On February 23, 2023, a lecture by Yair Haido, on behalf of the Napoleonic Heritage Center, was held at the Kibbutzim Seminar. The lecture dealt with Napoleon's attitude towards food and wine and the culinary heritage of his time and its influence on today's French cuisine.
You can find a video of the lecture below, followed by a summary of it. If you are interested in registering for the following lectures, please visitWebsite of the Napoleonic Heritage Center, see what lectures are available and sign up for his mailing list.
French cuisine until the time of Napoleon
It's no secret that France has long been considered one of the world's most important culinary centers (if not the most important). It received this status long before the birth of Napoleon thanks to a number of unique characteristics:
- A rich and diverse nature, which provides a huge amount of types of meat, fish and vegetables, all of which are of very high quality.
- The clergy in the monasteries were engaged in agricultural work and research for many centuries, which they documented. Therefore, it is not surprising that quite a few symbols of French cuisine were created by monks (for example: champagne wine, invented by the monk Dom Pérignon).
- The aristocracy and royalty saw food as a status symbol and therefore employed chefs, head waiters, and sommeliers who greatly developed the French culinary tradition starting in the 17th century. An example of this is Chef Wattel, who worked for Prince Condé inChantilly Castle And he was responsible for inventing quite a few French dishes, such as whipped cream.
French Revolution It created a kind of democratization of the French culinary tradition because many chefs who worked for the nobility lost their jobs, because many nobles fled or lost their heads on the guillotine, and were forced to open restaurants (it should be noted that the first restaurants were created in the 18s, before the French Revolution, but it was the Revolution that significantly increased the number of restaurants in Paris).
What did Napoleon like to eat?
Unlike Second Consul Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès or his mythical Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, who loved sophisticated French food, Napoleon loved simple food and did not spend much time eating.
He liked simple tastes and preferred to eat pasta, potatoes and meatballs. His main meal, dinner, often lasted no more than ten minutes and often the impatient Napoleon would suddenly get up from the table and leave the other diners. Napoleon's lunch was even simpler, but unlike dinner, which was formal, he used the lunch hour to play with his nephews and to keep in touch with his family.
Because Napoleon used to get up in the middle of the night to work, his household managers made sure he always had something to eat (especially chocolate), no matter what time he needed it.
Despite all this, Napoleon well understood the importance of cuisine both as a means of demonstrating power and as an important diplomatic tool, and therefore he encouraged his courtiers, especially his Foreign Minister Talleyrand, to serve sumptuous meals to Napoleon's allies and people he wished to please.
Antoine Carme – the most important chef during the Napoleonic era
Marie-Antoine Carême (1784-1833) is considered the first “celebrity chef” in history and he had the privilege of working for many of the leaders of the time, including the King of England, George IV, and the Russian Tsar Alexander I.
However, there is no doubt that Karem owed his rise to greatness to Talleyrand, Napoleon's foreign minister and a known glutton, who employed him for several years. It is said that Talleyrand set Karem a challenge: to serve him three meals a day and to ensure that no dish was repeated at any meal served for an entire year. Karem managed to meet the challenge and gained the trust of Napoleon's foreign minister.
Karem's contribution is invaluable. He wrote quite a few important cookbooks, invented the four base sauces, meringue, sculpted cakes, and more. He reached his peak during the Congress of Vienna, when his meals managed to tip the scales in the direction of France And although it was defeated, it managed to leave Congress with a very positive peace agreement from its perspective, in which it maintained its natural borders.
Napoleon's culinary legacy
Napoleon's culinary legacy can be divided into two parts. The first part is the direct culinary legacy of Napoleon himself:
- The importance of food in military life: Napoleon understood well that hungry soldiers do not fight well, so he coined the phrase "the soldier marches on his stomach" and made sure that his soldiers received nutritious food.
- The invention of canned food: Because it was important to Napoleon to provide nutritious food that would not spoil, he encouraged his scientists to find a way to extend the shelf life of food. Nicolas Appert took on this challenge and invented the first cans, which were airtight glass jars that allowed food to last a long time (the English would later invent tin cans).
- Beet sugar: Another invention resulting from the Napoleonic Wars was beet sugar. It was invented in France during the Napoleonic era, in response to the naval blockade imposed by England on France, which prevented it from importing cane sugar.
- Making potatoes a popular food item: The process had indeed begun a little earlier, when Parmentier began marketing the potato as a nutritious and cheap vegetable, but it was only during the Napoleonic era that the nobility and upper bourgeoisie slowly began to eat this vegetable, thanks to Carme's recipes (this also applies to the truffle mushroom, which was considered an inferior food until that time).
In addition to Napoleon's direct influence on French cuisine, his period constituted the golden age of French cuisine, creating a legacy that continues to this day:
- The development of restaurants – During the Napoleonic era, the number of restaurants grew to about 3,000. Paris Restaurants Only. During his time, the business menu was also invented, in which several dishes are served for a single price.
- Change in the form of presentation – In his day, the form of serving finally shifted from the French method, in which a large number of dishes are served to the table at once, to the Russian method, in which the dishes are served one by one.
- Restaurant review – Grimod de La Reynière, who worked during the Napoleonic era, became the first restaurant critic.
- The terms gourmet and gourmand were created.