©2010 Cathy K Kaufman Claw at the Table: The Gastronomic Criticism of Grimod de La Reynière Paris, February 1, 1783, 9:30 p.m. Seventeen of Parisʼs most distinguished artists, men of letters, and jurists braved the winter chill for a supper at the cityʼs most fashionable home. Hosted by Alexandre-Balthazar-Laurent Grimod de La Reynière (1758-1837), a 25-year-old lawyer and sometimes theater critic with a reputation for staging outlandish entertainments, the event, soon to be known as the “funeral supper,” was notorious even before it took place. In retrospect, Grimodʼs youthful use of the table for social and political commentary seems an odd prequel to his mature career as a founder of French gastronomic writing and the worldʼs first restaurant critic. But nothing about Grimod was conventional or predictable, and he remains a fascinating, if enigmatic, figure. " At the time of the funeral supper, the La Reynière family was, to say the least, dysfunctional. Grimod was an overage adolescent, rebelling against his aristocratic parents and the injustices of the world with flamboyant pranks while unapologetically enjoying the privileges of his rank. Grimodʼs father, Laurent, was a retired fourth generation fermier générale, or tax collector. The position had opened to the family only after a great-grandfather became a sécretaire du roi to Louis XIV, elevating the bourgeois Grimods into the Grimods de La Reynière, members of the noblesse de la robe. Along with arriviste status came wealth, which Laurent showcased in a new manse, the Hôtel Grimod de La Reynière. Built in the mid-1770s, the hôtel particulier overlooked the Champs-Elysées and was famous for its wall panels, executed by the painter Charles-Louis Clérisseau and inspired by frescoes from the recently discovered cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The house was excruciatingly chic. " " So was Grimodʼs mother, the beautiful Suzanne de Jarente de Sénar, who came from the highest ranks of the French aristocracy, the noblesse dʼepée. The Jarentes traced their lineage to the eleventh century and ancestors who had fought in the Crusades. Like many other ancient families of the sword, their nobility had outlived their money, and Suzanne made no secret of her disappointment at marrying down. The final nail in the marital coffin, however, came when the coupleʼs first and only surviving child was born ten months after the nuptials with grossly malformed hands. Now speculatively diagnosed as Cenani Lenz Syndactylism, a recessive genetic condition where the fingers are fused, Alexandre-Balthazar-Laurentʼs right hand reputedly looked like a pincer, two thick digits joined by webbing, while his left hand resembled a claw. Suzanne responded to the childʼs grotesque appearance by burying herself with high status lovers, while the cuckolded Laurent footed the bills. " Along with recessive genes, the La Reynières shared the shame that the infantʼs appearance brought to their bloodlines. A story was spread that the infant was sickly and unlikely to survive; he was secretly baptized in Parisʼs Church of St. Eustache not in front of the aristocrats who had been selected as godparents before his birth, but before an illiterate carpenter and a tailorʼs widow. Laurent also dropped the ennobling ʻdeʼ from Grimodʼs birth certificate, which made him a bastard under French law. Laurent could not have anticipated that this deliberate omission would help save his sonʼs life during the Reign of Terror. After Grimodʼs only brother died in infancy, Suzanne (who wore a locket containing the dead childʼs hair all of her life) and Laurent circulated a rumor that Grimod had fallen into a pigpen, where he was attacked by vicious beasts who chewed off his hands. Grimod retaliated by flaunting the pig as his leitmotif. " " Grimodʼs life improved in 1775, when he was fitted with prosthetic hands ingeniously designed by Swiss clockmaker Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz. Constructed from leather, cork, parchment, and papier-mâché on a jointed steel frame, Grimod could pen a tight but legible script and, it seems, perform many of the duties of host at table, although it is unclear whether he could adeptly carve, a social necessity for hosting elite French dinners in the late eighteenth century. Certainly he was self-conscious, always wearing white gloves to hide the unnatural looking leather, but he was also irrepressible: by the early 1780s, Grimod was a bon vivant, joining dining and literary clubs, frequenting theaters, and palling around with actors. His louche lifestyle and republican politics infuriated his parents, as did his refusal to conform to social expectations by surrendering his law practice for the higher status position of magistrate. Grimod snarkily justified his decision, claiming that, ʻas a judge, I could find myself in the position of having to hang my father, while as an advocate, I would always be able to defend him.ʼ * " Grimodʼs complicated relationships with his family, his society, and the gastronomic arts found voice in the funeral supper, where he orchestrated an evening that insulted his family, questioned social hierarchies and reminded all that death was the great equalizer. Gossip bubbled as soon as the invitations issued: somber funeral announcements, illustrated with a catafalque and carrying the unsettling pledge to the guests that, ʻevery effort will be made to receive you according to your qualities, and we flatter ourselves that you will be fully satisfied.ʼ Upon reaching the hôtel, two servants in armor examined the invitations and demanded of the guests whether they were visiting ʻMonsieur de La Reynière, the Peopleʼs Bloodsucker, or his son, the Defender of the Widow and the Orphan?ʼ A man in a judgeʼs wig scrutinized the guests and made ominous notes in a ledger. Supper was held in a hall draped with black bunting. A catafalque took the place of a sûrtout de table, while youths perfumed the air with censers. " Few other details can be reconstructed with confidence. Supper opened with a course of dishes made entirely of pork; Grimod discussed the meatsʼ quality and boasted that they were supplied by a butcher-cousin on his fatherʼs side, encouraging the assemblage to patronize his relation. The next course featured foods cooked in oil, and again Grimod praised a certain grocer, another paternal relation, as the supplier. Curiosity seekers, drawn by reports of the morbid invitation, gathered outside the hôtel and, in the middle of the night, were admitted to observe the festivities behind the balustrade surrounding the dining room, Grimod bluntly mocking tradition at Versailles. Finally one of the guests explosively accused Grimod of madness, to which Grimod responded by ordering that the doors be locked. His hostage-guests were released in the raw dawn, and the funeral supper entered the realm of legend. " With tongues wagging around the funeral supper, friends and literati who had not been included in the original fête begged for a repeat performance. Grimod gave a second version for guests including the polymath Louis-Sébastien Mercier, but rather than brag of foods supplied by humble cousins, this time Grimod explored the possibilities presented by color at the table: the meal started with tortoise soup and progressed through a succession of black foods: caviar, olives, game in a sauce “the color of licorice and boot black,” truffles, chocolate, plums, blackberries, and raisins.† Grimod continued to host controversial entertainments until 1786, when he went too far: Grimod dressed a live pig in his fatherʼs clothes and seated the porcine amphitryon at the head of the table. Grimod was arrested pursuant to the infamous lettres de cachet that permitted indeterminant incarceration of troublemakers at the Kingʼs pleasure and was confined to an abbey near the city of Nancy. There he dined well, if less colorfully, with the monks, and without an audience for his subversive games, Grimod began to study the arts of the table, rather than the table as art. " Once the Revolution hit, Grimod enjoyed a cool peace with his parents, provided that he stayed away from Paris. He traveled through Lorraine, Alsace, Provence, Languedoc, and Switzerland, learning about ingredients and absorbing local cooking styles. He sojourned in Lyons and Béziers, continuing his gastronomic education at the tables of other displaced aristocrats while Paris convulsed. He even attempted a business with his father, traveling as a buyer of exotica, especially foods, from the south of France for sale in Paris. The venture was unsuccessful, but would prove a useful credential in surviving the Revolution. " Grimod returned to an indelibly changed Paris in 1794, shortly after his fatherʼs death. The La Reynière finances were in shambles when the death of his father revealed many hidden obligations. The Terror had was at its bloody height, and Grimodʼs politics, already shifting rightward while in Béziers, as reports of the guillotine, seizures of property, and the suppression of the Church filtered in, became decidedly anti-republican as he saw aristocrats ousted from their opulent homes and worse. The wily Grimod used his earlier misfortunes to save his life and lifestyle: he produced his misleading birth certificate and the passport issued in Béziers listing him as a traveling salesman to prove that he was a poor, and therefore politically pure and deserving, bastard relation of the dead tax collector. He was allowed to stay in the Hôtel Grimod de la Reynière with Suzanne and a mistress (later his wife), even receiving a small allowance from the State for its maintenance. To make ends meet, Suzanne and Grimod sold furniture and artwork from the hôtel and took in boarders, who paid handsomely for the cachet of residing at the ancien régimeʼs most prestigious townhouse. " For the first time in his life, Grimod needed to work. He returned to theatrical reviewing and other writing, but his life was comparatively restrained for much of the 1790s, even occupied with tasks such as making his own bread to avoid the execrable black loaves found in the markets. He was, however, far too dynamic to retreat from Parisian society, and though he could no longer entertain on his former scale, he made the rounds of theater, dining clubs, and restaurants to the extent his purse allowed. He was dismayed, if hypocritically, by the new materialism that he saw permeating French society: suddenly the theaters and restaurants were filled with nouveaux riches bourgeois and proletarians who, in Grimodʼs estimation, understood little of literature or the art of fine dining. Over dinner with his publisher, Maradan, Grimod rued this sad turn and suggested, if cynically, that what the public really needed was a reliable guide to the gastronomic arts, if only to help them spend their money wisely while maintaining the standards of haute cuisine previously known only to the ever-diminishing ranks of the aristocracy. Maradan agreed, and the first issue of Grimodʼs highly influential Almanach des Gourmands was published a mere twenty-five days later. " Eight volumes of the Almanach appeared between 1803 and 1812. The first volume, often thought the best, sold 20,000 copies and provided its readership with an unparalleled introduction to Parisian gastronomy as enjoyed by the elites. Grimod included calendars, Gregorian juxtaposed with Revolutionary, to advise users of all political stripes when delicacies would come into season, reviewed the best purveyors and restaurants, organized by neighborhood, and offered paeans to some of the finest culinary preparations of the ancien régime. He covered topics essential to a full appreciation of the table, whether it be the duties of the host, proper table settings, or a general discourse on an ingredient. His essay on eggs listed some 543 preparations and served many purposes and audiences. For the neophyte who knew not of the difference between oeufs à la périgord and oeufs à la Coigny, the Almanach was a reminder to the newly enfranchised that they needed to acquire cultural capital from members of the old order. For the aristocrats fondly remembering dining under the ancien régime, Grimod helped insure the survival of these elite dishes by introducing them to a wider audience with the tone of a protective uncle. " The most practical benefits of the Almanach, both for Grimod and the reader, were the restaurant and purveyor reviews as developed in the second and succeeding volumes. Grimod convened a group of diners, the Jury Dégustateur, at the hôtel on Tuesday nights for weekly dinners lasting from seven until midnight. He announced that any interested caterer, purveyor, or restaurateur was free to submit dishes for evaluation; a favorable mention in the succeeding Almanach could make a business. Grimod had strict parameters for the jury, issuing written invitations for the sessions that were more in the nature of mandatory summonses. If a juror missed a session without good excuse, he would be barred from further participation, and few jurors ignored the summonses. The deliberations of the jury were secret, but if the juryʼs verdict was negative, Grimod presented the critique to the supplier with an opportunity for resubmission and reevaluation, thereby developing a reputation for fair and reliable reviews. Soon Grimod and his jury were deluged with all sorts of delicacies. " In a departure from French custom, Grimod banished servants from the dining room, ostensibly to allow uncensored discussion of the foods. More significantly, however, Grimod anticipated the nineteenth century revolution in the manner in which fine French meals were served. At the turn of the nineteenth century, formal dinners were served à la française, grand assemblages of multi-dish courses in which diners sampled several dishes in no particular order during each course. Diners carved meats and ladled sauces as companions requested portions, with servants buzzing about the table to help pass dishes as required. Grimod insisted on more control, serving dishes one at a time and reserving upcoming dishes on a sideboard. The stated purpose of Grimodʼs innovation was twofold: the diners would focus all their attention on the one dish at hand, and the dish could be served more quickly and as perfectly hot or cold as required, allowing for uncompromising judgments. Thus meats were carved before being delivered to the jury room by a dumbwaiter, and Grimod had a horn through which he could communicate with servants when needed. Whether Grimod advocated this innovation to relieve himself from the awkwardness of publicly carving is uncertain, given Grimodʼs tribute to the value of elegantly carving in his 1808 Manuel des Amphitryons. Nonetheless, his is the first documented use in Paris of this form of meal service, would become known as service à la russe when subsequent authors attributed its introduction to Prince Kourakine, the Czarʼs ambassador to Paris in 1814. The Jury Dégustateur, which disbanded in the summer of 1812, was the vanguard of dining. " Perhaps Grimodʼs most lasting influence to our gastronomic dialogue stems from the audacious name he gave the Almanach, that of the Gourmands. With this stroke of the pen, Grimod helped launch modern attitudes towards the pleasures of the table. To modern ears, gourmand suggests a sensual appreciation of food, perhaps a trifle overindulgent, but stopping short of vulgar excess. Grimodʼs audience would not have so understood the term and would have considered gourmand a synonym for gluton, glutton. France in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was still gripped by the Catholic Churchʼs condemnation of gluttony as a deadly sin, so much so that the French language as yet had no word for one who was knowledgeable about cuisine and enjoyed it enthusiastically. The delicate-sounding term gourmet was not associated with food; it applied only to those knowledgeable about, and dealers in, the wine trade. Gastronome would not be coined until the late nineteenth century. The only complimentary term for one knowledgeable about cuisine was friand, and to be a friand meant to partake of comestibles lightly, in small pieces, delicately, avoiding any suggestion of overindulgence or gluttony. Indeed, in every edition through the eighth, issued in 1932, of the authoritative Dictionnaire de lʼacadémie française, the guardians of the language contrasted the gourmand with the friand: “il nʼest pas gourmand, mais il est friand.” A gourmand ate avidly and to excess, while the friand ate discerningly with restraint. For the French lexicographers, there was no middle ground, no term for the knowledgeable diner who tucked into his tournedos with gusto. Anything beyond delicacy was reviled. " Grimod took issue with this view, arguing in the third volume that the gourmand ʻpossessed an enlightened sense of taste . . . developed through extensive experience. All his senses must work in constant concert with that of taste, for he must contemplate his food before it even nears his lips.ʼ The gourmand would never behave as a glutton, eating ʻwith such voracity that each bit of food seems to chase the next . . .ʼ. Later he argued that while the gourmand was a voluptuary at the table, he or she was also reflective and thoughtful. Anticipating by more than 150 years the burgeoning area of academic food studies, Grimod observed that the true gourmand was always aware that the gastronomic art encompassed, ʻall questions of moral philosophy, all societal considerations as well . . . [which art] only seems superficial to those of common minds, who see in cooking only pots, and in dishes served only a dinner.ʼ " " Volume eight, published in 1812, was the Almanachʼs last issue. His farewell contained an essay ʻOn the Progress of Culinary Art in the Nineteenth Century,ʼ in which Grimod begged not to be ʻaccused of ridiculous pride,ʼ but argued (quite rightly) that the Almanach had encouraged ʻpeople to study, and to deepen their knowledge of this great Art of dining.ʼ Why he stopped this successful and lucrative venture is unknown, although he complained that the rigors of being Parisʼs official palate were exhausting and tedious. Other competing reviewers had emerged, so that the work of Grimod and his Jury Dégustateur was no longer unique. Within a generation Grimodʼs gastronomic writings would be eclipsed by Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarinʼs Physiologie du goût, a work that borrows shamelessly from Grimod, especially with its famous culinary aphorisms that are elegant paraphrases of passages found in Grimod. Physiologie du goût has remained in print ever since its publication in 1825, while Grimod and his work languishes outside of a small audience. " Grimodʼs sense of theater would not allow him to retire discreetly. After the final issue of the Almanach was published, he secluded himself in the Hôtel Grimod de La Reynière, put out a rumor that he was ailing, and a month later had his wife announce his death. When the prominent figures of the Parisian gastronomic and theatrical scene assembled at the hôtel for the funeral meal, Grimod reprised the February 1783 funeral supper, complete with a coffin in the dining room. To the shock of his guests, Grimod arose from the dead during the meal. Thereafter he lived on a small country estate, where he would never again write about food. Cathy K. Kaufman *Unless otherwise noted, all quotations concerning the family relations and funeral supper are from Giles MacDonogh, A Palate in Revolution: Grimod de la Reynière and the Almanach des Gourmands, Robin Clark, 1987. Quotations from the Almanach des Gourmands are taken from Gusto: Essential Writings in Nineteenth-Century Gastronomy, English translations by Michael Garval, edited by Denise Gigante, Taylor and Francis, 2005. †As described in Allen S. Weiss, Feast and Folly: Cuisine, Intoxication and the Poetics of the Sublime, SUNY, 2002. (My translation).