Subject: Re: Napoleon and Food

From: [email-masked] (Jane Beckman)
Date: 18 Oct 94 01:31:45 GMT

Let's not forget that Napoleon is why we have canned foods.
He wanted someone to develop a way to preserve food so that
his troops in the field could use it.  The result was canned
foods (originally bottled).
--
  Jilara the Exile   [[email-masked]]
That's how freedom will end: not with a bang, but with a rustle of file
folders.  If you love any of your rights, defend all of them!
-Joe Chew, on the net

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From: [email-masked] (BILL HILBRICH, ST. CLOUD, MN)
Date: 17 Oct 1994 14:48:40 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (James Bagby) writes:
>	If anyone knows anything about Napoleon and how he has influenced
>the culinary world of today, I would really appreciate your insite.  A
>student of mine is having real trouble trying to find info. on Napoleon and
>food.  Thanks...
>
>	Jim Bagby, Librarian
>        Johnson & Wales University (Norfolk Campus)

James Burke had a TV series called Connections and with Luck you will
find a book by the same name that was a companion to the PBS series.

In one of his shows he talked about Napoleon offering Government grants for
inventions. One of the grants went to a French Bottle Washer who invented the
process on Canning food. I guess the first was Peas in old wine bottles.

Mr. Burke also mentions a few french dishes that came from pragmatic cooks
that had to feed Napoleon on the road from local foods. Apparently some of it
was not very tasty, and thus Canning food that could be brought from home was
a big hit.

Bill

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From: [email-masked] (Steve E. Mercer)
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 1994 18:12:30 GMT

>student of mine is having real trouble trying to find info. on Napoleon and

After the French Revolution, hunderds of thousands of recruits were conscripted
to form six huge standing armies along the France's frontiers.  The giant armies
were meant to make up in numbers what they lack in experience and discipline.
Provisioning these armies was a problem, because they had to be fed whether or
not they were in an area where food was plentiful, and because the general civil
structures that assured adequate food supplies had broken down.  Napoleon 
inherited these problems when he took command in 1796, and tried to take Italy 
>from  the Austrians.

To obtain food, the armies were split up into small foraging groups which spread
out and could feed themselves in areas where the entire army could not have been
accomodated.  The groups were supposed to be highly mobile, so they could gather 
together quickly when a battle was imminent.  

At the battle of Marengo on 14 June 1800, this strategy was nearly fatal.
The Austrian army, led by General Baron Melas, attacked while most of Napoleon's
army was scattered around the countryside looking for food.  Only the timely
arrival of the nearest foraging column led by General Louis Desaix prevented the 
Austrians from defeating the French.

The night after the batle Napoleon's chef prepared him a dish consisting of
a sauce made of oil and water, a chicken, eggs cooked in the sauce with some 
garlic and tomatoes, and six crayfish, steamed over the chicken as it cooked
in brandy.  The dish, known as Chicken Marengo, reflected Napoleon's major
provisioning problem because, like the food his armies were eating, it was all
there was at the time.

The problem of provisioning the military was one of many factors that caused 
Napoleon to offer prizes of up to 100,000 francs for ideas.
One of the first people to win a prize was Nicholas Appert, who spent his
youth working in wine cellars.  Appert's idea was to preserve food in champagne 
bottles.  Food was placed in the bottles, which were then sealed with corks
held on with wire cages.  The bottles full of food were placed in boiling water
for varying lengths of time.  The heat sterilized the food.  These bottled foods 
were first used by Napoleon's navy, which needed them because most of their 
foreign supply ports were blocaded.  

Preserving food in bottles eventually led to the preserving food in cans, and
led eventually also to freezing food for preservation.

I also vaguely remember that the first street cafe' ever to exist
was liscensed in France in Napoleon's time (by his permission?).

So from Napoleon we get Chicken Marengo, canned food, and street cafe's
as contributions to the culinary world of today.
---
Steve Mercer
[email-masked]

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From: Robert And Cynthia Chiovoloni <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 94 22:10:33 -0500

>provisioning problem because, like the food his armies were eating, it was all
 
The chef, one Dunand, is supposed ti have
FRIED  the eggs in olive oil.  I have seen the dish prepared that way, myself,
back in the days when such dishes were still the mainstay of fine dining
restaurants. The ingrediants of the dish were, the legend goes, dictated by the
fact that they
t the baggage train had become seperated from the general's entourage.  Thus
Dunand included the crawfish to flesh out the otherwise meager portion.  When
he was again asked to produce the same creation, he substitut
ed mushrooms for the crayfish and wine for the water.  Napoleon would have none
of it.  He insisted that his
luck would be ruined if the copy were not exact.

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From: [email-masked] (Casey)
Date: 24 Oct 1994 06:16:32 GMT

I'm sure your student could find a bunch of info on Nicholas
Appert (he is in my encyclopedia even).  At the University of
California - Davis, they even have an "Appert Room" in his honor (they do 
a lot of food science there).  Someone on here already wrote
a lot about him, so I won't go over it again.

By the way, my boyfriend is an Appert, and is a descendent of
Nicholas.  Unfortunately none of those 100,000 francs seem to have
made it our way :(.

Casey Forrest
[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Robert G Sieber)
Date: 24 Oct 1994 10:45:37 -0700

> student of mine is having real trouble trying to find info. on Napoleon and

The Rombauer-Beckers (_Joy_of_Cooking_), I believe, credit Napoleon's 
chef w/ creating Pommes Souffles (French fries which puff themselves as 
they cook -- if done just so).  One of the accidents which led to the 
discovery was N's tardy arrival at the camp where his dinner was being 
prepared.

--
Robert G Sieber (Bob)		"I got a mind like
[email-masked]	 a magnetic sieve!"
Long Beach, California