CH LUXURY MASTER CLASS Foie Gras
meaning “fat liver”, originated in France. After all, not only is France by far the largest producer of foie gras producing two-thirds of the world’s supply, but the French also consume three-quarters of the world’s production. For the French, foie gras is not just a familiar ingredient, but an intricate part of the historical and cultural heritage of the people. Despite southwestern France’s rich production of foie gras, that region alone cannot keep up with French de- mand for the luxurious meat, and the French import additional foie gras from Israel, Poland, and Hungary.
Most people assume foie gras, the French term
The History of Foie Gras – Luxury Dating Back to the Ancient Egyptians
production date back to the dynastic Egyptian aristocracy over 5,000 years ago. It was they who discovered the deli- cacy of the meat of geese, especially fattened geese. The Tomb of Mereruka in Saqqara shows depictions of ser- vants force-feeding grain to geese in order to fatten them.
F D K F
oie gras traces its history back much further than the formation of France, however. The earliest records of
I
uring the days of the Roman Empire, the Ro- mans, in their attempt to fatten geese as the Egyp- tians did, discovered the luxuriousness of fattened geese livers. This was the beginning of modern foie gras preparation. It was not until the Roman period that foie gras was clearly identified as a distinct food.
nowledge of foie gras seems to have come to the Romans from Greek culture. We know around 400 B.C., the Egyptians gave fattened geese as gifts to King Agesilaus of Sparta. In late second cen- tury B.C., the Roman statesman Cato the Elder wrote about the proper method and result of force-feeding
and the practice later become a staple of Jewish aris- tocrats in Palestine. Jewish people migrated to France and Germany during the Middle Ages and a long trail of literary evidence beginning in eleventh century me- dieval Europe links foie gras to the Jewish people. The knowledge of foie gras production may very likely have been brought to France centuries earlier, how- ever, the delicacy was popularized in the seventeenth century by chefs associated with the French Court.
W
n the year 1788, the governor of Alsace traded a pate de foie gras with King Louis XVI for some real es- tate in Picardy. The Sun King was so enamored with the dish he introduced Strasbourg foie gras through- out Europe. Very few ancient foie gras recipes have survived, but cookbooks with recipes for foie gras ap- pear in Europe, and especially in France, in the 1500’s. The Art of Cooking, the only surviving ancient Roman cookbook dating back to the fourth or fifth century, references two recipes for foie gras. The number of foie gras recipes increased greatly during the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries, with recipes from the great chefs of France such as La Chapelle, Massaliot, Pierre Delune, La Varenne, Careme and Menon. The nineteenth century brought greater culinary sophis- tication and the birth of multiple foie gras enterprises in France, some which are still in business today.
BY LAUREL PINE
Laurel Pine is the President and Founder of Mirepoix USA /
EnjoyFoieGras.com an online resource for premium quality French foods, gourmet gift baskets and gourmet foods including foie gras, white truffles, black truffles, caviar, charcuterie, artisanal cheese, Wagyu and US Kobe beef.
oie gras
DISCOVER THIS FRENCH DELICACY MADE IN CULINARY HEAVEN
grain to geese in his treatise called 'On Farming.’ Jewish slaves often fed and took care of the geese.
hen the western Roman Empire fell, Jewish Ash- kenazi retained the knowledge to make foie gras,
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