I just love French cuisine. One might even say that
a lobster with a nice béchamel sauce is to die for, and usually that would be a figure of speech,
but not in today's story.
So while I show you how to make a 17th century béchamel sauce drizzled over lobster tail,
i'll tell you the story of one of history's most infamous food-related deaths
from the court of King Louis XIV.
This time on Tasting History.
The court of King Louis XIV, the Sun King, produced some of the most amazing art in history from the
architecture to the literature and drama and of course the music.
Some of my favorite composers come out of this time period,
but perhaps the most important artistic leap came in the form of food.
During this time chefs and several cookbooks make extraordinary leaps to break away from
the medieval and renaissance cuisine and they lay the groundwork for French haute cuisine as we know it today.
One of the most important advances were sauces. Before this time
sauces tended to be highly spiced, vinegar-based and thickened with breadcrumbs which could leave
a gritty if not even lumpy sauce, but starting with books like La Varenne's "Le Cuisinier François" in 1651
we see the introduction of cream and fresh herbs and probably most importantly roux
which will allow for a nice smooth sauce that we would recognize today. And today's sauce is
one that you will probably recognize. It's one of the five mother sauces called béchamel, or
white sauce. The recipe I'm using is from the 1670 "Les Dons de Comus" by Fancois Marin.
"Sauce à la Béchamel: put in a pan, three or four pieces of butter, with a little parsley, scallions, chopped
shallots, salt, crushed pepper, a little nutmeg, flour to bind the sauce.
Wet with good cream.
Turn on the fire to make it take on taste and consistency,
and you use it as needed.
So it sounds a lot like a modern day béchamel though it uses cream instead of milk so it's going to be a lot thicker
and it has shallots, and parsley already in there which most modern béchamel would not have.
Now the major difference is in the order that things are are added to the sauce.
What's interesting is that earlier on in the book he discusses at length
how to make a roux and the importance of
making roux, and then he doesn't use it in this recipe, and I wonder if that's on purpose?
See during this time period cookbook writers were writing for a professional audience,
and especially Marin because he was a snob extraordinaire did not want amateurs knowing
how to make their food. You know he's kind of protecting his his livelihood.
I don't have proof of that but i think it's very likely,
especially if you read the book in its entirety and and see
how he leaves different clues. So I am going to be reordering the recipe a little bit so
that we get a nice béchamel.
So what you'll need is: four and a half tablespoons or 60 grams of butter,
eight tablespoons or 60 grams of flour. Now if you use a little bit more flour it's going to be a
thicker sauce. You probably don't need that because we're using cream but if you want a thinner sauce
then go ahead and use less flour. That's perfectly okay.
Two cups or 475 milliliters of cream.
A bit of minced parsley, minced scallions and minced shallots.
Some salt, pepper, and nutmeg all to taste.
Now you'll note at the end of the recipe he says you use it as needed, but then he doesn't give us
any actual uses for the sauce really. Luckily about 20 years earlier La Varenne gives us several uses
of what he calls sauce blanche. Some of the uses are for asparagus and fowl, and my favorite
longust or lobster. So I'm going to be putting this on several lobster tails.
So if you're going to make lobster go ahead and cut the back down the middle using kitchen shears stopping at the tail,
then flip it over and crack the bottom side of the lobster to help you open up the shell.
With your finger gently but firmly separate the meat from the shell and push it up through the
cut you made and let it rest on top remove the vein or any other pieces that are hanging off.
Then brush a little melted butter on top of it to keep it from drying out and set the lobster
tails in a pan about six inches from the top of the oven and broil at the highest setting
for about five to seven minutes or until the meat turns in opaque white. It's super easy.
Now the most important part of the dish: the sauce.
So you don't have to cook the shallots ahead of time.
It's unclear in the recipe. I did because I like the flavor of cooked shallots more than
raw shallots, so I just put them into a small pan over medium-high heat with a little butter
just to soften them up until they're translucent, and then I set them aside to cool.
Now for the base of the sauce you want a large saucepan or even a pot.
Set it over medium-low heat and add the butter.
Once the butter is nearly melted add in the flour and stir until everything comes together.
Now again the thickness of this roux is really up to you. You can add more or less butter or
flour, but I like a nice thick roux so it's almost like a paste.
Regardless of how thick you want it,
cook it for about two minutes to make sure that you get rid of that flour flavor.
You don't want that in the sauce as it ain't gonna be good.
Then add in one third of your cream
and whisk it vigorously to make sure that there are no lumps. Then add in the second
third of cream and whisk again and finally that last third until you have a nice consistent sauce.
Then grate in your nutmeg I used a half of a whole nutmeg which is about one teaspoon
of grated nutmeg. Then add some salt and pepper, and the parsley, scallions, and shallots.
Now you're gonna let this cook for probably four or five minutes to let it kind of thicken a
little bit. Now if you find that it thickens just a little too much go ahead and add a bit more cream,
it's totally fine. There's no reason to stress sometimes sauces stress people out, but just relax
and hit that Like button or else you might end up like poor François Vatel, which brings us to this.
France under the reign of Louis XIV was like a culinary Silicon Valley. There was
so much innovation and opportunity everywhere, so it's no wonder that Swiss-born Francois Vatel
decided to study cooking, and his first big job was in the kitchens of Nicolas Fouquet the king's
own superintendent of finances, and he must have done very well there because in August of 1661
he was actually put in charge of the kitchens for the inauguration of Fouquet's new Château at Vaux-le-Vicomte
Now this party goes down as one of the great fêtes in French history and not just the food
but the entertainment as well. Moliere premiered his comedic ballet le fascher at the party
with choreography by Pierre Beauchamp, and music by Jean-Baptiste Lully.
Also the actual château itself and the gardens were said to rival Versailles.
Now King Louis himself came to this party and a
word to the wise don't try to build a house that's better than your bosses, and if you do
don't invite him to the house warming.
See Fouquet was already kind of on the rocks with his monarch and if Louis
hadn't been 22 and hadn't really developed much clout he would have already gotten rid of Fouquet.
But he was looking for absolutely any reason to do so, and this party ended up being just such a reason.
After all to have such a grand soiree and a grand house you have to have grand finances and
so after the party Louise had Fouquet arrested on suspicion of pecuniary improprieties and
Lèse-majesté, or insulting the king to the point of treason.
Fouquet was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison
putting our dear Vatel out of a job, but a few years afterward another job presented itself,
when Louis II de Bourbon prince of Condé made Vatel his maître d'hôtel, or maître d
at the château de Chantilly and Vatel flourished there. He was in charge of absolutely everything and other
nobles would actually come visit the château not for the prince but to be wowed by Vatel himself.
He was actually given his own apartments and given the right to carry a sword which was a great honor,
and is foreshadowing.
So a few years into his tenure with the prince in April of 1671
a messenger arrived with a message from the king. Seemed that the king was going to be coming for a stay,
and it was a very important visit because the prince and the king who was his cousin had kind
of been in a rocky place for a while ever since the prince had challenged his cousin's authority
during a series of civil wars known as "The Fronde."
Now the prince had apologized after he lost but the two hadn't been that close ever since.
So surely the prince impressed upon Vatel
the importance of the occasion and that it really needed to go well.
Now when the king came to visit he didn't come alone.
He came with an average of four to six hundred nobles and courtiers and up
to two thousand servants, and Vatel had to make sure that they were all well fed and entertained.
OH!
And the king would be here in two weeks which when people couldn't go faster than horses,
wasn't very much time... You can see why the man was probably stressed.
Now there are several sources that talk about what happened that weekend,
but the best come from the letters of Madame de Sévigné
who was there the first night where everything started off just splendidly.
"I had intended to tell you that the king arrived yesterday evening at Chantilly;
he hunted a stag by moonlight; the lanterns did wonders...
and the entertainment went off admirably well."
A triumph! Though she does mention
that the fireworks which cost sixteen thousand francs were obscured a bit by some light fog and
those that could be seen
"were a little eclipsed by the brightness of our serene friend the moon."
But one can hardly blame Vatel for that.
Now everything else she talks about is
second hand either she had already left or she just wasn't privy to the actual goings on
and the first thing that she talks about is something that happened at dinner that night.
"A meal in a spot strewn with jonquils. Supper was served, but there was no roast meat at one or two of the tables,
on account of Vatel's having been obliged to provide several dinners more than were expected.
This affected his spirits, and he was heard to say several times: 'I have lost my honor!
I cannot bear this disgrace.' He said to Gourville 'My head is spinning. I have not had a wink of sleep
these twelve nights.' Gourville mentioned it to the prince who went directly to Vatel's apartment and said to him,
'Everything is extremely well conducted, Vatel; nothing could be more admirable than his Majesty's supper.'
Vatel replied, 'Your highness's goodness overwhelms me. I am aware that there was a deficiency of roast meat at two tables.'
'Not at all, said the Prince, 'Do not fret. All will go well.'
But all did not go well.
See the next day was Friday and on Fridays it was forbidden to eat meat,
and Vatel thought that local river fish were too pedestrian for the king
so he ordered seafood like our lobster from the ports of Normandy 150 kilometers away.
So it's early Friday morning at 4am and Vatel is walking the halls on another night of little to no sleep
when the man who he had tasked with procuring the seafood arrives with only two small loads of fish...
'Is this all?" Vatel said. 'It is sir said the man,
not knowing that Vatel had dispatched other people to all the seaports around.
Vatel waited for some time; the other purveyors did not arrive;
his head grew distracted; he thought there was no more fish to be had.
He flew to Gourville. 'Sir, I cannot outlive this disgrace.'
Gourville laughed at him. Vatel, however went to his apartment
and setting the hilt of his sword against the door,
after two ineffectual attempts, succeeded in the third,
in forcing his sword through his heart.
At that instant the carrier arrived with the fish."
When the servants went upstairs to see what they were supposed to do with the fish they
found Vatel dead in a pool of his own blood. When the prince later told the king what had happened
the king showed quite a bit of remorse saying that he understood how stressful his visits could be,
and that in the future the prince or anyone should only have to feed two tables
and not worry about the rest.
Now if you read Madame de Sévigné letters, and they are all wonderful,
it's clear that she is very upset about what happened to Vatel. She knew him personally and
she held him in great esteem, but I do think it's somewhat callous and you know it's
who she was in the time period about how she ends one of her letters after telling
the story of the man's suicide.
"..it must be very disagreeable to have so fatal an event break in upon an entertainment that cost 50,000 crowns.
Now in France in the 17th century if you committed suicide
you were not allowed to be buried in a cemetery or sacred ground.
You often wouldn't be buried at all but Vatel was held in such regard by his employer
that only recently there was a record found at the nearby Église Saint-Firmin which states
"On April 27, 1671, the body of monsieur Vatel of the house of the said prince was brought in a coach belonging to the prince of Condé,
to be interred in the cemetery on orders of the gentleman of the prince who also signed my discharge."
And while some at the time chastised him for taking such dramatic action
others lauded him for his sense of duty, and it was that perception that persisted throughout
French history, making him somewhat of an icon in part due to the help of the famous French author
Alexandre Dumas. In his 1847 novel 10 years later which is the last in the Three Musketeers trilogy
(did not know that it was trilogy by the way so now i really need to read that book in full)
the character of Vatel is still working for his first boss Fouquet,
and after a particularly well-appointed round of drinks,
Fouquet thanks Vatel and says that he's going to double his salary and ever
the proud one Vatel says,
"To be thanked for having done one's duty is humiliating."
Interesting side fact,
in real life when Fouquet was arrested the person who did the arresting was
D'Artagnan from the Three Musketeers.
Isn't that just crazy?!
There's also a legend from the 19th century
that credits Vatel with inventing crème Chantilly, or chantilly cream that weekend
because in addition to not having enough fish, I guess he also didn't have enough cream.
So he ordered what cream there was to be whipped to increase its volume and make it look like there was more.
Nice story on the one hand,
and on the other hand kind of a terrible story because it's just like adding to the
misfortunes that this poor man had that weekend.
Also it's not true because we know that there
were flavored whipped creams long before Vatel and crème Chantille wasn't a term used until much later
so not true at all.
Regardless, to honor Monsieur Vatel I suggest we plate up a dish that might have been served on that fateful day,
had he just held out a little bit longer.
Sso once your béchamel sauce is the consistency that you want or actually a little bit thinner
because it is going to continue to thicken even after you take it off the fire,
go ahead and serve it.
and here we are languste a-la sous blanche, or lobster with béchamel sauce.
Here we go.
*Monch monch
*Ascends our plane of existence
Hm!
That's amazing!
That is... you don't need the lobster! You don't need anything! Just a spoon!
Just hook it to my veins! (Please don't hook this to your veins - Jose)
Oh my gosh that is...
Oh that is fantastic.
I mean the lobster is wonderful don't get me wrong. Love lobster but the sauce...
Hm!
It's so creamy. I think I just had food flying into my mouth.
The flavors you can just taste all of the different herbs,
and the nutmeg and the pepper really comes through and I didn't use that much pepper
which is interesting but wow oh wow!
That's going on everything.
I am glad I made a lot of it, and it's low cal too. So....
(It's not)
But it's wonderful.
So I hardly endorse you making this dish. Just the sauce honestly. I mean the lobster is wonderful but just
make the sauce. It's easy and it's fantastic .
Yeah.
I will see you next week on Tasting History.
(Thank you friendlings for supporting Max - Jose )