Storming the Bastille, Just NOT during MY Dinner!
"I have lived all my life in the name of good taste. Now I am to die by the hands of people with bad taste."
- Madame du Barry
On 14 July, as they do every year, millions of French men and women will celebrate the fall of the Bastille in 1789. The passing years have shown, however, that the guillotine might have better served as a better symbol of the momentous events now recalled as the French Revolution. The truth is that life in the Bastille was simply not all that difficult. In fact, for many of those residing there, the Bastille may have been one of the best pre-revolutionary restaurants of Paris. During his own stay there, the Marquis de Sade passed his time washing down truffled sausages with fine Bordeaux wines. On the day the Bastille was actually liberated, there were only six "prisoners" in attendance. One, imprisoned for failure to pay his debts, insisted on staying in his three room suite long enough to finish his roast pheasant dinner. Another demanded that the crowd help him carry away the more than 50 bottles of wine that he had set aside for his use.
In fact, when the crowd tore down the Bastille, they were unknowingly carrying out a plan for which Louis XVI had already set aside funds. In what may be another interesting footnote to history, of the six liberated prisoners, three were eventually executed by the same people who freed them, two emigrated to America and one, Andre Dubois, harmless but quite insane, went on to become a member of the French senate.
French gastronomes of all classes were concerned with the influence of the revolution on their dining habits. Grimod de la Reyniere, a well known banker and gastronome of the ancien regime considered the Revolution little more than "an unpleasant interlude when austerity had to be simulated and chefs given their notice. If it had lasted", he wrote, "France might have actually lost the recipe for fricasseed chicken." One of his chefs, Antoine Broissard took it a bit more seriously. When Broissard discovered that he could not locate any Nantes ducklings to serve for dinner one evening, he hung himself in his kitchen. One of the problems that Reyniere did not dwell upon was that many of France's most devoted gourmets ended both their revolutionary zeal and their gastronomic endeavors by a meeting with the falling blade of the guillotine.
It may be of some historic interest to know just what many of these people ate just before keeping their appointment with the Widow, as the guillotine was known. Danton, surely the most charming of the revolutionaries and a great gourmet dined on stuffed squab, fresh asparagus and raspberry sorbet before his execution. Robespierre, Danton's rival but not a man who specially appreciated good food, supped on a thick lentil soup just before his own moment of truth. The Duke of Burgundy dined elegantly on salmon mousse and apple pie and Armond, the Prince of Conde had a light snack of salmon in mousseline sauce. As to the women, the only form of equality between the sexes that the legislators of the revolution believed in was the guillotine which decapitated members of either sex with equal dispatch. Marie Antoinette, Madame Roland and Charlotte Corday, the three most eminent women of the revolution were among its victims.
Marie Antoinette, executed as much for her rudeness to her jailers as for her royal position, sipped Champagne and ate truffled pate de foie gras before she was taken off for her final humiliation. The twenty five year old Charlotte Corday, who had slain the revolutionary leader Marat, declined a final dinner but nibbled on a chocolate éclair while standing on the platform of the guillotine, annoying the executioner somewhat because of what he considered an unnecessary delay in carrying out his duty. Madame Roland, the feminist of the group, dined simply on poached eggs, a small wedge of Brie cheese and an apple. Madame du Barry, the last great courtesan of the royal days, and a woman of elevated taste in food as well as in lovers, is said to have dined on raspberries with fresh cream before being carted off to the guillotine. Du Barry's final words were: "I have lived all my life in the name of good taste. Now I am to die by the hands of people with bad taste."
I am celebrating Bastille Day by making my interpretations of a famous last meal from the Bastille, the Marquis de Sade's Truffled sausages. I am serving them with potato puree and sauteed apples.
Marquis de Sade's Truffled sausage
26 ounces lean Veal
9 ounces pork fatback
18 grams fine salt
2 grams ground white pepper
1 gram ground nutmeg
as much Truffles as you can afford (about four ounces diced fine)
about 5 feet medium hog casing
Cut the meat and fat into pieces small enough to pass through grinder. Partially freeze.
Grind the veal using a disk with 3/8" (10 mm) diameter holes. Grind the fat using a disk with 3/16" (5 mm) diameter holes.
Combine the meat and fat with the salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Chill thoroughly. Add as much chopped truffles as your budget will allow.
Soak the casings in cold water until soft. Thoroughly rinse the casing inside and out.
Set up a sausage stuffer. Fill the bowl of the stuffer with the forcemeat. Be careful not to leave any air pockets in the mixture.
Slide the casing on the fill tube. Tie a knot at the end of the casing after it is fully on the fill tube.
Fill the casing with the forcemeat. Do not overfill the casings. Guide the casing along the work surface as it fills.
Tie a knot at the other end of the filled casing that comes off the stuffing tube. “Massage” the sausage to ensure that it is filled evenly. Twist the filled casing to make 5" long sausages.
Place the sausages on a rack and dry for a couple of hours in a refrigerator. Using a fine skewer or needle, puncture the skin over any visible air bubbles and puncture evenly along the length of the sausages.
Use within a couple of days or wrap tightly and freeze.
To cook the sausage, poach in 180 °F (82 °C) water until the interior temperature reaches 160 °F (71 °C). Drain and fry briefly in a hot pan to crisp the skin.