The Art of Eating

Maybe if I turned eating a hot dog into an art I wouldn’t eat three at a time. I crack up every time I think of Louis the 16th, who was so proud of his skills at the table. These were the days when royalty ate in public, sort of a lame 18th century reality show. In THE PRIVATE LIFE OF MARIE ANTOINETTE, Madam Campan remarks: "He would knock off the top of an egg shell at a single stroke of his fork; he therefore always ate eggs when he dined in public, and the Parisians who came on Sundays to see the King dine, returned home less struck with his fine figure than with the dexterity with which he broke his eggs!" Seems like a skill George Bush would've been proud of.

Here's a sure-fire way to lose weight, do it the way French Royalty had to! Slim pickings for entertainment back then, so "the people" would make the rounds at court to watch the dukes and counts and king and queen eat.  Madame Campan, in her memoir THE PRIVATE LIFE OF MARIE ANTOINETTE tells that by dinnertime, there were "none to be met but honest folks, who after seeing the Dauphiness take her soup, went to see the Princes eat, and then ran themselves out of breath to behold Mesdames at their desert."  With entertainment like that, who needs YouTube???

A footnote from the book adds: "It was necessary to have been habituated from infancy to eat in public, in order to avoid loss of appetite from being the object to which the eyes of so many strangers were directed."  So munch away!

OK it's early, but I haven't made any progress. Will I end up like the Princess d'Harcourt, so delightfully described in the Memoirs of Duc de Saint-Simon?  "Excuse me, I gotta go...ooops, too late!" 

The Princesse d'Harcourt was the kind of person who warrants a description in order that you may better understand a Court that cheerfully accepted such a person. She had at one time been gay and handsome, but though still far from old her airs and graces had turned to brambles, and at the time of which I speak she was a gross, vulgar, bustling creature, with a skin the colour of putty, thick blubber-lips, and hair like tow, perpetually falling down like all the rest of her soiled and filthy attire. She was for ever scheming, demanding, making mischief, quarrelling, cringing low as the grass or riding high on a rainbow, according to her company. A blonde fury! Worse, a harpy! for she possessed the same manifest wickedness, evil temper, and treachery, and was miserly and grasping as well. Worst of all, she was a glutton, and so eager to relieve herself that she drove her hostesses to desperation, for although she never denied herself the use of the convenience on leaving table, she sometimes allowed herself no time to reach it at leisure, leaving a dreadful trail behind her that made the servants of M. du Maine and M. le Grand wish her to the devil. As for her, she was never in the least embarrassed, but lifted her skirts and went her way, saying on her return that she had felt a little faint.

I love to read about food in books, how well or badly the author can write about an experience mostly about smell and taste using only words.  I'm not speaking of books about foods, but books with food....sometimes it almost seems like the food is one of the characters.  My favorite is the ox roasting scene from Hungarian Lajos Zilhaly's epic THE DUKAYS.  Don't worry, I don't think it'll make you hungry!  What's your favorite food scene? Here's mine:

 The high point of the festivities would be the barbecue. Among the family records Count Peter had found a detailed account of the ox-roast at Katalin Dukay's wedding. Unfortunately they were unable at first to find a man for the job. Monsieur Cavaignac, who took part in the preliminary conferences, had declared that the whole thing was a myth: it was impossible to spit an ox and roast it in one piece.

Finally, from a distant county, they secured old János Kigyó, who was so much a master of the rare art that he had been summoned to Budapest for the ox-roast on St. Stephen's Day a year ago. And Master Kigyó appeared, a short little wrinkle-faced man, so small that one wondered how he managed to contain so much knowledge. Brandishing his cherry-wood stick, he issued hoarse commands from beneath his gray walrus mustache. He supervised every step in person, tested everything. He took the knives in hand, and the platters, the spits, the crosspoles and the pokers, even tasting the cakes of lard and the salt. He dismissed each item to its task with a cry of, "Good enough—let 'er go!"

First he skinned the ox, after explaining that the head and the hoofs must be left in place. He slit the throat to make room for the spit, which was as thick as a telegraph pole and would come out at the tail after passing under the backbone. He cut a hole into the stomach of the ox, just large enough to receive a calf, which would replace the tripe, the stomach and the lungs. But the kidneys were left inside. When all this was done they produced a quail larded with bacon. Master Kigyó took it in his hand and looked it over.

"Did you salt it on the inside too, Julie?"

"Salt it, love—of course, I did! Don't ask so many questions!"

"Good enough—let 'er go!" and Master Kigyó handed the quail to one of the assistant butchers.

They placed the quail inside a plucked capon. Good enough-let 'er go! They put the capon in the stomach of a lamb, and the lamb was nestled inside a calf. Good enough—let 'er go! Now the calf was crammed into the stomach of the ox. The poor ox had never imagined it would sometime be so pregnant.

They drove the tremendous spit through the flayed beast. And now came the most difficult part. Kontyos, the estate blacksmith, came forward with five-foot-long iron spikes under his arm. They drove these through the backbone of the ox so that they penetrated the spit and came out of the belly. It was hard work that took expert skill. It was even harder to nail the legs of the ox to its shoulder blades so it would seem to be in a reclining position—for the ox would have to be served, in its entirety, from the center of the table. Finally it was secured. Twenty strong men were needed to lift the spitted ox onto the cross-poles. There a mechanism similar to that of a grindstone would turn the beast. Of course Csengös, the estate cartwright, had fashioned a wheel for the tail end of the spit, which was long enough so that the men turning the spit would be out of range of the blazing heat. They tried the wheel, and found it worked splendidly. Good enough—let 'er go! The two-thousand-pound ox began to turn.

"All right! Light the fire! Let's move! No loitering!" But Master Kigyó did not use the ai or i sounds. What he said was, "Oll rot! Lot the fair."

But first the wood had to be stacked, and that took considerable finesse. The logs were placed on both sides of the cross-poles, none of them longer than the ox itself, and far enough from the meat so that it would be enveloped in heat but not touched by the flame. If only there be no wind! for if a breeze should strike up, the whole arrangement would have to be moved to face it, and the whole business started from the beginning again. The horns and hoofs of the ox were wrapped in wet rags, lest they catch fire in the course of roasting. Just let the horn take fire, and then watch everyone run from the smell!

The women were melting the lard and boiling the salt in a large kettle. This mixture would be poured over the roasting ox. They were already tying saucepans to the ends of broom handles.

"Good enough! Let 'er go!"

They lit the bonfire. The sparks began to crackle, the dry oak logs popped angrily and the smoke whirled skyward just as it had done once upon a time in Asia, in the ancestral home. Slowly the ox began to revolve to the tune of "Ladi-ladi-lom," for the arms of the turners unwittingly took on the rhythm of the music.

Kegs of beer and tuns of wine were tapped. Skirts flew, hands slapped at boots, and dancing began for all who were in condition to dance. The brass band outdid itself. True, they played nothing but "Ladi-ladi-lom," but we must acknowledge that this itself was a major accomplishment when we consider that the band was composed of lads like Laji Hal and Józsi Szunyog, one of them a bicycle-riding postman and the other a stable-boy. Neither was over fifteen years old.

"Tha ox" had been revolving over a tremendous heat for nearly four hours. Now it slowly came to a standstill. They put the fire out on both sides, and removed the kettles as well to make room for the carvers. From the horns and hoofs they removed the steaming wet rags that had been periodically dampened during the roasting. Master Lusztig, the estate painter, stood with his brush and cup in hand, ready to spread gold paint on the hoofs and horns. When this was done, Master Kigyó personally tied the Dukay seal, with its eleven-pointed coronet, between the two horns.

"Good enough—let 'er go!"

     Five wagonshafts were poked under the ox, and ten strong-fisted men lifted the enormous roast from the cross-poles. They put it on a wide table that Master Berecki, the estate carpenter, had made for this very purpose. The ox lay quietly on the table, its legs drawn under, like any ox when it settled down to rest, with the difference that this one had settled down to roast. And how it had been roasted! Its crackling exterior was iridescent with the most beautiful hues of rose-red and deep brown, for it had been continuously drenched with fat while it was cooking. There lay a ton of ox, with the Dukay seal on its forehead between the tremendous, forked, golden horns.