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Dolf Riks’ Kitchen:

 by internationally known writer and artist, Dolf Riks

 

Le Grand Dictionaire de Cuisine

wait pic

Alexandre Dumas a few years before his death with
“la artiste” Adah Menken, his equestrian lover.

Readers of my generation, born in the twenties or thirties when people still read books, will remember the fascinating literary works of the French author Alexandre Dumas. He was actually referred to as Alexandre Dumas “père”, to distinguish him from his son, Dumas “fils” who was also a writer of name. Alexandre “père”, claimed to have written about 500 works of literature, and although this may have been an exaggeration, his output was truly amazing. He wrote, among others, books I recall I really loved because of their romance and adventure; “The Count of Monte Christo”, “The Three Musketeers”, and I believe that he was also the author of another book I treasured; “The Prisoner of Zenda”.
Dumas himself, though, wanted to be remembered especially for his last great work, the “Grand Dictionaire de Cuisine”, which was almost finished before his death in 1870 when he was 68 years old and published three years later in 1873. The “Grand Dictionaire” was a bit of an enigma for the reviewers and critical readers. In the first place, it was awfully bulky, containing about 600,000 words, and in the second place, it was rather erratic. Many of the recipes, ideas and writings were borrowed from other prominent eighteenth and nineteenth century food writers , sometimes with references but mostly - more than he admitted - without any mention of the original sources at all. Some of the entrees, for instance, were literally taken from “La Physiologie du Goût” by Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a much admired French “gourmand” and writer, who was a generation older than Dumas.
The well known food writer and retired British foreign service man, Alan Davidson, who together with his wife Jane, translated parts of the “Dictionaire” into English, says in his introduction to “Dumas on Food” (The Folio Society, Michael Joseph Ltd. 44 Bedford Square, London. ISBN o 7181 1842 I), that the writings make an unbalanced impression. For instance, very rare food items, like a South American bird called “Hocco”, most unlikely to be seen on the menu of a Parisian restaurant, get two pages of writing while milk deserves only half a page. One of the most amazing entrees is a complete essay on mustard followed by an advertisement for a certain brand name of the relish.
Still, although the French never seem to have become as enthusiastic about it as they are about Brillat’s musings on food, it was still a major work on 19th century cuisine by one of the greatest and most prolific writers of the time, who was also an intrepid traveller and explorer of the unknown. We should therefore not ignore it as of little importance. It is fortunate that Alan and Jane, who started and owned the publishing firm “Prospect Books” which specialised in works on food and related subjects (since sold), and who still publish that most interesting albeit rather academic magazine called P.P.C. or “Petits Propos Culinaires”, did take it upon them to save some of this curious “Dictionaire” for the English reader.
What many people don’t realise - at least I didn’t - is that Dumas was actually of West Indian origin. His grandfather was the “Marquis de la Pailleterie” who lived in Santo Domingo and his grandmother a black slave girl called Cessette Dumas. The offspring of this liaison, Alexandre’s father, an illegitimate child, was brought back to France as a young lad where he joined the army when he grew up and eventually rose to become a general in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army. He married a woman by the name of Marie-Louise Laboret and as a result of this union, Alexandre was born in the small town of Villers-Cotterêts in 1802. For some reason, while on duty in Egypt, his father managed to fall out of favour with “Le Petit General” and was subsequently poisoned in jail in Brindisi, Italy, a misfortune from which he never recovered, and he died when Alexandre was four years old. The boy grew up under modest circumstances as the family fortune had disappeared, learning how to read and write from his mother and sister who never could have anticipated how famous Alexandre as a writer would become one day.
Dumas was a handsome youth and an incurable ladies man who had many affairs with fascinating courtesans all through his life, the last one - when he was 65 - being an young American “artiste” called Adah Menken, who did daring things on horseback. Alexandre loved to travel and explore and he was keenly interested in matters of the table as well as the food of the peoples he encountered on his journeys and expeditions. It is certain that he loved to eat and he gave lavish dinner parties whenever he had the means, as his fortunes fluctuated all through his most interesting life.
There is a whole entry in the book devoted to a “Leporide” a so-called “Belgian Rabbit”, a supposed cross between a rabbit and a hare. This animal has never existed and is pure fiction. Leporidae is the family name of the hares and some other furry mammals. Turkeys, American birds, were, according to Dumas, known in Greece, where they were called Meleagrides, after Meleager the King of Macedonia, who supposedly brought them there in the 3559th year after the creation of the world. He also tells us the still popular myth that Sir Walter Raleigh brought the potatoes from Virginia to England in 1585. The original potatoes were cultivated by the Incas in the Andes mountains of South America and not in what is now the US, where they were much later introduced by European emigrants.

Correction:
Dear readers,
Before more irate citizens of the United States of America pursue me with their fangs bared because of my gaffe concerning Lincoln and the “Declaration of Independence”, I herewith offer my most sincere apologies to everybody concerned, including George Washington. The offending line should have been as follows: “One morning when he (Abraham Lincoln) was sitting for the painting ‘The first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation’, he interrupted......”
Sincerely
Dolf Riks



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