The name of Lorraine immediately evokes a symbol in the minds of most people. They think of the two-barred Cross of Lorraine, the proud emblem of French resistance and resurgence in World War II. Lorraine's heroic Verdun will ever stand as a beacon of unconquerable French determination in 1916. The name of an inspired peasant girl born in Lorraine, Jeanne d'Arc, will always be a symbol of miraculous courage and faith.
Lorraine has ever been a land of controversy and struggle, a recurrent setting for wars and invasions. Villages and towns have been demolished and rebuilt with dogged regularity for centuries. Generations of hardy men have sweat over its stubborn soil, toiled in its thick forests, and bucked its tough climate. The native of Lorraine is a proud, thoughtful man. He is not garrulous, but he is a true philosopher, and he can be trusted.
Very many of our overseas veterans from the past two wars know Lorraine and its hardy citizens. They have seen it at its best, which is very handsome, and at its worst, which is admittedly dismal. How many portly ex-doughboys must recall the flat hamlet in Lorraine where first they were billeted. Most of those villages conform to the same pattern: a very wide main street, which is the communal property of all and the accepted depository for woodpiles, carts, agricultural machines, and those proud signs of wealth—patrician manure heaps. Chickens and geese, dogs, cats, and donkeys roam at will.
The farmhouses crouch close to one another, flat-roofed and monotonous, with huge arched doorways for the ox carts. They are warm and comfortable, but far from beautiful. The most beautiful thing about them is the divine aroma coming from the kitchen. The Lorraine housewife is one of the subtler French cooks, and she achieves noble dishes for her hard-working husband without resorting to many spices or strong flavors. Ask some reminiscent doughboy!
A mere enumeration of a few names in Lorraine—Verdun, Tout, Metz, Pont-à-Mousson, Epinal—stirs up thoughts of darker days. They are names intertwined with struggle, but they are exhilarating names, too, for in the end they spelled victory. After the Franco-Prussian War, Lorraine was divided in two, but 1918 saw it united once again. Four more years of captivity descended upon it in 1940. They need to be philosophers!
The native of Lorraine is the best lumberman in France, so they say. He conserves his wooded treasure with a meticulous care which should make some of our swashbuckling Western foresters blush. He is a miner, too, for Lorraine is rich in iron ore and supplies half the salt in France. More warriors than poets have come from this often-invaded land, but it is timely to recall that this is the birthplace of Victor Hugo and the home of such gifted artists as Claude Lorrain, Jacques Callot, and, more recently, Isabey and Bastien-Lepage.
Lorraine has its gastronomic accomplishments also, and they are not to be scorned. The exalted quiche Lorraine is its most conspicuous contribution—a hot, flaky crust with cream and bacon, often fortified with eggs, onions, or ham. It is as palatable an entree as one will find anywhere. The story goes that the pâte feuilletée, the original flaky crust, was first contrived by the famous landscape painter, Claude Gelée, known to the world of art as Claude Lorrain. Gastronomy was his second love or (who knows?) perhaps his first.
The celebrated baba au rhum was dreamed up in Nancy by Stanislas Leszczynski, once King of Poland and father-in-law of Louis XV. Sonic of the finest wineglasses in the world come from the old Lorraine town of Baccarat, whose superb crystal began to flourish in the eighteenth century.
Lorraine is famed for its cheese. Above the richly wooded hills of the Vosges is a surprising ridge of pasture land which becomes a skier's paradise in winter. It produces, in summer, a symphony of cowbells and becomes the source of several noble cheeses. The solitary herdsman-cheese-maker establishes himself and his herd on the lone hill-side. Daily he docs the milking and makes cheese in a one-room mountainside dairy. Münster and Gérômé are the best of several cheeses made by this on-the-spot method. Münster, strong, lusty, and fragrant, is adored by local cheese experts, who often sprinkle it with caraway seeds. Gérômé is more solid, aged in the caves for four months, and often bestrewn with aniseed, fennel, and caraway. The flat-roofed cheese factory wedged in the hills is known as a marcairerie. It's a lonely life, but it brings pleasure to a lot of other people!
Fresh-water fish, carp and trout in particular, are the pride of the gourmets of Lorraine. They love to make an omelette with sautéed frogs' legs and to encase a baby pig in gelatin. An autopsy of some of their smoked sausages would probably be disconcerting, but the sausages are undeniably savory. In their love of pork products, the good people of Lorraine have much in common with their Alsatian neighbors.
Lorraine can't compete with Alsace on the question of wine, however. Little by little, its vineyards have been abandoned and planted with trees. Despite this partial eclipse, a few pleasant Lorraine wines still assert themselves, especially the unassuming vin gris. They call the wines gray rather than pale pink, which they really are. They taste much better than they sound, being very dry, fairly fruity, and clean to the taste. In the Meuse the vin gris is made from the pineau grape; in the Moselle it tastes like another wine.
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