Trying to get a French dinner together

Trying to design a good French dinner in the Escoffier style.

A standard French formal meal at WCI consisted of seven courses:

1.       Hors d’oeuvres froid

2.       Potage

3.       Hors d’oeuvres chaud (Replacement for Poisson, as not many people wanted a fish course, or something I really don’t know why they broke the formulae but they did.)

4.       Glace

5.       Entrée et entrements

6.       Salade

7.       Dessert

I am at a loss so here is the menu from possibly the most famous Escoffier dinner that the master (Escoffier) actually had a hand in. You will note that these days an ice course is served before the Entrée to cleanse the palate before the richness of the sauces that mask the fact that French cooking isn’t that much better than the English…the French just have sauces. In this menu the Roti is served after the Ice but before the salade. It is actually quite had to reconstruct in the fact that like most Edwardian or fin de siècle dinners were served a la Francais and not a la Russe (A la Russe is the way Americans serve food, one course after the other each plate perfect and set. A la Francais meant that someone offered you something from a dish and you were served from this dish if you wanted some. It makes it hard when you see a menu of some forty dishes, to figure out who ate what. ) This menu was printed in the morning the day the meal was served, the cooks trained by Escoffier and his cronies would have allowed very little variation. The only point of “Imagination” would have come through the “hors d’oeuvres varies”, something Escoffier was violently against. Escoffier also complained about the American and British (Italians were not real people according to Escoffier in his “Early Years” he was a bigoted fool and in his later years threatened suicide on a regular basis because of what had happened to France, but around 1900 he was the best chef ever. To this day he is a demi-g@d. He classified the sauces, he defined the methods of cooking (Braised, Broiled, Baked, Sautéed, Fried etc…)  habit of having a cocktail before dinner. Escoffier said that it ruined the palette for the food that was to come. No chef has ever equaled Escoffier in pretentiousness, holier than thou-ism of in creation of dishes that can be called “New”. Yet in his cookbook “Ma Cuisine” there are failures, his Chicken Marengo (A favorite dish in Britain) is insipid and uninspired.  His instructions for Pot au feu are whimsical at best and lacking. Any good French housewife with and over bearing grandmother could produce a pot au feu that makes you beg for more even after you realize it is just a pot roast with a twist.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Escoffier. I keep a ratty 80 year old copy by my bed with my bible. It is that important to cuisine.

Well here is the meal, about 250 people ate of this menu (There was a special dinner being offered elsewhere where the menu was a la carte. No menu has survived.)

1.       Hors d’oeuvres varies: Left blank (Escoffier thought that appetizers of any type should be ignored, however no Edwardian could go through a meal without them.)

a.       Oysters (the menu does not specify but one may think that these were raw on the half shell? That however is a speculation no one has ever said.)

2.       Potage:

a.       Consommé Olga

b.      Cream of barley

3.       Poisson:

a.       Poached Salmon with Moussaline sauce (A highly seasoned hollandaise with whipped cream added just before serving)

4.       Entrées:

a.       Filets Mignon Lili ( A filet mignon sautéed then a deglazed, a sauce made of this, the steak is placed on a fried crouton of bread, the pan sauce is poured over it is then topped with béarnaise, and all steakyness is lost in the flavor…)

b.      Chicken Lyonnais: Chicken breast seared and then braised in white wine with a smothering amount of onions (Lyon? Hello?)

c.       Vegetable Marrow Farcie (A stuffed giant zucchini stuffed with rice, basilico, parmesan and bread crumbs)

5.       Releves:

a.       Lamb with mint sauce (as it sounds)

b.      Beef Forestiere:

                                                               i.      Beef roasted with veggies with a burnt demi-glace garnished with brunois (basically veg-all, tiny diced veggies) of roasted veggies.

c.       Roast Duckling glazed with brandy with spiced applesauce

6.       Entrements:

a.       Chateau potatoes (cut into bizarre crescents and fried)

b.      Boiled new potatoes

c.       Parmentier Potatoes (Cut into small dice (Brunois) and fried with garlic, shallots and lashings of butter)

d.      Timbales of molded minted peas

e.      Creamed Carrots (A little different than you might know, these were julienned, stewed for too long in butter, white wine is added, then cinnamon, clove, mace, nutmeg and and finally heavy cream. )

f.        Boiled rice

7.       Glace:

a.       Punch Romaine

8.       Rôti:

a.       Roasted Squab on wilted watercress

9.       Salade:

a.       Aspérages with champagne saffron vinaigrette (warm)

10.   Savourie:

a.       The Savoury is an odd thing, though not. In the Britain I know it was usually a little something that came before or after the “Sweet” or dessert. Usually it was some potted meat on a tiny piece of toast, lightly seasoned with brandy or it could be dates or oysters wrapped in bacon, it could even be little toastlettes topped with Welsh Rarebit of melty cheese with hints of ale. In Scotland the savouries were sweeter, often heather honey (Which is opaque and not clear like American honey) spread on toastlettes topped with little edible flowers, cheese that smells like old feet or crisp crumbled bacon. At the very simple point it was cheese and buttered biscuits. Which is usually offered at the end of any meal to aid digestion. (Cheese is supposed to aid digestion in Scot Lore…uh yeah right about that..)

b.      It was an English place that this menu I have been relating to happened so they had to have the savoury.  A fun story about savouries. I have  a book from the war and the gentleman author is an American and is stuck in this post in Scarpa Flow (at the island head where the difference between Norway and Britain gets skewed), anyway he was dining in the Officers mess and the meal was done and it was dismal British cooking and then the savory came and it was little ramekins of macaroni and cheese. (Something the British had never experienced, but that had been perfected by the manufacturers of American military supplies early in 1932.) he stated that all of the British officers took a bite of this luminous orange food and pushed it away. The American states that he ate four plates of it, and asked for more. Pasta was never big in Britain. Sometimes my grandmother reminds me of Esme Weatherwax and the fear of anything from forrin’ parts. She went with me to Pizza Hut in Aberdeen once and she called it “Pizz-ahh” and refused to call it pizza, to say the least she was not impressed. When I was a teenager I took her to “ICI” a gigantic French Bistro in Aberdeen. To say the least she found fault with everything because it was not as good “As we do” …ok back to the menu:

c.       Pate de foie gras and celery

11.   Dessert:

a.       Waldorf pudding (In the past 88 years no one has really figured out what this was? There is no “documented” reference to a specific pudding with this name, and most of the kitchen staff were dead by morning so short of a Ouija board I don’t know how to figure out what this was. )

b.      Peaches in chartreuse jelly

c.       Chocolate painted éclairs with French vanilla ice cream

d.      French Vanilla Ice Cream (For those who do not éclairs with their ice cream)