Rethinking “Famine bread” in the late 18th century France and during the French Revolution

James Gillray, Un Petit souper à la parisienne, 1793

Richard C. Delerins, Ph.D. Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris

A family of Sans Culottes refreshing after the fatigues of the day

“My definition of Man is, ‘a Cooking Animal’. The beasts have memory, judgment, and all of the faculties and passions of our minds, in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook. “

James Boswell, Journal of a tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, 1773

Le Sueur Freres, La Disette du pain,

(Bread Scarcity ) Musée Carnavalet,1795

Chardin, La Pourvoyeuse, 1739,

“Miches de Pain” (Loaf of Bread) - Musée du Louvre

“Daily Bread”

Bread and … Bread

Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin, La Brioche, 1763

“White bread” (wheaten bread)

and “Soft bread” was a luxury

Soft bread was made from the

finest flour with brewer’s yeast

and milk called “Queen’s bread”

or “Brioche”

In Paris, the Regulation of July

1372 defines three types of

bread :

- “Chailli” bread

- Bourgeois bread

- “Brode” bread (or brown bread)

Barley bread

Chestnut bread

Rye bread

Grains / Cereals

“Bread Fears” Ergot poisoning – Darnel poisoning (Ivraie)

Lolium temulentum

Pieter Bruegel, The Beggers, 1568.

Claviceps purpurea (fungus)

grows on the ears of rye and related cereals plants.

Ergotism (alcaloid,hallucinations, seizures, LSD)

Darnel usually grows in the same production zones

as wheat and is considered a weed.

Bread with darnel

In humans, darnel poisoning is characterized by the

sensation of intoxication, ataxia, giddiness, apathy,

nausea, vomiting

Ivraie ------ Ebriété – Inebriation / Drunkenness

Ivraie ------ Zizanie (social disorder/ discord)

The extraction of the stone of Madness,

Hieronymus Bosch, The Prado Museum,

Madrid (ca. 1495)

“Grain was France’s whole life” According to Legrand d’Aussy: A working man

or a peasant in France ate two or three pounds

of bread a day (1782).

Grain was the “manna of the poor” and its price

is the most sensitive general index of the food

market.

The price of grain depends on stocks, transport,

bad weather, harvests … and the King of France

Bread distribution during 1709

famine in Paris

“Daily Bread” – “Famine bread” – French Monarchy

From Charles Le Brun: Grande Galerie, Versailles Le

Soulagement du peuple pendant la famine de 1662

The Relief of the People during the famine of 1662

La Piété royale (Royal Piety)

The King is of France is the father of the

people

The Monarchy had been committed to a

policy of fostering the provisioning of the grain

markets as a guarantee of social order. To

make sure that grain was supplied regularly,

in sufficient amounts of adequate quality and

at a price accessible to the mass of buyers,

the grain trade was subject to strict controls

and regulations – a “Police des grains” (Police

of provisioning) was in charge of law

enforcement.

Abundance – Relief of the people

« Pacte de subsistance » - Social contract

Market - “Free trade”

Lettres au contrôleur général sur le commerce de

grains, 1770

Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth

(Réflexions sur la formation et la distribution des

richesses), 1766

In 1763-1764, the Royal government renounced the

stewardship over subsistence that it had exercised –

from time immemorial.

“ When the people is starving it’s not providence it’s

bad administration”

The “Flour War” followed Turgot’s measures in

support of the free movement of grain.

“When they have pillaged the markets and the bakers’

shop” wrote a contemporary, “they can pillage our

houses and slit our throats”

Anne-Robert Jacques

Turgot (1727-1781)

Intendant of Limoges

Minister of the Navy

Comptroller General of

the Finances

Physiocrat and fervent

advocate for economic

liberalism

Daumier – Allegory of the

French Republic – (charity)

feeding her children

Republicains,

decapitate this Jean-foutre LouisXVI

and this prostitute Marie Antoinette…

if you want Bread

French Liberty / British Slavery

“The Mexican Treasure”

Antoine Augustin Parmentier, by François

Dumont, 1812. Musée national du Château de

Versailles et du Trianon.

Wheat – Maize (Corn) – Potato

Parmentier’s experiments

in Paris on the chemical

properties of potatoes

(“Examen chymique de la

pomme de terre”, 1773)

were conducted to

understand how to make

“potato bread” without flour.

Cooking for the Poor

Chestnut Polenta (Corsica)

In 1772, Varenne de Béost published

“La Cuisine des pauvres” (Cooking for

the poor), the first French cookbook

dedicated entirely to potatoes; de Béost

also designed a machine to make a

“potato dough”.

Pommes de terre A l’économe

« Quand les Pommes de terre seront cuites &

pelées, écrasez-les bien avec une cueillere en bois,

faites un hachis de toutes sortes de viandes, bouillie

ou rôtie, mettez-y un peu de beurre, sel, poivre,

persil, ciboule, échalotes hachés, un ou deux œufs ;

mettez vos Pommes de terre en aussi grande

quantité que vous avez de viande hachée, mêlez le

tout ensemble, formez des boulettes de moyenne

grosseur, trempez-les dans un peu de blanc d’œufs

que vous réserverez de ceux que aurez mis dedans,

farinez-les & les faites frire : servez-les garnies de

persil ou avec une sauce.»

Mme Mérigot, La Cuisinière Républicaine, An III,

p. 30-31.

The “Breadfruit Utopia”

In the 1770-80s the French Government

funded naval expeditions (Dombey, 1775;

Thouin, Lahaye, 1791) to South America

and the Pacific to search and collect new

nutritious exotic plants (for bread making)

and to observe how native Americans

prepare, store and cook their staple

foods.

Chuño, a form of

dehydrated Andean

potato

John Ellis, A Description of the Mangostan

and the Bread-Fruit, London,1775

“La Mouture Economique”

Medieval Water Mill

“Analytic decomposition” –

Flour – Bran

“Mouture Econonomique”

Beguillet, Manuel du meunier et du charpentier de moulins,

ou Abrégé classique du traité de la mouture par économie, 1775.

A baker of Paris, M. Malisset invented a new

grinding technique called “mouture économique”

(Beguillet, “Discours sur la mouture economique”,

1775) which greatly increased the quality and the

variety of flours extracted from grains

Comparison of the two grinding method

- White bread (Pain blanc)

- “Bourgeois bread” (Pain bis blanc)

- “Pain Bis”

“bread is flavorful, nutritious and with better taste”

The National School of Bakery was founded

in 1780 by Parmentier and Cadet de Vaux

Bakers became

“composers of flours”

and bread making

became an art and a

science

“The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star”.

Brillat-Savarin, Physiology of Taste, 1832

Baguette 250 gr.