceased.
Grimod de la Reynière, however, was not the first to combine the banquet and the grave. Cassius Dio relates just such an occasion when Domitian entertained various senators and nobles. In the dining room walls and furnishings were all in black. At each guest’s place his name had been carved onto a stele , or grave marker. They were treated to a frightening dance performed by naked boys painted black and offered food normally presented at sacrifices for the dead. None of the terrified guests dared to talk during the meal, and the Emperor spoke of nothing but killing and death. It was with great relief that they were allowed to return home.
D EATH ON THE N ILE
If you’re planning a fête macabre give some serious thought to location. Setting is all important. The necropolis of Sakkara in Egypt would be most appropriate. There you could find a suitable 2nd dynasty tomb and reproduce this menu, provided for an Egyptian Princess who was buried about 3000 B.C.
A TRIANGULAR LOAF OF BREAD MADE FROM EMMER
WHEAT ON A POTTERY DISH .
B
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