File:Food and flavor, a gastronomic guide to health and good living (1913) (14774283431).jpg

Identifier: foodflavorgastro00finc (find matches)
Title: Food and flavor, a gastronomic guide to health and good living
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Finck, Henry Theophilus, 1854-1926
Subjects: Gastronomy
Publisher: New York, The Century Co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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s Guide to Europe, the Rouen duckis not any particular breed of duck, though the goodpeople of Rouen will probably stone you if you assertthis. It is simply a roan duck. The rich sauce whichforms part of the dish was, however, invented atRouen. It was with a duck sauce that one of the Frenchrestaurateurs of our time won fame and fortune. Fora number of years every American and Englishman inParis who could afford it, went to the Tour dArgentto eat a duck as prepared by Frederic Delair. He usedtwo ducks for each order. One of them, well-cooked,was for the meat, while the other, quite rare (or under-done, as the English say) was put into a silver turnscrewand had all its juices—including that of the liver—squeezed out. These juices make a sauce which I haveeaten with enjoyment and impunity; but I have beentold by a physician at Lyons that some persons aremade ill by it, owing, apparently, to some injuriousquality in raw duck-livers. Most of the Paris restaurants, now that Frederic is
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The Tour dArgent and Frederic Delair 218 FOOD AND FLAVOR no more, have their silver turnscrew, and they do notfeel guilty of plagiarism, for Frederic did not reallyoriginate this trick but adapted it from the practice ofFrench peasants who tried to get as much juice aspossible out of their tough and skinny ducks by smash-ing the carcasses with stones. Already in the middle ages the saucier, or sauce-maker, was the headman in the cuisine of Frencharistocrats. The age of Careme (who wrote eloquently and lov-ingly about sauces) was, as Ellwanger remarks, theera of quintessences—of the cuisine classique, whenchemistry contributed new resources, and fish, meats,and fowls were distilled, in order to add a heightenedflavor to the sauces and viands that their etherealizedessences were to accentuate. One thinks of Lucullusand Apicius, and of the exceeding odoriferous andaromatical vapor of the ovens of the artist mentionedby Montaigne. The most common ingredients used to make thesavory and a

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