In life, the importance accorded to things and people often depends on the perspective from which one judges them, and on the learning of the judge.
To the common man, for example, nothing could be less remarkable than how, or when, one opens an oyster. In the eyes of a true gourmand, by contrast, there is nothing more important.
The gourmand, and the Parisian gourmand especially, rarely has cause to travel. Accustomed to having the cream of the provincial specialties practically laid at his feet, he has no need to seek them out at their source. Even if he isn’t rich or refined, he has at his doorstep all the culinary treasures the wide world has to offer.
Nevertheless, there are a fair number of regional delicacies that don’t travel at all well, and must be hunted down to their native habitat if they are to be enjoyed in their purest state.
Time is a man of honor, an old Italian proverb tells us; he always tells the truth. Why persist in lying, then, when fraud is always discovered sooner or later, heaping ridicule and shame upon its perpetrator?
When it comes to food, it is all the more important to be truthful; to represent a dish as an artist’s creation, when, in fact, it is the work of some miserable hack, is not only to impugn a reputation but to utterly compromise one’s own good faith and integrity.
And that is just what happened on an estate outside Paris, on Sunday, July 30, 1809, at a belated name day celebration for a lady whose patron is Saint Anne.
Translation © Michele Humes.