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The 18th-Century Stovetop

An overview of a forgotten cooking tool: the potager

Before gas and induction, how did people manage to cook multiple dishes at once? In 18th-century kitchens, a piece of equipment with a surprising name was used to heat sauces, stews, and jams. Let’s head to Versailles and consult the illustrations in the Encyclopédie to find out.

Close-up view of the reconstructed potager, featuring six fire pits and their grates, Hameau de la Reine, Palace of Versailles.

Many 18th-century recipes, including those for chocolate or coffee creams, specify that the mixture should be cooked in a double boiler. So you need a flame. All right. A flame… which means a fire…

But wait, where was this fire? In the middle of a room? In the fireplace? Or was it a campfire?

No! On the potager, or a stove, the ancestor of our modern stovetops. In modern French, a potager is a vegetable garden, which renders this all the more confusing.

Continue reading — The 18th-Century Stovetop

What were chocolate creams served in during the 18th century?

A brief look at this piece of tableware that has disappeared from modern use

Gravure des petits pots de crème au café

Engraving of small jars of coffee cream in Jules Gouffé’s book, Le Livre de pâtisserie, 1873

Chocolate creams appear twenty-one times in the Choisy menus from 1744 to 1746, making them the most common sweet dessert on those menus. The recipes were also included in the cookbooks of the time.

I had read, though I couldn’t find the source, that the creams were cooked and served in small pots.

The first clue I found was Jean-Michel Garric’s academic text on cream and juice pots. This confirmed to me that these small pots existed, were used in meals at Choisy in the 18th century (white cream in small pots among the intermediate desserts), and what they looked like in the 19th century.

Continue reading — What were chocolate creams served in during the 18th century?

How much did an egg weigh in the 18th century?

Painting of a girl in a red holding a wicker basket of a ton of eggs. A rooster is in the right corner.

Girl with a basket of eggs, first half of the 16th century, Beuckelaer Joachim, Musée de Varsovie

1 ounce 6 gros, or 53 g! Just like us! According to Buffon.

And ranging from 1 ounce 6 gros to 2 ounces 2 gros. That is, from about 53.5 g to nearly 69 g according to the Cours complet d’agriculture, in the article ŒUFS by Abbé Rozier in 1805 (slightly after the 18th century).

The variation in egg weight noted by Rozier is due to the fact that egg size varies depending on the hen’s age.

In short, there’s no need to stress about egg weight. It was the same back then.

Marie Antoinette’s Brioche?

An investigation into an 18th-century recipe that eludes me

Recreating an 18th-century brioche when the texts, measurements, techniques, and images never provide a complete answer.

Nature morte avec brioche, fruits et légumes, 1775, Anne Vallayer-Coster, available at the Louvre.

“Let them eat brioche!”

Even though this phrase is wrongly attributed to Marie Antoinette and is better known among our Anglo-Saxon neighbors as “Let them eat cake, ” it reflects just how much of a star brioche was at the time. I’m sure everyone was fighting over it. Oh! That suddenly makes me want to eat some. With jam or as French toast? Hard to choose.

But what did this brioche actually look like?

Continue reading — Marie Antoinette’s Brioche?