The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1907-04-28
Dainty French Dinners

came down and, ~thronging the near
by restaurants, demanded cabbage
soup. The restaurants had none of the
savory brand that they had been smell
ing, and presently the managers were
busy bribing the staff of the theater
for the recipe.
When Dumas's great character Por-
thos becomes a rich man and dimes
with Louis XIV. he tells how he stuffs
a ~barbecued OK with larks from Pithi-
viers. Larks from Pithiviers are a
huge reality in French epicurism.
Pithiviers has invented a lark pie
which is described as being fine and
light as the larks themselves.
But Paris now makes the pies as
well as eats them. 1t is when the frost
first nips the country in h fall that
the slaughter of the larks begins. The
pot hunters get out after them in the
early morning and nets twenty yards
long and six yards wide are spread for
them.
From 1000 to 1900 dozen of them are
shipped to Paris every week. The total
for the season is from 100, 000 to 50,0OO
dozen. They are paid for at the rate
of so cents to 81 a dozen. The workers
who prepare them pluck from forty to
fifty dozen a day; n man can bone
from seven to eight dozen an hour.
The meat is cooked in great braising
pans, then laid in the pie dishes in
successive layers with fine lard, truf-
ffes and goose Iivers. Each house has
it's special seasoning. Small pies con-
tain twelve larks; large ones twelve
dozen.
More tina $500 people, peasants and
workmen, live on the larks of Pithi-
viers. They divide among them a mil
lion francs a seaso earned by the
massacre of little songbirds.
1t takes about eight hundred hogs to
furnish the lard for the pies, with 1900
pounds of goose livers and 2,2OO pounds
of truffles. They use 10, 900 dozen egg
10, 600 pounds of butter and 500 sacks
of flour in making the paste.
Paris initiates, but can not equal, the
experts say, the dishes of the South.
For the aioli, the bouillabaisse (be-
loved of Thackeray and Du Maurier)
the bourride, the aigou-saou and the
c~assoulet, the native air and the ma
tive genius are as necessary as the
native fresh ingredients.
The aioli is simply a mayonnaise
dressing with a formidable basis or
garlic. Tradition has it that the aiolf
is the first thing the Phocaeans pre-
pared when, away back in the dawn or
time, they landed on the coast OF
France to found Marseilles. The city
still makes it.
They begin by grinding up six or
seven cloves of garlic in a mortar.
Then they add the other ingredients
of the ~mayonnaise in the man.
ner that every housewife follows. They
use it on snails, fish, carrots, potatoes,
artichokes, string beans, even on the
tentacles of the octopus.
The foundation of the meal is unim-
portant; it is the aioli that counts. 1t
is a Marseillaise saying that with aloll
one can eat paving stones.
/ Then there is the bouillabaisse, which
also goes back to the Phocaeans ac-
cording to the Marseillaise traditions.
1t takes eleven sorts of fish to make
it-all newly fshed from the Mediter-
anean Among them are the turbot,
sardine, whiting, gurnet and conger
eel There are half a dozen other
sorts, known only to the fishers and
epicures of the south of France, chief
among them being the rascasse or
racaou (the hogfish) and the ~langouste
or spiny lobster.
The fish are scaled and cut into
slices and praised in a casserole In
company with a minced onion. a couple
of tomatoes, a sprig of thyme, a branch
of ~fennel, the peel of an orange n
three or four cloves of garlic. The
b~ouillabaisse should be eaten hot
where n when it is made. Never
theless, more than 100, 900 pounds of 1t
is exported in tins from Marseilles
every rear. The local consumption be-
tween the mouths of the Rhone ana
San Reno is estimated c~onservativeiy
at 200 pounds a day.
The Pyrenean district also has dishes
of its own. From the mountains to
Toulouse, the c~assoulet holds sway.
1t is simply beans, but beans with
ham and sausages-and a stuffed duck
and the legs of a goose. even a
partridge may be added with advan-
tage.
The various meats are put on top of
the beans and the whole is baked until
the beans are saturated with the
juices. a Gascon swears that when
the North Pole is discovered some
empty dishes in which c~assoulet was
baked will be found in the hOllows OF
the rocks.
In Perigord they excel in creations
in which the goose is the most i'm
portant factor. Truffles come from
that part of France and they are not
spared on the goose. Deep pies Of truf-
fed goose are the climactic product.
There are those who say they are
the climax of French cookery. The
story is told Of an epicure who de-
voted his life TO a tour of France,
pursued for no other purpose than the
comparative study of the characters
tic dishes of the various sections. He
was found dead In a dining room in a
hotel at Perigueux with al empty pie
dish before him. He had eaten a deep
goose pie and there was nothing left
to live for.