The epicure's year book for 1869 (second year) / [compiled by Fin-Bec].

Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The epicure's year book for 1869 (second year) / [compiled by Fin-Bec]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and of course Paris, share the honours of producing these delightful pasties with Strasbourg. And now for their origin: the question is so important, that early in last February, the Moniteur published an authori- tative historical treatise on the subject. It had been asserted that foie gras pates were among the epicurean enjoyments of the ancients, and that they were mentioned by Pliny. Their story is a much more modern one. They are of Norman extraction, nor can they boast of very remote descent. According i to the Moniteur, one Clare, who was steward to the Marshal de Cantades, invented the pie of the goose’s liver in 1780, at Strasbourg. When the marshal left, Clare remained behind, serving a new master—the Marshal de Stinville. Clare placed his splendid in- vention daily upon his new master’s table. But De Stinville was a man of dull palate, and ate foie-gras as a hungry clerk eats beef-steak. This was too much for the author of so renowned a chef d'oeuvre. Clare withdrew from the dull man’s service, and opened an establishment in the Rue M^sanges at Strasbourg, which he made the original Strasbourg pie-shop ! ' Here Clare flourished, and became exceedingly rich. Albeit his foie-gras was but an elementary study of the perfect pati which is bought now-a-days in Piccadilly. Clare lived to see a vast improvement made on his invention. In 1792, one Deyer, at Bordeaux, was inspired with the idea of associating the fat liver of the goose with the gastronomic dia- monds of Pdrigord. It is related that, overwhelmed i fe-