Tag Archive | Paris 1815

Food in Paris in 1815

Feb21

Cooking is one of my favorite pastimes—eating and learning about good food is a pleasure. This means it was not difficult to dive into the research needed for a restaurant in Paris of 1815 for the setting of Lady Lost (which comes out in March).

Lady Lost

France gets the credit for inventing the more modern idea of a restaurants, and they certainly came up with the name. The word comes about in 1806 for “an eating-house, establishment where meals may be bought and eaten,” but comes from a “food that restores” from the Old Frence restorer.

The original idea was to serve up a healthful bouillon—basically a bone broth or consommé as a restorative. This was also to get around the strict guilds that made selling bread, meat, fruit, and vegetables separate affairs. In 1765, a gentelman named A. Boulanger opened a restaurant on what was then rue des Poulies (now rue du Louvre). It was his idea to serve a wide rage of food—and Boulanger offered up menus, waiters, and small, round marble-top tables. A new business was born.

The term “Gastronomie” comes about in 1801, in a French poem by Joseph Berchoux, and was translated into English in 1810 as: “Gastronomy or a Bon-vivant’s Guide: A Poem”.

The phrase établissement de restaurateur was shortened, and there were soon enough restaurants that the guide L’Almanach des Gourmands was published annually from 1803 to 1812 by Grimod de La Reynière.

In 1782, Antoine Beauvillier opened Grande Taverne de Londres on rue de Richelieu, and went on to write L’Art du Cuisinie, published in 1814. He had to close that restaurant when things got a bit too hot in Paris during the Revolution, but he then opened Beauvillier’s. Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said, it was “the first to combine the four essentials of an elegant room, smart waiters, a choice cellar, and superior cooking.”

Francis Blagdon, Englishman, wrote of Beauvillier’s in 1803, “The bill of fare is a printed sheet of double folio, of the size of an English newspaper. It will require half an hour at least to con over this important catalogue. Let us see; Soups, thirteen sorts. — Hors-d’oeuvres, twenty-two species. — Beef, dressed in eleven different ways. — Pastry, containing fish, flesh and fowl, in eleven shapes. Poultry and game, under thirty-two various forms. — Veal, amplified into twenty-two distinct articles. — Mutton, confined to seventeen only. — Fish, twenty-three varieties. — Roast meat, game, and poultry, of fifteen kinds. — Entremets, or side-dishes, to the number of forty-one articles. — Desert, thirty-nine. — Wines, including those of the liqueur kind, of fifty-two denominations, besides ale and porter. — Liqueurs, twelve species, together with coffee and ices.” Below is just part of the menu sheets showing prices.

London continued on with taverns, coffee houses, chop houses, confectioners that served tea, sweets, ices and pastries, and a few gentlemen’s clubs. The Epicure’s Almanack by Ralph Rylance came out in 1815, listing more than 650 eating houses, inns and taverns in London, but was a financial failure. The English just were not that interested.

By 1815, the Palais Royal alone had fifteen restaurants, twenty cafes, and eighteen gambling halls—not to mention the brothels. This included Café de Chartres. Other restaurants included Le Grand Véfour next door to the Palais Royal gardens, Le Procope in Saint-Germain-des-Pré and said to be Bonaparte’s favorite restaurant, Véry which moved to the Palais Royal in 1808, Frères Provençaux in the Palais Royal, and the Café des Aveugles was one of those in the basement of the Paris Royal that offered cheaper prices. In 1815, the Café Anglais opened on the corner of rue Gramont and the Boulevard des Italien, and that boulevard would become extremely popular over the next few decades for restaurants and cafes.

There’s the saying about many sauces in France and one religion, but the opposite in England, and often attributed to Voltaire, but which comes from Louis Eustache Ude’s 1829 book, The French Cook; A System of Fashionable and Economical Cookery, Adapted to the use of English Families. The quote is, “It is very remarkable, that in France, where there is but one religion, the sauces are infinitely varied, whilst in England, where the different sects are innumerable, there is, we may say, but one single sauce.” He was speaking of the English penchant for a white sauce of butter, with a little flour and then perhaps some anchovies or capers, put over most everything.

Back to Paris of 1815—and there were at least a couple hundred of restaurants, some out to attract the wealthy but others serving up food for the average man and woman. The café’s had figured out the idea of putting tables outside to attract customers to sit with a coffee. The Parisians drank lots of coffee, offered along with the inevitable wine, and sometimes chess as well. Pastries, of course, came out along with cakes and bread and cheese. Soups were always a popular meal—despite what the song says about ‘April in Paris’ springtime is lots of wet and March of 1815 served up more than a little bad weather.

A meal might be had for a few sous, or the francs piled on with an array of dishes served up—the wine was generally the most expensive item on any menu.

All of this kept making me remember a trip to Paris—the street food was amazing, as was almost any café serving up crepes or fondue (interestingly Homer’s Iliad describes a mixture of goat cheese, flour, and wine that is basically fondue, but the Swiss came up with their version to use up leftover bread and cheese—a cheap and easy meal.) It is said that the version with meat was created in the Middle Ages in the Burgundy region of France, and the word fondre means to melt in French. Like most foods, everyone seems to have come up with their version. And…oh, the patisseries!

Which are nothing new to Paris, as shown in the print below, entitled, “The English Revenge or, The Patisserie at the Palais Royal” by John Sharp, from 1815, no doubt after Waterloo, with the English eating up all the sweets in the shop. The poor shop girl doesn’t look happy about it, even if she is selling out of everything. Which seems a very Parisian attitude.

Patisserie. A girl in a pink dress and white cap sits at the counter, while six gentleman and one lady eat up all the cookies and cakes.

All of this made for a fun bit of research for the book when I had to weave in a meal, or put a conversation into a café, which were all considered suitable places for women as well as men, and isn’t it nice to know the cafés and restaurants of Paris still seek to serve up some of the best food that can be had.

Lady Lost – Coming March 2025

Jan31
Lady Lost

Some stories just take more time—and this one took ages! Part of this is due to the research needed for Paris in 1815. Part is just due to Jules being a reticent character who took a bit of coaxing before he finally agreed to this. Another part comes from the interruptions of life. But at last Lady Lost, the third book in the Ladies in Distress series, is done and coming out March 2025.

Below is an excerpt from the book…

Chapter One
Paris, March 1815

She stepped onto the stage in a ripple of smoke, shadows dancing on the white plaster of the wall behind her. Jules sat straighter in his chair.
The illusion of fog was a good one. It would hide any trap doors. The actress took one step forward, into the light of the stage lamps. Makeup left her oval face pale and perfect—a slash of dark, arched eyebrows, a curve of a red mouth. Under her black cape and hood, the brown of her elaborately arranged hair showed through glistening white powder. Her skirts rustled and the spangles on her gown glinted. The dress belonged to a previous generation, but the woman moved with the grace of youth. She swept the room with a look…a challenge…arrogance in the dark eyes.
For an instant, their stares clashed.
Awareness shot through Jules and tingled on his skin. The woman commanded the stage—and his attention.
Her gaze seemed to linger a heartbeat longer before it shifted. He let out a breath.
With a wave of her hand and a burst of smoke, she conjured a box with thin legs onto the stage. A good trick from Madam de Mystére, otherwise known as Simone Raucourt, the featured act. She was his connection to Henri Allard…and the missing courier.
Shifting restless in his chair, Jules glanced around the theater. It was more of a café with its tables and chairs, and its black-and-white checkered floor. Past splendor haunted the décor with bits of carved columns in dark corners. Two chandeliers clung to the ceiling as if desperate to hold onto past glory, their crystals dusty and dim. The crowd had quieted. Those sober enough to give their attention leaned forward. For an instant, irritation surged that he must wait for his answers.
“Patience, patience,” he muttered, keeping his words in French, not English, his accent that of his old governess who herself had come from Paris.
He let his gaze slip back to the stage.
The woman proceeded to conjurer a bouquet of violets—the symbol for this rebirth of Bonaparte’s Empire. She transformed them into a deck of cards and back again, and threw a few into the audience. They cheered. More cards appeared from the ether. Fanning them out, she changed the suits all to hearts. She managed several other sleights of hand. Coins did not go over well, but scarves in the tricolors of France’s Revolutionary flag had the audience going wild.
Turning to the box she’d summoned onto the stage, she beckoned with a slim, pale hand. An oddly still monkey in a blood-red coat rose from inside the box to perch on its top.
Jules had seen more than a few automata—mechanical beings that ran on some sort of clockwork with gears and cams, metal discs with the edges notched to create instructions. Most played an instrument, while others could write or draw. One, he recalled with a smile, had been an extraordinary swan made from silver. It caught fish from glass rods that appeared to be reflective water.
This mechanical monkey sat before a tiny harpsichord, bits of black hair glued to its head and the backs of its paws. Glass eyes shone in the lamplight with the illusion of life. The uncanny creature mimicked playing a sweet tune, its paws moving over the keys, which depressed on their own. The music obscured the click and creak of the mechanism. Madam de Mystére sang along, a plaintive melody about home and loss.
She had a good voice, a deep contralto that would enchant anyone. An ache wound through her song. The audience quieted. Some stared into their drinks. A few wiped a tear. No doubt everyone here knew someone who had died for France—the wars drained more than a few villages of every able-bodied man. Jules turned his drink on the table once, like winding a watch that might turn time back to better years. The conjurer had power, he had to give her that. Her emotions seemed heartfelt. Perhaps she, too, had lost a brother or father to the wars. He tightened his fingers around his tumbler.
Life had left him wary of maudlin sentiment.
He shifted on the chair and wished he could pull off his boots. He knew himself not in a mood to be pleased. The hour for his dinner had long passed, this café stank of onions, wet wool and the acid of inferior wine, and his feet ached from tramping over this damp city.
Allowing the last note to trail off into silence, the actress held still. The spangles on her dress sparked with each breath. She lifted her hand. The automaton did the same, a small pistol slipping down its coat sleeve and into its mechanical grip.
The audience gasped. Jules did not.
The female magician held up a card. A sharp report stung the air and sulphury gunpowder bloomed. The woman turned the card so all could see the image of the king shot through the center. The symbolism could not be clearer—royalty shot dead. Cheers rose, along with stomping.
Deciding he’d seen enough, Jules stood and gathered his hat and gloves. He tossed a coin onto the table and made for the door at the side of the stage pausing long enough to speak to a waiter to ask directions and pushing a few francs into the man’s hand.
On his way to the dressing rooms upstairs, he spotted a spray of violets on the floor, one tossed into the audience by Madam de Mystére. He hesitated, and then gave into impulse. He swept up the tiny purple flowers. He brought them to his nose only to have silken petals brush his skin. That left him wondering if the woman who had thrown the flowers was as false as the violets.