The historian Jules Micheler once said:
"The 'essence of the nation' of France,
It is to have a variety of races and regions
The power of integration. ”
And one of the elements that forms this essence,
It is the power of "French desserts".
"French desserts are the best", I don't know when this recognition has become a common knowledge all over the world.
Macarons, soufflé, caramel pudding, mousse cakes, lightning puffs... These desserts, just by mentioning the name, poured into a fashionable, exquisite sense of luxury.
Holding a macaron or madeleine cake in your hand seems to automatically unlock the image of a Parisian girl, and the strong French style is also accompanied by the sweetness in the mouth.
Why does French dessert make desserts in other countries become a dim foil?
Why are desserts and the image of France always inseparable?
To understand these phenomena, we must begin with France and its history, as well as its cultural world strategy.
Dessert: "Something superfluous"
Desserts, like fashion and social etiquette, are often a cultural essence of a country or region.
On the surface, desserts are "superfluous" attached to a society. However, after examining history, it will be found that desserts are often linked to status and power, and exist as lubricants and coordination tools for social relations and culture, indispensable and irreplaceable.
From a production point of view, whether it is cake, chocolate or ice cream, sweets are on the edge of the diet system. However, it is precisely this dispensable state that gives desserts the incredible power to create happiness.
In order to exert this power, people continue to work desserts.
There has never been such an architectural and artistic food as dessert. Desserts are generally allowed to be completely decorated, and this will never be considered a wasteful act.
At the same time, despite being the most advanced luxury in the local diet system, desserts are democratic food open to all, from the royal court to the common people.
French desserts, the strategy of the country
France is a country that uses desserts as a national strategy. Throughout its long history, France has devoted all its energy to packaging desserts as a weapon for overseas propaganda.
Stills from "The Absolute Queen"
Of course, all French cuisine is such a propaganda tool. But desserts have a small, flexible convenience. Not only that, as the tip of the French gastronomic myth, desserts are not limited to the tables of European courts and upper classes, but can also be started and enjoyed by ordinary civilians.
For France, the most important strategy is to promote the myth of gastronomy, to turn French cuisine and French desserts into a desired goal, to make people talk about it and call names.
The success of this strategy is obvious: French cuisine and desserts, as a comprehensive art of cuisine, spread across borders, constantly portraying the image of beauty, casualness, freedom, fashion, and urban style.
Even as long as the name has a French flair, it will make people feel that the dish or dessert is more valuable. Savarin Savarin cake, Amandine almond tower, this kind of dessert with nasal sounds, seems to give people a more elaborate and delicious feeling.
The orthodox French desserts we are now exposed to are usually born in the nineteenth century. But before that, France already had a series of habits, institutions, and political, cultural and spiritual structures that had been formed to prepare for the activity of desserts.
Macaron: The "Dowry" from Italy
When it comes to French desserts, the name of the macaron, is always the first few to jump out.
Small, stylish, light, sweet enough to forget all other tastes, the macarons are not only the art of dessert, but also a perfect symbol of French style.
However, even with a deep "French" brand, this dessert actually comes from Italy. And the way it circulated to France was a royal marriage.
Since the Middle Ages, as a foreign policy, European dynasties have often entered into in-laws with competing dynasties. Among them was the marriage of Henry II to Catherine de Medici of Italy. Catherine came from a powerful Medici family. In the sixteenth century, the head of the family became the monarch of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, reaching the pinnacle of power.
When Catherine de' Medici married into France, many Italians came with her. Although Catherine was only a 14-year-old girl at the time, she was already a very good foodie. She brought with her a large number of cooks, as well as many excellent pastry and confectionery chefs.
Queen of France Catherine de Medici
Long before this, Italy's confectionery manufacturing was very developed. From the end of the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, Italian chefs made a special effort to delve into desserts, and desserts such as fruit pie, jam, preserves, and nougat appeared one after another.
Desserts such as various small cakes, including macarons and almond towers, were introduced to France along with Catherine's marriage.
Macarons are made with egg white, granulated sugar and almond flour. The successfully crafted macaron has a crispy surface, a crisp bottom, and a soft middle, but not sticky teeth.
In his classic book Taste Physiology, published in 1826, the well-known food critic Bria Savoran mentioned that sugar has three uses, one of which is to make macarons:
"After adding sugar to flour and eggs and stirring,
You can make cookies, macarons and baba cakes
Light dessert. These desserts are recently called
'A bite of dessert master' people
The result of the development of pastry manufacturing technology. ”
Bria Savaran
It is worth mentioning that from 1826 to the present, "Taste Physiology" has been reprinted more than 50 times, which can be described as a super bestseller. It was in this book that Bria Savaram defined the meaning of "gluttony" and laid the theoretical foundation for gastronomy.
In terms of cooking, he believes that educational lectures, academies, theorists, and practitioners are all necessary.
France, on the other hand, was built into a country of gastronomy known to all ages in the activities of Savaram.
Madeleine Cake, Railway, and Paris
There are many legends about when and how madeleine cakes were born. One of the more reliable accounts is that in 1755, in Kormesi, in the Lorraine region, a banquet was held at King Leszczyński, who had taken refuge in France, but his pastry chef had a quarrel with someone in the back kitchen and then dropped off his job.
In order to save the scene, madeleine Polmier, a young maid present, quickly made a dessert taught by her grandmother with an egg beater. The dessert was highly appreciated, and the name "Madeleine Cake" was soon called.
By the mid-19th century, made the madeleine cake famous in Paris. Dumas's Dictionary of Gastronomy and Grimaud's Annals of Old Food both document this dessert.
All along, Paris has always been a high-minded posture. Yet in the face of this dessert from the Lorraine region, Paris let go of its arrogance. From this period to the beginning of the 20th century, sales of Madeleine cakes also rose rapidly.
Among them, the railway from Paris to Saint-Trasburg played a significant role. At Colmesy, where the route passes, madeleine cakes are a major local industry, and as costs and quality improve, the madeleine cakes produced here are becoming more delicious and more affordable.
With the laying of the railway, the train transported this snack from Kormesi to the Gare de l'Est. Eating madeleine cake after dinner gradually became a favorite habit of the bourgeoisie and the nobility. In this way, madeleine cake became a dessert in Paris and a representative dessert in France.
Chocolate: Exotic, erotic and joyful
There is also a dessert that was brought to France because of the royal marriage, namely chocolate. Only this time it was introduced to France not from Italy, but from Spain.
Spain was one of the first countries on the European continent to start drinking cocoa. In 1615, Princess Anna of Astoria, Spain, married Louis XIII of the Bourbon dynasty, promoting the elegant habit of drinking cocoa among the Spaniards, which was subsequently popularized from the French royal family to the French nobility.
Marie Teresa, Princess of Louis XIV, was also a Spanish princess. When she married in 1660, she was accompanied to France by a maid who was good at making chocolate. This directly contributed to the popularity of chocolate in French high society. By the 18th century, chocolate was gradually being used as an ingredient, and chocolate desserts were born from this time.
In the late Napoleonic First Empire, as France grew cocoa beans on Martinique Island, the consumption of chocolate in France also increased, and the style of chocolate desserts was constantly renovated. It is said that the candy wrapped in paste-like chocolate on the outside is the favorite food of marie Antoinette, the "absolute queen".
The court banquet of Marie Antoinette
In Reminiscences of a Time Like Water, Proust not only writes about madeleine cakes, but also about chocolate. He describes a scene at a tea party where the narrator's beloved Gilbert cuts chocolate cake for him:
"Gilbert from desserts with imitations of the structure of the building
The collapsed building took out a wall and gave it to me,
This wall with an oriental flavor is dotted
Bright red fruit, shiny lustrous color. ”
In Proust's description, there is also exoticism, longing, the joy of experiencing the destruction of conquered things, and the strategy of sexual desire games. This is particularly suitable for the sweet and dark chocolate cake, and perhaps also in line with the feeling that all desserts bring to people.