In the early 1900's, when unlimited sums were spent on expansive living in England and on the Continent, the chefs who served in the kitchens of great estates were French, or at least French-trained. Many English boys came to France to study their trade under the supervision of famous French chefs, so that they might go home to well-paid jobs across the Channel. Great English families maintained permanent pied-à-terre in Paris hotels and brought their kitchen maids with them to learn the ways of French cooking and its culinary language in the hotel kitchen. Armed with this experience, the young women were of invalue assistance to the busy chefs at home. It was a lucky chef whose household included a French-trained kitchen maid who knew just what was wanted, had everything in hand, and could keep a dozen details in order when the strain of an important dinner put the cook on his mettle.
We always had one or two filles de cuisine, as we called these little English girls, in the kitchen of the Bristol in Paris. That circumstance, I must admit, imposed no hardship on the young chefs. They were such charming girls, so pretty, with theironde hair,blue eyes, and fair English complexions, and just enough different from our French girls to be particularly intriguing. The rivalry for their favor was usually keen, and if the kitchen staff happened to include one of their own countrymen. who naturally had a language advantage, we Frenchmen” had to find tricks of our own to help the flirtations.
I recall one such English rival, Robert Tudge, who was put in my charge for his training. Although he spoke no French and I no English, we got along very well, except that we were both eying, with seventeen-year-old interest, the pretty Victoria who was bustling around the kitchen. She could talk with Robert, and she couldn't even understand me, so 1 wasn't making much progress in the conversational way. But one afternoon I had my chance. I had been teaching Robert how to make hot desserts, the wonderful entremets chauds, so popular during the raw winters of the Continent, and the dish for this evening was an apple charlotte. Somehow I forgot to explain carefully to Robert how to overlap the slices of bread in the mold and how to cook the water out of the apples so that the puddling would stand up and hold its shape when it was unmolded. I did remember, however, to prepare another charlotte, one that would stand up, as a precaution. When the waiter came, I nodded to Robert; he turned out his charlotte and despairingly watched it sink down into an untidy, unappetizing mass. At that point 1 turned out my charlotte de pommes, the most shapely of puddings, and deftly dressed it with glistening apricot sauce. Victoria was standing by, and her broad and admiring wink told me that she did not have to know the French language to understand my strategy! Eh bien, it was a silly joke, not worthy of the dignity of the grot bonnet, but it was love, and we were young.
Twenty-five years later Robert Tudge, just off the boat from France, walked into my office at the Ritz-Carlton. He had forgotten almost entirely how to speak English, oddly enough, and as we laughed and sighed over old times, he said, “Faites-vous des charlottes de pommes à présent, Louis?”
I was able to tell my old friend that I was indeed still making apple charlottes, along with inumerable other hot desserts. My employer, Mr. Keller, who was then president of the hotel, was a connoisseur of international reputation. and he preferred hot desserts. If they could be hot and flambéed, so much the better. To him the perfect end for a distinguished meal was the croûte aux fruits flambées(see November, 1951). When together we planned the details of the dinners which writers of the time described as fabulous, he would always leave the dessert to me. “Think up something new to surprise me, Louis. Send it in flaming.”
Mr. Keller was not the only gourmet who understood and appreciated hot desserts. I have pored over many, many figures that show how popular hot desserts were at the Ritz, figures which make it plain that the current emphasis on frozen desserts and the tray of French pastries is the line of least resistance, not always the answer to pic demand. My experience has been that men. particularly, are fond of hot desserts, and surely the fame of many restaurants in this country rests on their skill with les entremets flambés. Further, connoisseurs often insist that many of the desserts usually eaten cold should be served freshly cooked and still warm, or at least reheated. Heating improves taste and texture of such dishes as fruit pies, rite puddings, and baked apples.
The hot dessert is not purely a French tradition, although the soufflés, beignets, crêpes, and fruit charlottes of France are superb examples of the genre. My sojourn in England taught me how much steamed and baked puddings mean to the British, and how bare a British Christmas te would be without the (laming plum pudding to crown it. As for America, where tradition is fleeting, brown betty and fruit cobbler are almost all that is left of a long list of cold-weather favorites that were named in the old cookbooks. In many families, as in most restaurants, pastry, ice-cream and a few simple cold puddings are the invarie dessert, and the special sweet richness of a hot dessert, the flavor enhanced by the piquancy of a burning liqueur, is, sadly, unfamiliar.
It was not so at the old Ritz. Even when we were faced with the prem of keeping a fragile soufflé from drooping on its long journey from the oven to the guest in the dining room, a task infinitely riskier than yours in carrying the soufflé from the kitchen to the te in the next room, we served soufflés because our European guests, and our American guests who had traveled abroad, demanded them, along with the other entremets chauds. Nothing was too much trouble then.
Once when Mr. Keller asked me to make a surprise dessert for some guests from the diplomatic set in Washington, I put together a dish which became an all-time favorite. I knew the guests and their tastes; crème frite was one of their frequent choices, and cherries Jubilee another. So I considered combining the two. Then I remembered that two of the guests were from Spain, and very interested in the canned white grapes which were then beginning to be shipped here from their homeland. So I substituted grapes for the cherries and created a new dish with a new name:
Pinterest
