Royal Taste

Edited by Danille De Vooght

Food, Power and Status at the European Courts after 1789

Royal TasTe

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Royal TasteFood, Power and status at the european Courts after 1789

edited byDanille De VooghT

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

II

Danille De Vooght and the contributors 2011

all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Danille De Vooght has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work.

Published by ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing CompanyWey Court east suite 420Union Road 101 Cherry streetFarnham Burlingtonsurrey, gU9 7PT VT 05401-4405england Usa

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Royal taste : food, power and status at the european Courts after 1789. 1. europe Court and courtiers Food history 18th century. 2. europe Court and courtiers Food history 19th century. 3. europe--Kings and rulers--social life and customs--18th century. 4. europe--Kings and rulers social life and customs 19th century. 5. Food habits social aspects--europe history--18th century. 6. Food habits social aspects europe history 19th century. 7. social status europe history 18th century. 8. social status europe history 19th century. i. Vooght, Danille de. 394.1208621094-dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataRoyal taste : food, power and status at the european courts after 1789 / [edited by] Danille de Vooght. p. cm. includes bibliographical references and index. isBn 978-0-7546-6837-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) isBn 978-0-7546-9478-6 (ebook) 1. Food habitseuropehistory19th century. 2. Dinners and diningPolitical aspects europehistory19th century. 3. Courts and courtierseurope--history19th century. 4. Political cultureeuropehistory19th century. 5. europehistory1789-1900. i. Vooght, Danille de. gT2853.e8R69 2010 394.1209409034dc22

2010038454

isBn 9780754668374 (hbk)isBn 9780754694786 (ebk)

Contents

List of Figures and Tables viiNotes on Contributors ixAcknowledgments xiii

introduction. Food and Power: studying Food at (Modern) Courts 1Danille De Vooght and Peter Scholliers

1 The historical Models of Food and Power in european Courts of the nineteenth Century: an expository essay and Prologue 13

Ken Albala

2 a Culinary Captatio Benevolentiae: The Use of the Truffle as a Promotional gift by the savoy Dynasty in the eighteenth Century 31

Rengenier C. Rittersma

3 Drinking for approval: Wine and the British Court from george iii to Victoria and albert 57

Charles C. Ludington

4 Food at the Russian Court and the homes of the imperial Russian elite, sixteenth to mid-nineteenth Centuries 87

David I. Burrow

5 Pilaf and Bouches: The Modernization of official Banquets at the ottoman Palace in the nineteenth Century 111

zge Samanc

6 The Ceremony of Dining at napoleon iiis Court Between 1852 and 1870 143

Anne Lair

7 Culinary networks of Power in a nineteenth-Century Court society: Dining with the Kings of the Belgians (18311909) 171

Danille De Vooght

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Conclusion 191Stephen Mennell

Bibliography 201Index 227

list of Figures and Tables

Figures

2.1 The change in the geopolitical position of savoy during the eighteenth century (source: gianni oliva, I Savoia, 1998; by kind permission of arnoldo Mondadori editore s.p.a.). 363.1 sherrys rise to parity with port, 18171846 (source: Parliament of the United Kingdom of great Britain and ireland, Parliamentary Report C.8706, Custom tariffs of the United Kingdom from 18001897, with some notes upon the history of more important branches of the receipt from 1600 (london, 1897), pp. 15051). 755.1 a banquet given for a european envoy at Topkap Palace in the eighteenth century (source: M. dohsson, Tableau Gnral de lEmpire Ottoman; authors collection). 1145.2 Banquet given in honor of Prince napolon at Beylerbeyi Palace on May 8, 1854 (source: LIllustration: Journal Universel, Paris, 1854; authors collection). 1235.3 The layout of the banquet arranged for the commander of the english navy at yldz Palace on June 28, 1914 (source: ottoman archives, Beo. ggd., 20 a). 1285.4 The menu and concert program of the banquet arranged for the commander of the english navy at yldz Palace on June 28, 1914 (source: ottoman archives, Beo. ggd., 19b). 1295.5 The layout of the banquet prepared in honor of the commandant of the german navy at Dolmabahe Palace on May 17, 1914 (source: ottoman archives, Beo. ggd., 18a). 1315.6 The menu of the banquet prepared in honor of the commandant of the german navy at Dolmabahe Palace on May 17, 1914 (ottoman archives, Beo. ggd., 17b). 1326.1 The large dining room at the louvre Palace (source: Muse du louvre). 1516.2 Christofle basket (source: Muse du louvre).7.1 Visual representation of all dinner occasions at the Belgian royal court in 1835 and how these are linked by guests (Pajek software). 180

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7.2 Visualization of the component of the one-mode network consisting of guests (tied by occasions), 1869 (Pajek). 183

Tables

2.1 Quantities of food gifts sent from Turin to Vienna (17381774). 4565.1 Dishes served during late ottoman official banquets. 1371426.1 Three menus served at the imperial court of napoleon and eugenie, spanning a period of five years. 1597.1 line values of the one-mode network consisting of dinner occasions, 1835 (Pajek Report Window). 1817.2 line values of the one-mode network consisting of dinner guests, 1835 (Pajek Report Window). 1827.3 interpretation of the line values of the one-mode network consisting of all dinner occasions (tied by guests). 1857.4 interpretation of the degree of all vertices in the one-mode network consisting of all dinner guests (tied by occasions). 186

notes on Contributors

Ken Albala is Professor of history at the University of the Pacific in stockton, California. he is the author of nine books ranging from academic monographs such as Eating Right in the Renaissance (2002) and The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe (2007) to popular titles such as Beans: A History, the 2008 iaCP Jane grigson award winner. he also edits three food series for greenwood Press, including Food Culture Around the World. he has recently completed a textbook for the Culinary institute of america entitled World Cuisines, and has begun a book on food controversies in the Reformation era.

David I. Burrow is assistant Professor of history at the University of south Dakota, where he teaches european and Russian history. he received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2005. his research focuses on the concept of the public in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Russia.

Danille De Vooght graduated from the history Department at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2001. as of January 2002, she is a researcher at that same department. she conducted research for the research project (Un)sustainability Developments of Product systems, 18002000, an interdisciplinary project in cooperation with Vito (Flemish institute for Technological Research) and commissioned by the Belgian Federal science Policy office. in april 2010, she obtained her PhD with a thesis on the relationship between food culture and (political, economic, social, and cultural) power within an elite, and more particularly on food culture at the nineteenth-century Belgian royal court. she has recently published an article about her research in Food & History and in an edited volume entitled The Dining Nobility: From the Burgundian Dukes to the Belgian Royalty (2008).

Anne Lair received her PhD in French culture from the ohio state University in 2003, she is an assistant Professor of French in the Department of Modern languages at the University of northern iowa. she studies the ways in which a literary text can also be read as a source for information about culture in a certain period of time. as a French culture specialist and expert on the symbolism of

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food, she taught a course on famine and abundance, focusing mostly on the Middle ages and medieval literature.

Charles C. Ludington received his PhD from Columbia University in 2003. he is currently a Visiting Professor at Duke University and the University of north Carolina at Chapel hill, where he teaches British and irish history since 1400, early modern european intellectual history, and two different courses on the history of food and drink. he has published a variety of articles on the huguenot diaspora, British intellectual history, and the history of wine consumption in Britain. he is currently writing a book on the meaning of the taste for wine in Britain, 16491860.

Stephen Mennell read economics at Cambridge, and was then Knox Fellow in the Department of social Relations at harvard (19661967). From 1967 to 1990 he taught sociology at the University of exeter, becoming Reader in sociology and Western european studies. in 1986, his book All Manners of Food was the first english-language book to be awarded the grand Prix internationale de literature gastronomique, and the French translation (Franais et anglais table) won the Prix Marco Polo in 1988. in 19871988 he was a Fellow of the netherlands institute for advanced study, Wassenaar, and he has spent three periods as a senior associate Member of st antonys College, oxford. From 1990 to 1993 he was Professor of sociology and head of the Department of anthropology and sociology at Monash University, Melbourne, australia. he moved to the chair of sociology at University College Dublin in august 1993. he has been an associate editor of Theory, Culture and Society since 1989, and is now international editor of the Irish Journal of Sociology and an editor of the journal Food & History, based in Tours, France.

Rengenier C. Rittersma graduated as a Master in history from the Universiteit van amsterdam in 1999. he also obtained his Masters degree in germanic studies at the same institution in 2000. in 2006, he succesfully defended his PhD on the myth of the count of egmont in european culture (15681830) at the european University institute in Florence (published by Waxmann Verlag, Mnster and new york, 2009). he is currently writing a book on the cultural history of the truffle in europe since the late Middle ages. he recently published Luxury in the Low Countries. Miscellaneous Reflections on Netherlandish Material Culture, 1500 to the Present (2010). Between 2008 and 2010, he was an alexander von humboldt Fellow at the Universitt des Saarlandes, where he now teaches at the history Department. since 2007, he is the secretary of the editorial board of the journal Food & History.

Notes on Contributors xi

zge Samanc completed her graduate studies in history at Boazici University in istanbul in 1998 and continued her PhD studies in ottoman and Turkish studies at the ecoles des hautes etudes en sciences sociales in Paris. Recently, she finalized her PhD thesis on the culinary culture of the ottoman palace and istanbul in the nineteenth century. samanc is assistant Professor at the department of gastronomy and Culinary arts at yeditepe University in istanbul. she is also working as the culinary culture section curator in antalyas City Museum Project in Turkey.

Peter Scholliers studied history at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he obtained his PhD in 1984 with a dissertation on wages, purchasing power, and the standard of living in Belgium in the interwar period. in his research he focuses on the history of the standard of living, labor history, wages and prices, material culture, and industrial archeology, and on the history of food. he was a researcher at the Center for Contemporary social history between 1976 and 1985. in 1986, he became a staff member of the Department of history at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. since 2000, he has also been a lecturer in that department. he is a member of the editorial staff of Food & History, Food and Foodways, and Food, Culture & Society. on top of that he is vice-president of the international Committee for the Research of european Food history and he is a member of the Comit dorientation of the institut europen dhistoire et des Cultures de lalimentation. Recently, he received the Vlaamse Cultuurprijs smaakcultuur (Flemish award for the Culture of Taste) for his research on food.

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acknowledgments

i would like to thank the international institute of social history for giving me the opportunity to organize a session on courtly food at the esshC 2008.

Thank you to all authors for their contributions, and to stephen Mennell for his editorial remarks. Thank you, Jay Paul Bullard, for proofreading the manuscript. Thank you to the peer reviewers, for their useful comments and suggestions. Thank you to my supervisor, Peter scholliers, for his never-ending enthusiasm and support. and of course, a special thanks to emily yates and nick Wain, editors at ashgate Publishing, for their enthusiasm, patience, and suggestions.

Danille De Vooght

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introductionFood and Power: studying Food at

(Modern) CourtsDanille De Vooght and Peter scholliers

The Importance of Food and Everything That Comes With It

The social and cultural importance of food has been examined and confirmed at length by anthropological, sociological, and historical research, which has ascribed to it status, identity, and power.1 Clearly, (public) dining, social position, and hierarchies are tightly interconnected. This explicit association between food and status was, academically speaking, first acknowledged on the food production level. landowners, millers, and bakers were the rich, the famous, and the powerful, since they owned the essential foodstuffsgrain, flour, and bread, respectively.2 anthropologist sidney Mintz analyzed this relationship meticulously. Taking sugar as an example, he demonstrated the relationship between the possession of sugar plantations and slavery and, thus, how ownership of food was directly proportionate to the occupation of the most important positions in society.3 Moreover, this was a dual conceptualization of power; next to the obvious demonstration of power on the production level, the social significance of sugar consumption could hardly be neglected: as a rare and costly substance, its very consumption expressed a kind of power.4 Food consumption not only reflects power and status, but it also demonstrates the quest for power and status, regardless of the lack of either ownership or affluent income. in early nineteenth-century spain, for example, some impoverished aristocrats ignored their formal bankruptcy or judicially constrained patrimony,

1 P. Fieldhouse, Food and Nutrition: Customs and Culture (new york, 1995), p. 78. 2 see, for example, R. gibson and M. Blinkhorn (eds), Landownership and Power in

Modern Europe (london, 1991).3 s.W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: the Place of Sugar in Modern Society (new york,

1985). 4 s.W. Mintz, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the

Past (Boston, Ma, 1996), p. 12.

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and continued buying (via seemingly endless credit) costly foods in order to uphold their status.5 The consumption of rich foodin terms of quantity and qualitywas and undoubtedly is a manner of showing ones social status, creating or maintaining power, or aspiring to powerful circles. Taste and dining preferences, as Ken albala put it, point to broader values, desires, and sometimes explicit food ideologies. like any ideology, this term denotes a conscious way of behaving, in this case eating, intended both to set the individual or group apart from others [] .6

This book addresses the relationship between food consumption, status, and (political, cultural, social, and economic) power by focusing on the traditional top layer of society; it considers the way royalty, nobility, and aristocrats wined and dined in the rapidly changing world of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a period during which the bourgeoisie and even the menu peuple (i.e. common people) obtained political rights, economic influence, social importance, and cultural authority. although the book deals with all the elements that arise when kings, sultans, or czars are mentioned, it moves beyond the effulgence of extravagant feasts. it questions the role of food consumption at courts and the significance of particular foodstuffs or methods of preparation; it deals with the number of guests at parties and with table decorations; it studies the way courts influenced one another; and it considers whether and how dining preferences at court diffused throughout the society as a whole and, indeed, how societys food practices interact with court food. This relationship, interestingly, was also illustrated in a present-day democracy prior to the inauguration of the 44th president of the United states, Barack obama. The choice of who was to become the new White house chef stirred up debate among foodies, since his [obamas] eating habits could set an example for the rest of the country.7

Food, of course, makes up the central issue of this book, but because food is much more than the simple act of eating and drinking, the book addresses issues of social networks, prestige, politics, and diplomacy, banquets and their design, income and spending, economic aims, taste and preference, cultural

5 C. sarasa, Upholding status: the Diet of a noble Family in early nineteenth-Century la Mancha, in P. scholliers (ed.), Food, Drink and Identity: Cooking, Eating and Drinking since the Middle Ages (oxford and new york, 2001), pp. 3761.

6 K. albala, The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe (Urbana and Chicago, 2007), p. 2.

7 h. Bailey, no White house Food Fight, Newsweek, January 17, 2009. as read on: http://www.newsweek.com/id/180097 (accessed on January 20, 2009). J. huget, eat, Drink, and Be healthy, Washington Post, January 19, 2009. as read on: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/16/aR2009011604152.html?referrer=emailarticlepg (accessed on January 20, 2009).

Introduction 3

innovations, social hierarchies, material culture, and many more social and cultural issues. Food is crucial to all humans, yet it may be even more essential to the rich and famous because of these multiple connotations with prestige, codes (of behavior), and display of sheer power. The specific issues addressed in this book will be presented more thoroughly in the final section of this chapter.

Food Historiography, Social Differences, and Power Exertion

The link between food consumption and (economic) status has been studied and empirically verified more or less continuously since the late eighteenth century. Recurring investigations into household expenditures established, not surprisingly, that richer households spent more money on food, mostly due to the variety in their diets. in 1855 for example, the Belgian statistician edouard Ducptiaux recorded the yearly per capita consumption by various families of four foodstuffs that were considered a genuine marker of wealth, including meat. his findings revealed striking differences between the rentier, grande aisance (106 kg of meat), the boutiquier, avec petit commerce de mercerie (65 kg), and the ouvrier maon (13.5 kg), all living in Brussels in 1853.8 By 1900, numerous statistical studies of mainly working-class households in a great variety of countries led to more detailed insight into this relationship, confirming that higher income groups ate more, and more varied food. Moreover, this led to one of the first sociological laws formulated by the german statistician ernst engel: as income increases, the share of total spending on food declines. subsequent research showed this to be universally valid both through space and time, as well as within a particular society.9 since the 1920s, these inquiries gradually began to include other social categories such as blue-collar employees or independent workers. From the 1950s on, partly because of the development of more sophisticated statistics, data were refined, groups were reorganized, and other classifications were introduced (e.g. dwelling place or age group). although these changes raised doubts among some scholars about the close link between income and food consumption, the data substantiated the importance of family income, regardless of family composition, age, or place of residence. Moreover, since most people spent at least 50 percent of their household budget

8 e. Ducptiaux, Budgets conomiques des classes ouvrires en Belgique, Bulletin de la Commission Centrale de Statistique, Vi (1855): p. 415.

9 see the survey by g.J. stigler, The early history of empirical studies of Consumer Behavior, The Journal of Political Economy, april (1954): pp. 95113. on the relevance of household budgets, see T. Pierenkemper, Das Rechnungsbuch der hausfrau, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 14/1 (1988): pp. 3863.

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on food (in Western europe this was true up to the 1950s), the possibility to obtain other goods or services was inevitably restricted. The ability to make at all times consumption choices, thus, was the privilege of a small elite. This elite used quantity as well as quality of food to enjoy and express material comfort and prestige.

if the particular aim of studying budget inquiries was to know about the standard of living of working-class households and inequality between these families, another type of research, which also used expenditures, emerged in the 1960s. These studies considered the lifestyle of the rich and famous. here, a totally different world appeared, one of luxury, social occasions, conspicuous consumption, snobbery, and networking. This type of research started as part of a vast program in various european countries, but most benefited from Frances influential journal Annales. Economies, Socits, Civilisations. its 1975 special section Histoire de la consommation dealt with food and, more importantly, it paid specific attention to the nobility.10 The ongoing (and still modest) research outlined three significant issues: the enormous amounts spent on food (although clothing, travel and other types of conspicuous consumption were important, too), the great variety of food (particularly wine and meat), and the huge quantities of food (with, for example, an average daily consumption of 2 litres of wine per person at minor courts in southern France during the fifteenth century). Thus, historical research again confirmed engels law: as the household income increases, the diet becomes more diverse, and the percentage of the budget spent on food declines. Unfortunately, historians of the 1970s (not exclusively the French) were entirely focused on a quantitative and highly economic approach to food; because of this, they neglected what had been happening in anthropology and sociology since the 1930s.11

in the first half of the twentieth century, the functional sociologists, displaying an interest in food, addressed its physiological and nutritional aspects, and linked food production, preparation, and consumption to interpersonal relationships.12 Food and cuisine were used to maintain social structures of a group, community, or society. scholars who opposed this approach raised objections based on the ideas of teleology, circularity, a-temporality, and biological reductionism. By the

10 B. Bennassar and J. goy, Contribution lhistoire de la consommation alimentaire du XiVe au XiXe sicle, Annales. Economies, Socits, Civilisations, 30/23 (1975): pp. 40230.

11 see the survey in P. scholliers, Twenty-five years of studying un phnomn social total: Food history Writing of europe in the nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Food, Culture and Society, 10/3 (2007): pp. 44971.

12 s. Mennell, a. Murcott, and a. Van otterloo, The Sociology of Food: Eating, Diet and Culture (london, 1992), pp. 718.

Introduction 5

late 1950s, structuralist sociologists, strongly influenced by social scientists like Claude lvi-strauss, norbert elias, and Mary Douglas, focused on cuisine, taste, and manners as opposed to the functionalists attention to food and calories. They considered the meaning, symbolism, and aesthetics of food in order to learn about the underlying, and thus hidden, cohesion of a group, community, or society. Cuisine is a language, they claimed, and as with language there are both unconscious and conscious messages. Therefore, studying cuisine reveals the very core (or structure) of a society. The most important critique expressed against structuralism was regarding its static approach. This led to an increased interest on the part of sociologists in historical developments; stephen Mennells and anneke van otterloos work are fine examples of this development.

Finally, in the 1980s, socioeconomic historians gradually discovered the sociologists and anthropologists approaches and debates, which contributed highly to the cultural turn in history writing. Jean-louis Flandrin may be cited as a pioneer.13 Food historians continued their research about particular communities such as schools, poor houses, towns, wealthy families, and courts but took a much more cultural outlook than previously. Werner sombarts Luxury and Capitalism of 1913 and norbert eliass Die hfische Gesellschaft of 1969 (with the english translation in 1983) were read or reread. Both showed an interest in the conspicuous consumption of courts, and particularly of the italian Renaissance courts of Ferrara, Urbino, Milan, or Rome and that of louis XiVs Versailles, where cuisine clearly played a central role in forging status and identity. Most of these places were studied thoroughly in the 1990s.14 Calories and expenditures were still research subjects, but they were situated within the study of taste, preferences, prestige, and significance. household budgets were still used too, of course, but they were set within a qualitative approach.15

The subject of food studies currently revolves very much around how food was and is used to create, confirm, and change social relations, identities, behavior, and power hierarchies.16 Through food, people are socially, culturally, and even

13 see, for example, J.-l. Flandrin, la diversit des gots et des pratiques alimentaires en europe du XVie au XViiie sicle, Revue dHistoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 1983: pp. 6683.

14 albala, The Banquet.15 a good example of this shifting approach is B. laurioux and P. Moirez, Pour une

approche qualitative des comptes alimentaires: cour de France et cour de Rome la fin du Moyen ge, Food & History, 4/1 (2006): pp. 4566.

16 a. Beardsworth and T. Keil, Sociology on the Menu: An Invitation to the Study of Food and Society (london and new york, 1997); T.l. Bray, The Commensal Politics of early states and empires, in T.l. Bray (ed.), Archaeology and Politics of Food and Feasting in Early States and Empires (new york, 2003), p. 2.

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politically positioned within society.17 To use Warren Belascos words: Food indicates who we are, where we came from, and what we want to be.18 Today, historiography connects issues of food, diet, and nutrition to cuisine, taste, preferences, communication, demarcation, identity, and power.19 This relatively new approach frequently appears in the bulk of literature about culinary culture, no matter what language it is written in. Very recently, nineteenth-century court food began to benefit from this approach. Most of this literature is presented and used throughout this introduction and the chapters in this book. admittedly, this new attention has also led to the production of some entertaining and superbly illustrated coffee-table books, some of which may contain relevant information.20

Food at the Court and Within the Modern Society

sebastian olden-Jorgensen stresses the multiple functions of courts, in early modern europe the court of a prince was many things: the household of a prince, a point of contact between the ruler and the elites, a cultural trendsetter, a focal point of patronage and an important institution of regional and international politics. in short, the court had many functions.21 Moreover, according to stephen Mennell, this role of the court, with its elites as a culturally powerful establishment that shapes good taste and appropriate manners, must be seen as a blueprint of power relations in society as a whole.22 Thus, court life differs from one country or even region to another, according to dissimilar political, social, and cultural elements in each country or region (hence, the difference between

17 see, for example: M. Jones, Feast: Why Humans Share Food (oxford, 2007); M. Dietler, Feasts and Commensal Politics in the Political economy. Food, Power and status in Prehistoric europe, in P. Wiessner and W. schiefenhvel (eds), Food and the Status Quest: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (Providence and oxford, 1996); C. Counihan and P. Van esterik, introduction, in C. Counihan and P. Van esterik (eds), Food and Culture: A Reader (new york and london, 1997).

18 W. Belasco, Food Matters. Perspectives on an emerging Field, in W. Belasco and P. scranton (eds), Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies (new york and london, 2002), p. 2.

19 scholliers, Twenty-five years, pp. 4616.20 For example, K. Jones, For the Royal Table: Dining at the Palace (london, 2008).21 s. olden-Jorgensen, state Ceremonial, Court Culture and Political Power in early

Modern Denmark, 15361746, Scandinavian Journal of History, 27 (2002): p. 65.22 s. Mennell, All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the

Middle Ages to the Present (oxford and new york, 1985), p. 108.

Introduction 7

a conspicuous louis XiV and a somewhat more frugal Charles ii).23 With this statement, Mennell follows in the footsteps of sociologist norbert elias. in Die hfische Gesellschaft, elias emphasized the importance of not thinking of the concepts individual and society as two different and therefore isolated entities.24 he is convinced that the individual position of the king, the structure of the court, and the figuration of society as a whole are correlated. studying the court is apposite, and even compulsory, if one is interested in power relations on a micro-level (the court) as well as on a macro-level (society as a whole).25 links between the court and its context, or society, may be illustrated by referring to the court as a display window for impressing local nobility and foreign visitors, but also the little people (e.g. artisans, workers, and even the poor). if the court is indeed a display window, then it is conceived and set up to be seen and commented upon. so, the court does not exist outside or above society, but it is part of it in practice (e.g., providers, servants, diners) and in discourse (e.g., narratives, imagery, renown, later journalism).

also according to elias, foodways, cuisine, guests, etiquette, drinks, presentation of dishes, dcor, et cetera reflect societal configurations.26 Thus, since food is central within the court and the court is fully embedded within society, the importance of studying food at the court can be accepted with little argument. To be absolutely clear, the impending study is not only about the demonstrative consumption of the wealthy (which would be a great research topic on its own); it is primarily about the position of the rich and famous within society, and how their position is mirrored in their dining habits. The importance of studying food at the court is fully acknowledged by Bruno laurioux, who claims that the courtly images of abundance and refinement that appear within a very specific political and social situation are necessary to understand a broader societal context.27

Most of the aforementioned theory and empirical study relates to absolutist courts with powerful sovereigns, a wealthy court life, and complex relationships between court and society. From the late eighteenth century onward, the

23 Mennell, All Manners of Food, p. 118.24 n. elias, The Court Society (Dublin, 2006), pp. 2021.25 D. De Vooght, Culinary networks of Power: Dining with King leopold ii of

Belgium (18651909), Food & History, 4/1 (2006): p. 85.26 J. goudsblom, J. heilbron and n. Wilterdink (eds), Norbert Elias. Het

civilisatieproces. Sociogenetische en psychogenetische onderzoekingen (amsterdam, 2001), p. 111; J. allard, Repas et manires de table la cour despagne au sicle dor, in J.-l. Flandrin and J. Cobbi (eds), Tables dhier, tables dailleurs (Paris, 1999), p. 172.

27 B. laurioux, alimentation de cour, alimentation la cour au Moyen ge: nouvelles orientations de recherche, Food & History, 4/1(2006): p. 9.

Royal Taste8

role and status of courts changed radically and irrevocably, and with that, the historians interest seems to have diminished. absolutist kings and emperors in europe have gone or have continued their reign as constitutional monarchs, meaning they have little or no real influence. yet, new courts appeared as loci of power. Think about the presidential houses of large nations like France28 and the United states, or consider international organizations like the european Union. Moreover, it is questionable whether the old monarchs role really became irrelevant. it is clear that the role of the aristocracy and royalty altered when confronted with the enormous transformations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries resulting from the numerous revolutions in agriculture, transportation, dwelling, manufacturing, politics, time usage, social structure, employment, infrastructures, et cetera. new powerful groups, gathered under the term the bourgeoisie, forged a new cultural hegemony, with their own codes and practices. The fancy restaurants that began to emerge in Paris in the 1780s and conquered the world are only one example: they became the new meeting places of the rich and famous.29

so, what did happen to court society after 1789, the chronological ending point of norbert eliass Die hfische Gesellschaft? Did the aristocracy and, consequently, the monarchy, indeed lose its influence and power completely? or did it succeed in entering the new financial, industrial, and commercial elite of the nineteenth century? some new countries emerged, and chose a new king and court, such as Belgium or greece. some old monarchies re-emerged, as with napoleon iiis coup in France in 1852. What were the implications for the nineteenth-century monarchies, and how did they affect societys functioning?

assuming that nineteenth-century courts did retain a certain amount of power and influence, what then was the role of food at the court? For example, could the food that was served at the court compete with the food of the new fancy restaurant? Did food (still) create and maintain hierarchies at nineteenth-century courts, and this within the society wherein it existed? Who got invited to dinner by kings and queens, and did the table arrangement of the guests (still) reflect contemporary social hierarchy? and how about the presumed bond between food and power? Did the new bourgeoisie appreciate being invited at royal courts, or did it not care?

28 M. lavandier, e. Flament-guelfucci et al., La table lElyse. Rceptions officielles des prsidents depuis la IIIe Rpublique (Milan, 2005), p. 11: offrir un bon repas privilgie lentente et lamiti tout en les rendant publiques, et daucuns en ont fait depuis des sicles un vritable outil diplomatique.

29 R. spang, The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture (Cambridge, Ma, 2000).

Introduction 9

surprisingly, these questions have rarely been asked by academic researchers before. indeed, the (exhaustive) bibliographical database on court history that can be consulted on the website of the society for Court studies contains virtually no titles concerned with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.30 yet, to interpret (luxury) food and grasp the hierarchies, conflicts of power, and indeed the general development of european society, it is of utmost importance to understand court society after 1800.

European Courts and This Book

The european social science history Conference (esshC) convenes researchers who tackle historical questions by using the methods of the social sciences. at the 2008 esshC in lisbon, the research unit social & Cultural Food studies (FosT) of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels) organized a session on Food, Court Cultures, and the World since 1850. For this book, the four papers that were presented at the esshC were transformed (very thoroughly) into chapters. The book is completed by three additional chapters, an introduction, and a concluding chapter. it tackles the question of the relationship between food and power by looking at (nineteenth-century) courts in different parts of the world.

Ken albala sets the stage in an expository chapter. he states that dining is always, and certainly at courtly events, an expression of power. he convincingly argues that, to demonstrate their authority, leaders from all times and places looked for inspiration from the past or from the colonial other. his contribution should be read as a guide to different historical models that may have affected nineteenth-century european courtly food culture. it takes us to ancient greece, which apparently served as an example for the healthy eating habits that are currently very much in fashion, and to ancient Rome, of which the decadent banquets are probably the best-known example of sheer perversity as far as eating habits are concerned. however, there was more to dining in Rome than hedonism alone, as the author shows. From Rome, albala leads us past the food dictates of early Christianity and illustrates the importance of the medieval institution of kingship for nineteenth-century nobility. of course, albala does not neglect the significance of the italian (Renaissance) courts and of the French sun Kings Versailles, both of which are also treated in the chapters by Rittersma and by lair. Finally, the author demonstrates how european courts were influenced aesthetically by the colonies.

30 http://www.courtstudies.org (accessed December 31, 2008).

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in his chapter, Rengenier Rittersma examines the use of truffles as a promotional gift by the savoy dynasty in the eighteenth century. By looking at the rich diplomatic correspondence of the court of savoy, Rittersma reveals how the gift-giving practice was always used as a political tool and how food each time played a part in this tradition. What is striking is the fact that the use of the truffle as a promotional gift coincides with the emergence of the state of savoy on the european political scene. Rittersma argues, persuasively, that this custom indeed had a key role in the development and preservation of diplomatic relations, and even in the development of a dynastic culture. Finally, the author points out that the organization of this gift-giving culture can be useful to evaluate the (power) alliances between the different parts of the Piedmontese state administration.

Charles ludingtons chapter also commences in the eighteenth century. he takes us to the court of george iii and his successors, describing a century of wine consumption at the British court. The author argues that the taste for wine at the British court was evidence of a changing society as well as a changing British monarchy. ludington wishes to oppose the widespread idea that, as of the mid-seventeenth century, the British court was culturally dead. By examining the courts consumption of wine, he studied a commodity that had been associated with the court and aristocracy since long before the early modern era. ludington shows that there was a shift in courtly wine consumption in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The royal family became more middle class in its tastes, and its choice of wine should be regarded as a political move to keep the monarchical institution alive.

David Burrows chapter puts, what Richard Wortman terms, the scenarios of power on trial. Burrow applies the idea of these scenarios to food and its presentation at the Russian court. By examining different types of sources, for example diaries and household books, Burrow demonstrates how service and meals among the court-affiliated Russian nobility shifted from an emphasis on sociability and the open table to events designed to inculcate court-approved manners, a shift corresponding with a parallel deepening of Russian nationalism.

as described by zge samanci, at the ottoman court too, food was one of the key components of the ceremonial code. Until the early decades of the nineteenth century, foreign ambassadors who visited the sultan were welcomed in a traditional ottoman style, which included dining at low tables and eating without knives and forks. as samanci convincingly demonstrates by examining menus and diaries, changes inspired by european culture were introduced during the nineteenth century, and foreign guests were served with a new kind of cuisine known as alafranga (in the european style). in this chapter, samanci

Introduction 11

looks for the underlying reasons of this modernization of the food language and she examines the importance of food in the positioning of the ottoman court within (global) power alliances.

anne lair discusses the ceremony of dining at the French court of napoleon iii. Before elaborating on the courtly dining habits of the second empire, lair takes us back to louis XiVs dining table in Versailles, since he imposed ceremony, etiquette, codes, and table manners. With this elaboration, she puts the choices that were made by napoleon iii in perspective. according to lair, napoleon iii and his wife eugnie were not gourmets; nonetheless food was still in abundance at the Tuileries Palace. By examining courtly menus and comparing these to the food that was served in some of Pariss fancy restaurants, by looking at the dcor of the imperial couples apartments, and by discussing some of the details that were designed to inspire awe, like the Christofle silverware, lair concludes that dinner occasions at napoleon iiis court were merely a display of wealth and power. The food itself however, lacked refinement, and French haute cuisine was no longer to be found at the court, but rather in the public sphere of fancy restaurants.

Danille De Vooght examines the usefulness of sociologist norbert eliass concept figurations of power. in his Die hfische Gesellschaft, elias uses ample historical empirical material to formulate and test sociological theories. The framework of his study is the courts of the ancien rgime, especially focusing on the French louis XiVs reign (16611715). When studying a court, elias cannot be ignored. But can eliass findings actually be used as a guide when researching all courts? De Vooght tests eliass views by examining the composition of the dinner guest lists of the kings of the Belgians of the nineteenth century. Who was invited to join the king and queen at the dining table? how did the guest lists evolve over time; can subgroups be detected; and do the culinary networks at the kings dining table reflect a (shifting) balance of power within Belgian society at that moment in time? By performing a social network analysis, the author reveals that the Belgian royal court can be regarded as a place to be, but perhaps not the place to be.

Finally, stephen Mennell provides the afterword, in which he relates the chapters to the central issues of this book. he also looks to the future, pointing out possible other angles of research.

* * *

This book explores the extent to which the connection between food and power, which has clearly been defined for medieval and early modern courts, can also be identified for nineteenth- and twentieth-century court elites confronted

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with gigantic societal turmoil. it adds to our understanding of the importance of food, as well as of the power of royal courts in modern europe. apart from exploring this fascinating period of time in history, the subject of these chapters covers a substantial geographic area of the world.

nonetheless, as is almost inevitable, there are geographical hiatuses. This book does not talk about, for example, the habsburg court, the Brazilian imperial court, Meiji Japan, or Qing China, even though, according to William Chan Tat Chuen, in China the organization of the court, including court meals, was already meticulously described more than 2,000 years ago.31 We acknowledge the reality of this lacuna, but instead of allowing it to keep us from publishing this book, we would like to take this opportunity to encourage scholars to fill in the gaps and to take up the modern court, and, even more specifically, food at these loci of power, as a subject of research.

31 W. Chan Tat Chuen, A la table de lempereur de Chine (arles, 2007), pp. 78.

Chapter 1

The historical Models of Food and Power in european Courts of the nineteenth Century: an expository

essay and PrologueKen albala

in the Western Tradition, the plastic arts have often taken their formal inspiration from historical precedents, notably the idealized reconfigurations of either classical greek and Roman or medieval and indigenous art. For example, columns and pilasters on a town hall or bank evoke ancient imperial Rome and convey a feeling of strength and stability. a neo-gothic spire celebrates the intense heaven-soaring piety of the Middle ages in an attempt to elicit a comparable emotion in the modern spectator. artistic taste alternates between these historical styles, sometimes motivated by explicitly nationalistic goalsas in the rejection of classical objective dictates of beauty for the local and home-grown. The nineteenth century witnessed erratic and sometimes violent shifts in taste between the classical models and the romantic, naturalistic, or neo-gothic.

Paintings, sculptures and buildings, especially when publicly funded, regardless of style, were conscious expressions of power, meant to provoke reaction in the spectator by means of associated symbols and ideas. More often than not, these symbols were drawn from historical models. hence, napoleons court exploited universalist Roman and then ancient egyptian symbols at the same time he was attempting to build an empire to surpass these. in the age of nationalism, new states like germany drew inspiration from their folk tales and pagan legends in order to exhibit their own inherent greatness. it was in this same era that the Brothers grimm and Wagner sought to create art as a manifestation of the soil, its people, and their values, which included the ancient german idea of kingship. historical models were sometimes drawn from a specific artist of the pastperhaps Michelangelo during the Florentine Republicor were meant to recall a certain time and place: the court of louis XiV, Tudor england, and so

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on. in every case, the art relays an implicit message of identification with the historical court depicted or echoes its form of political power.

how the plastic arts serve as tools of propaganda has been studied in great detail. yet one art, among the most ephemeral in nature, remains to be analyzed as an expression of a certain type of power, be it authoritarian or populist, imperial or national, idealized or folk; or, as Friederich nietzsche would have schematized it, apollonian or Dionysian. This remaining art form is food. one reason for this neglect stems from the difficulty in analyzing the historical record, the objects themselves having completely vanished, except for the intrepid archeologist or coprolithographer. The food served, and its stylistic inspiration in great state banquets, has for all practical purposes disappeared. as with the other ephemeral art forms, music and its forms of notation, there survive historic cookbooks and banquet guides which describe how dishes can be recreated, and accounts which give a reasonable report of the proceedings, table settings, modes of protocol and service, and even sometimes individuals reactions. From these the historian is able to recreate, sometimes literally if necessary, the historic meals of the past.

it should not come as a surprise that the great state functions of the nineteenth century, like other arts, drew inspiration from the past. it might have been straightforwardin the elaborate architectural follies of a genius like Carme which depicted classical ruins in pastry and sugar work1or more subtly in Victorian gelatin molds recalling gothic tracery and crocketting. or it might have been a message of exoticism, recounting the history of a recently conquered colonyhence we find an interest in northern african cuisine, couscous in particular, at the same time paintings by Jean-lon grme become popular in France in the late nineteenth century.2 The historical reference may equally have been a form of seating arrangement, a recreated ceremony or even sometimes a recipe recovered from a historic cookbook to evoke the rulers ancestors, or named for a great gourmand of the past such as apicius or lucullus. no less than in the other arts, these meals were not merely flights of fancy incidentally using forms drawn from the past. They were expressions of power intended to evoke explicit associations among diners. The artistic statementsnot only in the food, but also in the table settings, uniforms of the servants, the seating, and perhaps the entertainmentwere all ultimately expressions of political power, and often in the nineteenth century of a specific type of political power. a meal may thus evoke an egalitarian past, an aristocratic past, a past replete with exotic novelties drawn from the far corners of a tropical empire, or simply remind diners of a regal bygone sovereignty bedecked with the baubles of majesty. one can easily

1 i. Kelly, Cooking For Kings: The Life of Antonin Careme, the First Celebrity Chef (new york, 2004).

2 g. ackerman, Jean-Lon Grme: His Life, His Works (Courbevoie, 1997).

The Historical Models of Food and Power 15

understand, for example, why King Victor emmanuel was fond of elaborate neo-Roman tiered wedding cake forms in architecture (witness his tomb) and on the table, just as a bourgeois king like louis-Philippe chose to serve more simple unaffected foods. Quite plainly, taste reflects political leanings, and the desired associations are often, particularly in the historicist nineteenth century, drawn from the past, or at least an imagined past.

This being the case, a discussion of the great banquets which served as models of inspiration for the nineteenth century is in order. What historical precedents did nineteenth-century courts draw from and why? how did the political vicissitudes of the era stimulate them to change their models, and what prompted the constant interplay between grand elaborate meals and the simple unaffected? What messages of power were nineteenth-century courts attempting to broadcast? This chapter will serve as a prologue to the general themes of food and power in modern european courts, specifically how these courts used historical models to elicit particular associations and how expressions of power are always grounded in past political forms which are manifested in terms of style, in the arts, and in cuisine.

it should be noted from the outset, however, that courtly meals in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were not merely historical recreations or set pieces. other dramatic forces were equally transforming dining in general and especially at court. Perhaps the most important of these was the organization of the kitchen itself, a result of both the professionalization of cooking and the development of restaurants.3 Kitchens were indeed organized like armies, into batteries with a strict chain of command. The scale of operation was now naturally far beyond anything even thinkable merely a century before. This was also due to industrialization, new forms of energy, and new cooking technologies. The entire infrastructure of the food supply of Western europe would change in the industrial era, and this would make the organization of the kitchen as well as the types of food available totally new. Refrigeration, the ability to import meat from the other side of the world, fruits out of season, or cannedthese were totally different culinary substrata than those known to courts of previous eras.

Precisely as in the arts, cooking became commodified, something sold to the masses and advertised. This had a direct effect on the popularization of taste and styles of serving. That a celebrity chef like escoffier would work in a hotel and publish his culinary guide is a measure of how dramatically elite and courtly

3 a. Trubek, Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession (Philadelphia, 2000); R. spang, The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture (Cambridge, Ma, 2000).

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dining had changed.4 This was no longer merely publicized, like the dining manuals of the early modern period, but intended to be used in any restaurant, patronized by literally anyone with money. That is, popular taste and preferences now influenced courtly cuisine, and of course to serve plebian food is itself a specific political statement. americans, for example chortle when hearing that Franklin Delano Roosevelt served hot dogs at a picnic to King george Vi and Queen elizabeth during a state visit, assuming this was pure incompetence. in fact, it was a clear political statement of informal amity and concordas well as pride in an indigenous and industrial american commodity. But it was a different world, and culinary milieu, that made such an act even thinkable in the twentieth century.

nonetheless, we might assess on a similar level the great egalitarian potato banquets of the Jacobin era, the exotic food halls of the Crystal Palace exhibition, the celebrations of traditional folk foodways at state functions of the late nineteenth centurywhether hungarian goulash, a swedish smorgasbord, or spanish paella; and of course when monarchs and emperors set out to impress with food, they have ample historical precedents, as well as the financial wherewithal and staff to execute any whim. What follows is essentially a catalogue of possible historical models on which nineteenth- and early twentieth-century courts drew their inspiration, and with which they hoped to project some kind of affinity, or in the case of the exotic, those states over which they hoped to exercise dominion.

Greece

ancient greece has long been identified as the birthplace of democracy, whose culinary habits embraced a generally egalitarian style of commensality. That symposia and other meals were exclusive to only the highest ranks of enfranchised male citizens was not exactly important, since nineteenth-century egalitarians were often of a similar mind: equality for those of wealth and standing and the leisure to afford the cultivation of taste. The greeks also left copious documentation of their culinary customs, stretching from the earliest homeric barbecue-sacrifices all the way up to the luxurious courts of alexander the greats successorsthe Ptolemys, seleucids, and aechmenids of hellenistic greececorrupted by eastern exotics. That is, there were numerous examples drawn from ancient greece, both positive and negative. Most of these were

4 a. escoffier, The Escoffier Cookbook (new york, 1969); K. James, Escoffier: The King of Chefs (london, 2006).

The Historical Models of Food and Power 17

also recorded in athenaeuss massive food history, the Deipnosophistae.5 Within this text was one author in particular who revealed that there were among the greeks certain cultivated connoisseurs whose knowledge of fine dining in many ways anticipated their own, and even in some respects rivaled the great pillars of gastronomic writing in nineteenth-century FranceBrillat-savarin and grimod de la Reynire. This author was one archestratus, whose culinary testament survives in fragmentary form, in sections mostly about fish, within the work of athenaeus.6

archestratus was unique in that he singled out quality over quantity in foodstuffs, refinement over lavish presentation, and went so far as to specify exactly where the best of ingredients could be obtained. The best barley flour for bread comes from lesbos, followed by Thebes and Thasos, which seems merely passable. his attention to what we would now call terroir is unparalleled in ancient literature. There are also recipes, the most interesting of which specify not to over-season or garnish the main ingredient (good evidence that many cooks did just that). For example, about the amia, probably a kind of bonito, he counsels to wrap it in fig leaves with a little oregano, no cheese and no fancy stuff. it is then simply placed onto hot embers. This fish, the best of which comes from Byzantium, needs no adornment, the quality of the ingredient will speak for itself.7

in any case, the impression bequeathed to modern europeans by writers such as archestratus was that the greeks had managed to achieve that most worthy of gastronomic ideals: good taste without excess, attention to health, balance and moderationin short, a culinary culture as well conceived as their political forms. This may have been an entirely self-delusionary image of what the greeks were actually like, but in the nineteenth century they were still accepted as the ideal unspoiled roots of Western civilization in the arts, sciences, and dietary practices. ironically, though, not many europeans knew much about ancient greek food. Those who went to aid the greek war of independenceand romantics like Byron who wanted to experience it first hand, and certainly consumed enough of itencountered the same ruddy wine, pita bread, feta cheese, fish, and olives that proponents of the modern Mediterranean diet find there today. Readers of Platos Symposium, meaning virtually every educated person in the nineteenth century, would learn little about foodways. even in the more raucous symposium by Xenophon, we get naked flute girls, ample amounts of wine and snacks, but not a proper meal. Thus the model of dining which

5 athenaeus of naucratis, The Learned Banqueters (Deipnosophistae), ed. s.D. olson (Cambridge, 2007).

6 archestratus, The Life of Luxury, ed. J. Wilkins and s. hill (Totnes, 1994).7 ibid, pp. 734.

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greece provided was entirely in the abstract. it dealt with moderation, even sometimes stoic self-denial, but not specific recipes or ways of eating.

even in the greek revival period of the early nineteenth century, which was itself inspired by democratic ideals, one finds day beds reminiscent of greek dining couches, modern politicians posing in togas, haircuts drawn directly from athens, and of course pediments on facades and imitations of the elgin Marbles in statuary. But there is little evidence of europeans looking directly at models like archestratus for culinary inspiration. if not in content, they did imitate the greeks in form and function. This was a period of great dietary reform, when health and a well-built physique were considered indispensable components of the good life. gymnastics suddenly gained prominence in educational theory, as witnessed by Matthew arnolds interest in muscular Christianity. likewise the Romantics emphasized wholesome, clean, and natural food, inspired first by Rousseau but then adopted with enthusiasm by shelley, vegetarians, and similar groups.8 The historical model is ultimately the well-fed egalitarian greeks, who listened to their physicians, exercised rigorously, and ate pure, simple foods. This general fashion for greek taste did not originate in european courts, but it certainly left its mark.

Rome

ancient Rome afforded two diametrically opposed models of culinary taste. on the one hand there was the republican period, consciously imitated by every revolutionary state in successive waves1789, 1830, 1848for its egalitarian culinary virtues. This model stood in sharp contrast to the decadent imperial era, when Romans became addicted to luxury if not outright perversity in their dining habits.

The republican period is best exemplified by the stern Roman statesman Cato the elder. Best known as the instigator of the last Punic War, Cato also composed a farming manual, an investment guide for young aristocrats eager to buy land and make it productive.9 While his advice is mostly for an absentee landlord, growing grapes, olives, and other southern italian crops, the model of self-sufficiency and landed wealth was one that resonated with many nineteenth-century europeans in powernotably landed aristocrats. on their estates, such men prided themselves on the produce of their own domains. They invited similar-minded peers, and regaled them in country houses modeled directly on

8 J.-J. Rousseau, Emile, trans. a. Bloom (new york, 1979).9 Cato, On Farming, trans. a. Dalby (Totnes, 1998).

The Historical Models of Food and Power 19

those of early Rome, which in many cases survived in ruined form in proximity. This particular classical aesthetic originated in the eighteenth century, especially in england and its american colonies, but remained a powerful model well into the nineteenth century. While the meals actually served may have had little to do with ancient Roman dining practices, nonetheless a prejudice toward homegrown, and simple, unaffected fare dominated, often in direct contrast to the more lavish regal courts. even if subconsciously, the food culture of men like Cato, alongside the rhetoric of Cicero and ornamental forms of the same epoch, had a profound impact on elite dining in the nineteenth century.

in fact, the dining habits of the Romans were also becoming better known, partly through archeological findings. There had been early food histories, academic latin discourses, going back to the sixteenth century,10 but the nineteenth century witnessed a real interest in learning about the daily habits of the Romans, in particular stemming from the apprehension that they were in many ways similar to european states in the imperial nineteenth century. alexis soyers Pantropheon of 1853,11 while not considered reliable history today, nonetheless reflects a wide and popular interest in ancient Rome, and in many cases meals were modeled directly on ancient precedents.

The image of Rome as a culinary model also benefited from the survival of a full cookbook from the imperial era, attributed to Marcus gavius apicius.12 although the historical figure apicius was almost certainly not its author, it was widely accepted until recently that he had written it. This was, however, a very different image than frugal republican Rome. This was a luxurious state, whose resources and far-flung trade routes could bring in exotic spices such as pepper from india, rare animals from northern africa, and even some products from the Far east. it is no wonder imperialist europeans could identify with these people; they were undergoing the same enterprise in many of the same locales. This assumed affinity is historically fascinating in itself. The very name apicius, once his text became known during the Renaissance, was consistently associated with gluttony and lavish excess. stories were circulated about his wild profligacy and eventual suicide once he realized he could no longer entertain on a massive scale. But over time the names meaning changed. in the late seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century the name came to be associated with discerning taste and refinement; there were books titled the Modern apicius in italy and then

10 see for example stuckius, Boulenger, Chacon et al. in M. Jeanneret, A Feast of Words (Chicago, 1998).

11 a. soyer, The Pantropheon (london, 1977).12 Apicius, trans. C. grocock and s. grainger (Totnes, 2007).

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elsewhere.13 By the nineteenth century to be called an apicius was fairly positive. This shift is similar to that enjoyed by the term epicurean; though having little to do with the original ideas of epicurus, it gradually shifted from gluttonous associations (as with sir epicure Mammon in Ben Jonsons The Alchemist) to a term denoting those who appreciate the finer things in life, especially good food. Thus what began as general censure of imperial Roman dining habits as corrupt during the Renaissance gradually became admiration, and sometimes not so veiled imitation, in european imperial courts, whether of napoleon iii, leopold ii of Belgium, or any empire of the late nineteenth century.

This is not to say that europeans suddenly adopted the salty garum fish sauce of the Romans, ate flamingo tongues or sows womb, in fact, they continued to gawk in disbelief at what they navely construed to be culinary perversities. But the style of imperial dining, the table settings, the service, and sometimes fanciful recreations of supposedly Roman dishes certainly interested these courts. There is another very interesting similarity between what might be considered the vulgarity and flashiness of imperial Rome and that of the nineteenth century, especially in the so-called gilded era. First, it seems unlikely that many ancient Romans ate exactly as apiciuss cookbook describes. These were foods intentionally intended to impress, with expensive ingredients or strange dishes like dormice dipped in honey and sprinkled with poppy seeds. This dish in particular was singled out for ridicule in Petroniuss Satyricon, as something in very poor taste served by the nouveau-riche upstart Trimalchio (a former slave who struck it rich speculating in grain).14 in this case the dormouse appears in dishes borne by a statue of a donkey. The foods found in apiciuss cookbook are precisely those that would be served by a newly wealthy merchant or businessman, exactly the sort the old patrician Petronius scorned. it may be mere coincidence, but the nineteenth century witnessed a comparable and shocking growth of the bourgeoisie, whose new-found wealth was flaunted in meals intended to imitate if not surpass their social superiors, often to their own embarrassment when it could not quite be pulled off. This class would of course never have consciously imitated the rising mercantile classes of ancient Rome, but the snobbery and effetism of the court attempting to exclude those not to the manner born might be considered directly parallel to figures like Petronius, who was in his day arbiter of taste at the court of nero. in other words, the nineteenth-century taste for imperial Rome may stem from a very real similarity of social circumstances: trying to protect their privileges and vaunted taste from encroaching middle classes with their filthy, commercially derived lucre. This in

13 g. Vasselli, LApicio overo Il Maestro deConviti (Bologna, 1647); F. leonardi, LApicio Moderno (Florence, 1790); Apicius Redivivus, or the Cooks Oracle (london, 1817).

14 Petronius, The Satyricon (harmondsworth, 1965).

The Historical Models of Food and Power 21

turn led to culinary innovations, rarer ingredients, and elaboration for its own sake. This may, strangely enough, explain the aesthetic similarities between these two disparate erasgrandeur, an obsession with ornamentation and stylistic innovation, and just plain kitsch as these styles were imitation down the social ladder.

The Christian Tradition

one powerful historical current influencing all european civilization stems from the food dictates of early Christianity. although Jesus himself and his followers explicitly rejected the food prohibitions of the Jews from whom they originated, the early church eventually instituted ritual fasts as well as feasts which punctuated the medieval calendar. a fast meant specifically abstinence from meat and meat products during lent, on Friday, sometimes on Wednesday and saturday, sometimes during advent. Roughly a third of the year was designated fast days, though in practice this could merely mean an elaborate fish-based meal. in contrast to these were the feasts: in the case of Carnival or Mardi gras, raucous opportunities to indulge in excess, in particular to consume all remaining meat before lent.

adherence to these strictures underwent various tumultuous reversals in the millennia since their institution, especially during the Reformation. By the nineteenth century they were almost completely abandoned in Protestant countries. yet in Catholic europe they still remained in force, sometimes strictly so by various ultramontane movements. That is, in France in particular, in the wake of secularization of the state in the Revolution, there was a conservative reaction which sought to uphold papal authority and its decrees regarding food. The Papal states themselves hung on tenuously, even being occupied by French troops before finally succumbing to the new nation of italy. in any case, fasting and feasting became a political message in nineteenth-century Catholic courts. it could have been merely a ruse to garner popular approval, or to signal real assent to papal authority, but the publicly acknowledged Catholic dietary practices of nineteenth-century courts must be construed at some level as political statements. France itself wavered between conservative and democratic regimes, and thus there is no consistent pattern of courtly fasting, but in countries like spain and Portugal, the new nation of italy, as well as the Central european Catholic states, fasting was practiced as it always had been, albeit, again, often as lavish meals of seafood and vegetables.

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The Middle Ages

The Middle ages became an artistic model in the nineteenth century for many varied reasons. First there was the reaction against the tyranny of the formal classically bound academic arts rooted since the Renaissance in imitation of ancient standards of beauty, and which upheld painting and sculpture as the highest artistic forms. This reaction is more apparent in the plastic arts than in the culinary, but a parallel rejection of the formalities of haute cuisine and modes of protocol demanded in formal dining did indeed go hand in hand with a new fascination for the medieval.

The clearest example of this can be found among the Pre-Raphaelites, whose new-found reverence for medieval textures and colors extended into not only an intense interest in what we now call crafts, but into cooking as well. The arts and Crafts Movement even better exemplifies the new fascination for organic medieval domestic arts, pottery and textiles, as well as tableware drawing inspiration directly from medieval models. We get glimpses of how the nineteenth century conceived of food culture as inspired by the Middle ages in William Morriss News From Nowhere.15 in it, healthy englishmen of the future are fishing for salmon in the Thames. gone are all the factories, and instead little cottages surrounded by gardens, clean and orderly, provide the ideal habitat for humans in this modern Utopia. as for food, there is no buying or selling; everything is shared freely, each person producing what they need with plenty to spare for others, since they are motivated by joy deriving from working itself. This is only possible of course due to the absence of luxuries; needs are met with good healthy food, unpolluted and unadorned with superfluous frippery. For Morris, this was an explicitly political vision of a socialist society which resembled in his mind something like the Middle ages. it is both a rejection of the modern state and nineteenth-century imperialism and, most importantly, a rejection of the so-called benefits that were supposed to derive from industrial capitalism. While certainly not a courtly food aesthetic, it did have a major impact on society and perhaps indirectly on a rather different approach to food, which has perennially resurfaced down unto our own day.

For courts, however, the Middle ages meant something more concretely rooted in their own ancestrythe medieval institution of kingship. as reactionary governments quelled the uprisings of republicans, and later socialists, they sought to justify their own authoritarian and conservative forms of government. The Middle ages, in its imagined form, provided the aesthetic grounding. nineteenth-century rulers built fantasy castlesneuschwanstein

15 W. Morris, News From Nowhere (harmondsworth, 1980).

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in Bavaria is merely the best known of these. Replete with grand medieval banqueting halls, there was indeed an effort to eat like medieval kings. although the details may have been wildly off, whole roast venison, stately pies and medieval confections came into fashion, just as had medieval dcor, and bric-a-brac. in many cases, particularly among germanic states and fledging nations, focus shifted anew to their own origins, in rejection of what were considered foreign classical influences.

one example would be the eleventh-century dining hall of the imperial Palace (Kaiserpfalz) in goslar, germany. a nineteenth-century mock medieval cycle of paintings of past emperors now lines the walls, beneath which one can easily imagine diners on long benches, consuming quasi-medieval fare. The idea at least is to associate the present Reich with the earlier, as the proper form of government native to germany. Perusal of menus of this period reveals not only a return to the german language instead of French, gothic script, but also to local, traditional dishes. The Knigliche Tafel in Munich on June 21, 1886 reveals Ochsenschweifsuppe (oxtail soup), Knigseeforellen (trout from Konigsee); Kalbsrcken (saddle of veal), Fleischpastetchen (meat piesalthough these are nach Richelieu), Hhnerbrstchen (chicken breast), and so on.16 Perhaps we might not be surprised to see germans eating german food; but at court, not to serve French food was indeed a statement of nationalism.

it is of course in this same period that many new nations looked to their own native folk traditions in all the arts: sibelius in Finland, Tchaikovsky in Russia, Bartk in hungary, for example in music. a comparable reawakening of local food traditions also begins here, with the gradual rejection of French taste as the model for all european courts. it is also, not coincidentally, the first time historians became actively interested in recovering and editing their own medieval cookbooks.

The Early Modern Era

in this period there were several disparate aesthetic models for european courtsthe aforementioned French model in haute cuisine reigned the longest and still exerts an influence. at first this was based on seventeenth-century monuments of gastronomic literature such as la Varenne, Massialot, l.s.R., and ultimately, the eighteenth-century Menon.17 These figures and the dishes they invented came to be codified as the ultimate forms of dining appropriate for

16 K. Wanninger (ed.), A la Carte (3rd edn, Rosenheim, 1988), p. 171.17 La Varennes Cookery, ed. T. scully (Totnes, 2006); LArt de la cuisine franaise au

XVIIe sicle (Paris, 1994).

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european courts, especially those of the ancien rgime, whose political style still in some measure reflected the precedent set by louis XiV and the Palace of Versailles. Why French taste came to dominate practically all european courts is difficult to determine, but must stem in part from the meticulous attention given to gastronomic matters in France. it should be noted that this was not merely imitating the latest contemporary French fashions, but evoking the French court of the sun King, and to a lesser extent his successors, as a historical model of the ideal court. That is, in the nineteenth century for rulers with aspirations or delusions of absolutism, the formal Baroque and Rococo forms of diningreplete with waiters in starched wigs, mirrored walls and gilt ceilings, as well as grand pices montes, virtual towers of foodsent a clear political message. We intend to dine as we would rule, in grand formal style befitting majesty.

it is impossible to overestimate the influence French taste in general had on european courts of the nineteenth century. Menus were for the most part written in French, rulers hired French chefs, served dishes devised by the French or made to look like them. in a word, French cuisine and fine dining became synonymous, and not to serve French food at state functions could only be construed as a statement of national pride.

naturally overt reference to the ancien rgime could stimulate rancor in more democratically minded eras, and it is actually surprising how resilient the Baroque trappings of kingship were in the nineteenth century, even in constitutional monarchies. a gala dinner menu for edward Vii, executed by escoffier and held at the Carlton restaurant in June 1902, is not only all in French but is also festooned with ermine, a crown, and regalia that more properly should belong to Charles ii, though the French menu cannot help but remind one of louis XiV.18

France was not the only stylistic model. italy of the Renaissance, just as it remained the inspiration for painting, sculpture, and architecture, also exerted a certain influence on the culinary arts. This is partly because italy was the gastronomic trendsetter in the sixteenth century, due to a wave of publications extending from the first printed cookbook in the 1470s, Platinas De honesta voluptate (On Right Pleasure and Good Health), through monumental works such as scappis Opera a century later, which influenced practically all of europe.19 Moreover, banqueting guides and carving manuals produced in the seventeenth century became the authorities in the field, and the inspiration for rituals used in royal courts throughout the continent. not only italian service, but also ingredients such as olives and lemons, eventually tomatoes and other

18 T. shaw, The World of Escoffier (new york, 1994).19 Platina, On Right Pleasure and Good Health (Tempe, 1998); B. scappi, Opera

(Venice, 1570).

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vegetables associated with the Mediterranean, and even pasta, left a permanent impression on what was considered good taste at court.

in the nineteenth century there was also an italianate revival, inspired by the same motives that had drawn european nobles on their grand tours long before, but now imbued with a strange taste for decay and poverty. This was not fascination with ruins and classical detritus, as in the archeologically minded sixteenth through seventeenth centuries, but an attraction for the squalor and violence of italian cities, and the desuetude of the countryside. of course, one would never see such a style imitated in courtly meals, but elites found themselves strangely compelled to witness it, to follow their guidebooks into louche corners, and perchance to eat a plate of spaghetti on the street in naples. italy had gone from being an artistic model to being an exotic other, though perhaps this was the result of discovering the south for the first time.

incidentally for those truly interested in italian cuisine, at least at the bourgeois level, the publication of Pellegrino artusis La scienza in cucina e larte di mangiare bene offered ample recipes, and itself played a crucial role in the nationalization of disparate regional cuisines into something recognizably italian.20 The emigration of italians would also stimulate restaurants where one could sample these foods outside italy.

almost the same impulse toward the exotic south can also be found with regards to spain. it was as if an unknown and for some reason backward part of europe had been left behind by time. This was a place where spicy Flamenco dancing, seedy women like Bizets Carmen, and not coincidentally spanish food suddenly gained attention outside spain. spain had actually already been a trendsetter in the seventeenth century, when olla podrida, or olios as they were called in england, came into fashion. spanish and Portuguese wines had long been popular among the english, especially when at war with France, and Bordeaux embargoed. hence the popularity of sherry and port. But the ninteenth-century attention toward spain was now quite different, its interest not in the great hapsburg court, but in dirty back alleys and cigar factories, street urchins breaking a loaf of bread or sharing a jug of coarse wine. one can only speculate that this was a kind of condescending fascination for a kind of life that was unimaginable yet close, the gaze of the tourist rather than the humanitarian. in any case, it does influence cuisine, with an interest in spanish dishes such as gazpacho and paella.

There remains one other european state that deserves mention for its influence on nineteenth-century fine dining: Romonov Russia. Fascination with Russia sprang from its distance and that few had any contact with its

20 P. artusi, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (Toronto, 2004).

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culture or cuisine. That would change after Russian soldiers appeared in Paris after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870; they arrived with the Prussians. it is even said that the word bistro derives from their command for quick service, in Russian buystro. of course service la Russe had taken hold long before, meaning that courses were individually plated rather than presented on the table en massebut the foods themselves were still always French. But eventually culinary interest shifted toward Russian ingredients, whose reputation for quality and elegance remains to this day. Caviar of course tops this list, but so too does fine vodka, blini, soups such as borsch, and other Russian specialties such as coulibiac, which enjoyed a vogue in the nineteeth century and beyond. in england the fascination may have sprung from the royal marriages between the two houses. For example, for Christmas dinner at osborne house in 1896 Queen Victoria was served kromeskys as an entrethey are a kind of cork-shaped croquette.21 From the cookbook written by her chef, Charles elm Francatelli, we find a recipe for this Russian dish, which instructs us to bind chopped roast fowl with mushrooms and truffles and bchamel sauce, chill, cut into cork-shaped pieces, wrap these with slices of braised calves udder, batter, and fry.22 Whether the procedure is authentically Russian or not is beside the point; Victorias court wanted to formally express its affiliation with the Russian imperial family through food.

We might add that most great courts of this period held a measure of appeal, thus hungarian palatschinken (a kind of stack of crpes laden with fruit and cream) appeared on menus, as did fine Tokay wines. austrian pastries, indeed anything hailing from a royal or imperial court, gained attention, especially when families intermarried.

Colonial Style

although not necessarily historic in their gaze and appropriation, european courts were consistently thrilled aesthetically by their own recent colonial acquisitions. This was partly fascination with anything exotic and novel, but it was also an interest in the raw, overtly sexual and primitive nature of the arts they encountered in their newly acquired territories. Colonial powers reacted with equal measure of disgust and delight over new ingredients, new ways of dining, and new cooking methods. at least to borrow aesthetic elements from these exotic cultures offered a frisson of release from the demands of modern

21 Menu image online at http://www.btinternet.com/~sbishop100/osmenu.jpg.22 C.e. Francatelli, The Modern Cook (london, 1880), p. 313.

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industrial society, an opportunity to express deep, fundamental, instinctual urges. To dress in a turban and eat with the hands while seated on the floor was at once an expression of the rejection of stiff, formal values; but it was also an expression of power over people who eat this way, a means by which the inherent fear of pollution through contact with them is sublimated into an aesthetic and gastronomic act. Consuming the strange and exotic can be an expression of machismo, but also a way to consume the other and use him or her as a means to our own ends, which is colonialism in a nutshell. even the seemingly innocent dessert garnished with a flourish of coconut or banana is a vivid expression of imperial power, for it exhibits not only the ability to import such items, but also the ability to force others to provide them.

Colonial regimes and adopted foods were nothing new in the nineteenth century. The spanish gladly adopted chocolate from the aztecs whom they conquered. The english for a while were fascinated by native americans, and some foods (including tobacco) gradually made their way to the english court, even if some were mistakenly associated with Virginia, like potatoes. actually, the French court did enjoy a north american native plant, the topinambour ( Jerusalem artichoke)erroneously named for a Brazilian tribe. Both Portuguese and later Dutch colonies in asia were founded expressly to control the spice trade, and thus it is not surprising that they both influenced the culinary cultures with which they interacted and adopted many local foodways in turn. Coffee and tea were both exotic imports explicitly associated with the ottoman and Chinese empires respectively. exoticism itself was nothing new. neither of course were plantation economies, in which millions of humans were subjected to slavery merely to provide nutritionally superfluous flavorings, such as sugar.

The novel element in the nineteenth century was the appeal of the primitive itself, not necessarily with an interest to convert, reform, and civilize as in previous centuries, but to enjoy and consume and even, ironically, to preserve native culture among the more ethnographically and anthropologically minded of observers. This attitude stems from the very different nature of colonies in the nineteenth century. not only were these in new and relatively unknown regions such as africa, southeast asia, and australia where relatively primitive peoples were found, but nineteenth-century colonies were also quite different in scale and purpose. Most were founded with tacit and sometimes quite open political encouragement of large corporate interests. such companies motives were first and foremost profit and more often than not through growing, trading, and processing foodstuffs.

it was also partly petty nationalistic rivalries that motivated nations which had never had a colonial legacy to suddenly engage in empire building. Thus we see germany and Belgium in africa, as well as italy in northern africa. all

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the colonial powers without exception were also industrial nationsFrance and especially england should be added to this list. The United states and Japan after the Meiji Restoration were also important to the late-nineteenth-century wave of imperialism. in colonies these nations sought raw materials, sometimes embarking on invasion without even knowing what natural resources they might find. equally important was the opening up of markets where they might sell manufactured goods, precisely those newly mass-produced goods which were advertised as the necessary accompaniments to civilized life