Free Kate Berridge by Madame Tussaud: A Life in Wax Page A

Whereas they were probably stoking themselves up for a whole day with their coffee, the leisured classes took a more ceremonial approach and even dedicated verse to the various drinks–‘la fève de Mokka, la feuille de Canton’. In private homes it became fashionable to employ young black houseboys to pour and hand round porcelain cups of coffee and tea–a ceremony contrived to create contrast with, and highlight, the milk-and-rose-petal pallor of the hostess’s own complexion. This affectation was in marked contrast to the buzz of the public coffee house, which was emerging as a popular venue to discuss current affairs.
    In her memoirs Marie makes mention of her mother’s culinary skills, which take on a new significance when the food supply at this time is considered. Consumption of beef was the privilege of the nobility and clergy, and everyone else had to make do with cow meat.As with clothes, appearances were deceptive, and the discovery of teeth in a steak was a common occurrence given that fragments of jawbone were commonly passed off as ‘cutlets’. The poor food of Paris was ammunition for Anglo-French rivalry, and after a tour of Paris in 1775 Dr Johnson joked that the French meat was so bad it would be sent to jail in England. An article in the Oxford Magazine described it as ‘so near to carrion that our butchers would throw it in the Thames; hence a variety of sauces and ragouts and every culinary trick is employed to hide what would otherwise be disgusting to the appetite.’
    A good housekeeper was a prized asset, given that shopping and cooking required more initiative than one might think. Food was not stored but was bought daily, and the Parisian housewife needed her wits about her. Bad meat needed good seasoning, but it was common practice for grocers to make pepper go further by adding dog dung, ‘which being blackened and powdered blends perfectly, so that innocent Parisians savour their food not with the spices of Malacca but a very different product’. Savvy shoppers insisted on having their pepper freshly ground in front of them.
    While the less well-off tried to avoid eating dog excrement, the wealthy were developing a taste for the affected non-consumption of solid food–restaurants originated in response to the fad for restorative and extravagantly priced soups. The word ‘restaurant’ was coined from the ‘restorative’ bouillon that was their speciality, and on which the first celebrity chefs staked their reputations. Picky eating was a pernicious fashion, and as one social commentator noted at a new restaurant in the Palais-Royal, ‘Even if he is not sick, a pretentious little fop often orders consommé because it gives him the aura of ill health.’ The polarity of classes in pre-Revolutionary Paris is perhaps most clearly expressed by the perpetual struggle of ordinary people to keep body and soul together coexisting with the orthodox anorexia that was so fashionable among the well-to-do, and which did not impress Mercier: ‘At grand dinners and rich men’s tables it is not rare to see women drinking only water and leaving twenty dishes untouched, yawning and complaining of their digestions and men following suit by disdaining wine in affectation of the fashion.’
    Another hazard of buying everyday provisions was that the grocer doubled as the druggist and used one set of scales for everything.Arsenic and cinnamon might be weighed one after the other, and the upshot of misinterpreting chemical characters on boxes was frequently a quiet burial. The adulteration of food led to the beginning of branding. In order to establish consumer confidence in the reliability of the product, and thereby win customer loyalty, sellers realised the advantages of the association of a specific name with a product. This set in train the dynamics of advertising and it was the mechanics of publicity that Marie witnessed at this