"God Rest Ye Merry" this Christmas season



Happy holidays everyone! Like many of you, I’ll be spending what's left of 2017 with friends and family, and of course, getting caught up in all the craziness (shopping, baking, wrapping, tree-trimming, entertaining and on and on) that can come with Christmas.

I’ll leave you with a lively rendition of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “We Three Kings,” performed by the Bare Naked Ladies with Sarah McLachan. 

“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” is one of the oldest English Christmas carols still sung today – it dates at least as far back as the 16th century, and the earliest known publication date of the lyrics is 1760. Regency folks would have certainly sung this song during the Christmas season.

“We Three Kings” is of a more modern vintage; it was written by John Henry Hopkins, Jr., an American clergyman, in 1857 for a Christmas pageant in New York City.

Thank you for reading my blog; I appreciate you stopping here for a while as you meander through all the Internet has to offer. I hope this holiday season brings you much happiness, and that your New Year prospects are bright.  

The Regency Looking Glass will return in January!



Friday Follies: The Battle of New Orleans

Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans


In today's world of instantaneous communication, it's hard to remember that there was a time when news traveled much more slowly than it does now.  

The War of 1812 is a case in point. The signing of Treaty of Ghent may have ended the war in December of 1814, but it took another month before news of that event reached the United States. So in January, American forces, led by Major General Andrew Jackson, engaged the British down in Louisiana at the Battle of New Orleans.

The Battle of New Orleans was actually a series of battles that were fought between December 14, 1814, and January 18, 1815. But the most famous battle was the one that took place on January 8, when the British tried to push through Jackson’s lines of defense and capture New Orleans.

The British were soundly trounced by Jackson and his forces. In fact, this battle was remarkable both for how long it lasted and the lopsided nature of the casualties.

In his official report to Jackson, Adjutant-General Robert Butler said that the battle lasted approximately 25 minutes. During that span of time, 700 British soldiers were killed, 1,400 were wounded and 500 were taken prisoners, adding up to a total loss of 2,600 men on the British side. Meanwhile, seven Americans were killed and six were wounded.

Also, according to that account, after the battle was over about 500 British soldiers who were lying on the battlefield pretending to be dead got up and surrendered.

But another account* puts the British casualties at 291 killed, 1,262 wounded (many severely) and 484 missing. Americans casualties are listed as 13 dead and 39 wounded.

Whichever account is accurate, it's clear that the British took heavy losses while the Americans came through largely unscathed. 

The Battle of New Orleans was a surprising and decisive victory for the Americans. It also was a huge morale boost for the United States, and it launched the political career of Andrew Jackson (nicknamed “Old Hickory” because he was as tough as a hickory stick), who became a U.S. senator for Tennessee in 1823 and the 7th U.S. president in 1829.

Despite losing that battle, the British kept going – first they tried to take Fort Philip on January 9, and when that failed they set their sights on Alabama. In fact, British forces captured Fort Bowyer in Mobile Bay on February 12 and were getting ready to launch an attack on Mobile when news of the Treaty of Ghent finally reached them, and they called the whole thing off.  

The Battle of New Orleans may have taken place after the war had ended, but it was still a significant victory for the Americans. Among other things, it helped convince the British to abide by the Treaty of Ghent.

And in abiding by the Treaty, the British were forced to abandon their dreams of taking New Orleans or any other part of the 827,000 square miles of land Napoleon sold to Jefferson in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase - a transaction that doubled the size of the U.S. The Treaty's "status quo ante bellum" proviso ensured that both Great Britain and the United States had to revert to their pre-war borders - no land-grabbing allowed.   


For a colorful account of the battle, here is Johnny Horton’s recording of "The Battle of New Orleans," a song written by Jimmy Driftwood. Horton's version hit number 1 on Billboard's "Hot 100" chart in 1959 and won a Grammy award in 1960 for Best Country & Western Recording.

The song describes the battle from the perspective of an American soldier, and this clip has lively images that illustrate the lyrics:




I hope you enjoy it!



* p 101, The War of 1812, World History Series, by Don Nardo, Lucent Books, Inc.,, San Diego, CA, 2000

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The Treaty of Ghent : “The Peace of Christmas Eve”

Signing of the Treaty of Ghent


Christmas Eve can mean many things to people – including warm family gatherings, church services or presents opened under a Christmas tree.

But those of us interested in early 19th-century history may want to keep in mind that Christmas Eve, 1814, was the day the Treaty of Ghent was signed, putting an end to second and last time the United States fought the British, in the War of 1812.

The Treaty of Ghent, also known as the Peace of Christmas Eve, was the pact signed in the city of Ghent, Belgium (chosen because Belgium was a neutral country) that officially ended hostilities between the fledgling United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain. (I say “officially” for a reason. Check this Friday’s post for more info on some unofficial military action that took place after the treaty was signed – the Battle of New Orleans.)

Peace talks started in Ghent in August of 1814. Chief negotiator for the Americans was future president John Quincy Adams, and his British counterpart was a man named Baron Gambier. 

Britain may well have sent it’s “B team” to these negotiations; top British diplomats like Foreign Secretary Viscount Castlereagh and later, the Duke of Wellington, went to Austria to attend the Congress of Vienna, which was taking place at the same time. 

So many wars, so many peace pacts to hammer out! 

The Treaty of Ghent was approved by Parliament and signed into law by the Prince Regent right before the end of the year, on December 30, 1814. However, the treaty didn't go into full effect until it was ratified by the U.S. Senate a couple of months later, on February 17, 1815. 

Why the war started

The War of 1812 was actually several years in the making. Tensions between Great Britain and the United States had been simmering ever since the end of the American Revolutionary War. The Treaty of Paris ended that war in 1783, but rather than diminishing American resentment against the British crown, those feelings grew over the following years.

But there were a couple of immediate causes that sparked the War of 1812. One was the Royal Navy blockade, intended to hurt Napoleon and the French economy but which also affected American trade with Europe.

The other was the Royal Navy’s habit of “impressment” – taking American sailors off their ships and forcing them to serve on British warships. 

To counter heavy battle losses with Napoleon's forces, British naval officers supplemented their ranks with these involuntary American conscripts. The Royal Navy reasoned that “once a British citizen always a British citizen” and indeed, some of the American sailors were probably born before the Revolutionary War and the forming of the new nation. The British officers also found deserters from their own ranks aboard American ships, which only encouraged them to keep up the practice. 

A  1780 British caricature of a "press gang"
rounding up involuntary military recruits 

In any event, when Congress declared war in 1812 it wasn’t exactly a unanimous decision – it was the closest vote on any declaration of war in American history (70 to 39 in the House; 19 to 13 in the Senate.)

Strategy

What followed that vote was a truly scattered, wide-ranging war, probably the most disorganized and disaster-prone in U.S. history. It ranged from the provinces of Canada to the Gulf Coast in Louisiana, and from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. Native Americans fought on both sides, helping both the British and the American forces.

The United States did enter the war with a strategy of sorts, no matter how harebrained that strategy looks in retrospect. The idea was to conquer Canada, and then either hold the entire country for ransom, using it as leverage to get concessions from the British or failing that, to keep Canada as a consolation prize.

Understandably, the Canadians weren't too thrilled with this plan. And when the war was over, many Canadians felt that they were the true victors, since they'd successfully prevented an American takeover of their country.


Illustration from The History of England, from the Earliest Periods, Vol. 1


Burning of Washington, D.C.

While peace negotiations were being conducted in Ghent, the British were actively involved in four different invasions in America. The most notorious one was the British attempt to capture Baltimore. Along the way they decided to march on Washington, D.C. and burn the city down – most notably the Capitol, along with other government buildings, including the 3,000-volume Library of Congress and the White House.  

And at the White House, First Lady Dolley Madison and her staff fled the oncoming troops in such a hurry that they didn’t even have time to clear the dinner table, on which a fine meal had been laid out. The British soldiers apparently enjoyed the food and drink before burning down the house. Talk about adding insult to injury!


Dolley Madison circa 1817 


Results of the war

Historians have more or less concluded that there were no conclusive winners in the War of 1812. No territory was gained on either side, and the borders of both the U.S. and Great Britain in North America went back to what they were before the war started.

Some argue that Great Britain actually won. Britain made no concessions on the maritime issues, such as the blockade or impressment, that had sparked the war. It didn't give up any of its North American territories and kept its Canadian colonies and Western forts. The war also put a stop to America's annoying repeated attempts to invade Canada. 

And to top things off, the Royal Navy didn't stop impressing American sailors until after the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815.

The war did have a few benefits for the United States, however. The Treaty of Ghent mandate that the countries involved in the war would return to the status quo antebellum - their pre-war borders - was actually a big win for the U.S., which didn't have to make any territorial concessions to Great Britain as a condition of the peace. 

In this way, the Treaty of Ghent actually recognized U.S. sovereignty, giving the new country the respect from Great Britain that had been lacking. For this reason, the War of 1812 is sometimes described as "the second War of Independence."  

Casualties of war

Casualties are tough to figure precisely. Records weren't well kept back then, but with known data it's estimated that the United States lost about 2,260 men in battle.

That number jumps to almost 20,000 if you count the additional American lives lost due to injuries, sickness, and accidents caused by the war. The British probably lost about 10,000 combatants, while the American Indian tribes most likely lost about 7,500. 

In terms of loss of life, the Native Americans on both sides of the conflict were hit the hardest, losing the greatest number of people in proportion to their populations. 

Effects of the war

The war may have been short, but it did have a lasting impact on American culture. We gained a national anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner, which started out as a poem written by Francis Scott Key after he witnessed the British shelling of Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore in September of 1814.

In that battle, the British sailed a fleet of 19 ships into Baltimore Harbor, defended by Fort McHenry, and sent about 5,000 soldiers overland to take the city. After a couple of days of fierce fighting and heavy shelling, the Americans won and the U.S. flag still flew over the fort.  

Ironically, the American national anthem based on Key’s poem was set to the tune of a popular British song, written by Englishman John Stafford Smith. It’s Smith that Americans can thank for how difficult this song is to sing, as we try to warble through its daunting range of just over an octave and a half.

And finally, two expressions from the War of 1812 permanently entered the American lexicon: “war hawks” (referring to the Congressmen who were pro-war) and a catchphrase that’s still heard today: “Don’t give up the ship.”

The U.S.S. Chesapeake, the ship the mortally wounded
Capt. James Lawrence  implored his men not to give up.
The ship was captured by the British in June 1813.



Peace memorials


Following the Treaty of Ghent, the United States has enjoyed an enduring peace with its northern neighbor, Canada. In the early 20th century, three memorials celebrating this peace were built:

  • The Fountain of Time (1920) in Chicago, Illinois
  • The Peace Arch (1921) straddling the border communities of Blaine, Washington and Surrey, British Columbia
  • The Peace Bridge (1927) that connects Fort Erie in Ontario to Buffalo, New York, across the Niagara River at the east end of Lake Erie



So, this holiday season, think of the Peace of Christmas Eve on December 24, 1814 – and perhaps you’ll be inspired to sing the Star-Spangled Banner along with your Christmas carols.

Here’s an audio sample of that anthem to inspire you, performed by the U.S. Army 1st Armored Division.  

And to accompany the music, here’s a photo of the actual flag that flew over Fort McHenry in 1814. If you look closely you can see the beating it took from the bombardment. This photo was taken in 1873 and proudly displayed in 1914 during the National Star-Spangled Banner Centennial in Baltimore, Maryland.  




Photos and images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Sources for this post include:
  • 187 Things You Should Know About the War of 1812, by Donald R. Hickey, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, Maryland, 2012 
  • World History Series: The War of 1812,  by Don Nardo, Lucent Books, Inc., San Diego, California, 2000 
  • The Prince of Pleasure and His Regency, by J.B. Priestley, Harper and Row Publishers, New York, 1969



Friday Follies: Celebrating Julia Child and scrumptious Sachertorte


A Sachertorte from the Hotel Sacher in Vienna,
by David Monniaux, 2005, CC-BY-SA 2.0 


Did you miss National Sachertorte Day? It was December 5. If so, don’t worry – you can celebrate it anytime just by eating one of the most delicious and popular cakes in the world.

Franz Sacher was an Austrian chef who created his namesake confection almost by accident in 1832 for his employer, Prince Wenzel von Metternich. A trainee in the palace kitchen, Sacher had to step up and make a dessert for an important banquet when the regular cook suddenly became ill. I think most of us have enjoyed some version of this treat, but the original recipe is a chocolate sponge cake, layered with apricot jam and covered with dark chocolate icing.

If you’re still searching for a Christmas dessert, this could be it (and you can find a recipe here). 

Sacher was only a 16-year-old kitchen apprentice when he created his famous dessert. But he went on to become a master pastry chef, like the French chef and confectioner Antonin Carême, profiled in this post

And speaking of French chefs, I just have to mention Julia Child, the woman whose mission, as she described it, was to make French cuisine accessible to the average American home cook, who had to get by without any professional help in the kitchen.  


Julia in her Cambridge kitchen in 1978
Photo by Lynn Gilbert, CC BY-SA 4.0

Julia’s first television show, The French Chef, was a hit on PBS from 1963 to 1973. It followed on the heels of her immensely popular debut book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) written with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle.

How that book was written, not to mention how easy (or not) it is to follow Julia's painstakingly detailed recipes, is addressed in the 2009 movie Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep as the inimitable Child and Amy Adams as her devoted fan. 

Also, if you ever make it to Washington D.C., you can visit the National Museum of American History and see a faithful recreation of Julia Child’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, kitchen.

What made The French Chef so endearing to viewers was that it was filmed live, with no time for editing. That means all of Julia’s accidental blunders, like dropping food on the floor or jamming a spatula into whirring electric beaters while mixing batter, are on full display as she explains her recipes with unfailing good humor. 

And the mistakes Julia makes in her kitchen are similar to the mistakes all cooks make but seldom admit. That’s what makes her so relatable.

As she once said: “If you’re alone in the kitchen, who’s going to see?” I don’t know about you, but those are words I live by.

I’ll end this edition of Friday Follies with Julia’s signature send-off:


Bon Appétit!

Antonin Carême: Top Chef of the Regency

 
"The King of Chefs and the Chef of Kings"


You might think celebrity chefs are a modern phenomenon, products of reality TV shows like Top Chef, Cutthroat Kitchen or Cake Boss. But the development of today’s publicity-savvy culinary stars can be traced all the way back to the Regency era, to a self-made man who started out as a homeless street urchin and became an international culinary star – Antonin Carême.

Carême’s backstory is as sensational as anything a reality show writer could invent. One of 15 children, Carême was christened Marie-Antoine at his birth in 1784, in honor of the doomed Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. 

As an adult, he preferred the more classic-sounding “Antonin” to his birth name. And the post-Revolutionary king, Louis VIII, gave him permission to sign his name simply as "Carême of Paris" - making him the first celebrity to use only one name, like Cher and many others today.

The French Revolution caused turmoil not only in France but in the Carême family as well, and the story goes that one night in 1794, while the Revolution was raging across France and particularly in Paris, Carême’s pére took his son to dinner at a Paris tavern and afterwards turned him loose on the streets, telling him that it was time for him to make his way in the world because his family could no longer support him.

Little Antoine promptly returned to the tavern where he had just eaten and got work as a kitchen boy. Soon he was learning how to cook and helping to prepare meals.

The Rue de la Paix in Paris, where Careme's shop was located.



By 1798 he was working at a shop in the fashionable Paris neighborhood of Palais Royal, as an apprentice to a famous pastry chef, Sylvain Bailly, Bailly encouraged his young apprentice to develop his talent. Soon Carême had his own pastry shop, which he called Pâtisserie de la rue de la Paix. He kept the shop throughout the early part of his career, until 1813.

Carême first made a name for himself in pastry and desserts, especially his famous  pièces montées,  huge confections that could be several feet tall, composed entirely of sugar, pastry, and marzipan. 

These confections were structural works of art, and they made jaw-dropping centerpieces at banquets. Carême got his inspiration for his creations from architectural monuments, like towers, temples and pyramids. Carême, who combined his dual passions for architecture and pastry in his work, once said that architecture should have a special branch for patisserie.

As a freelance pastry artist, Carême worked for the rich and titled in French society, including Napoleon. While creating his confections in the kitchens of the rich and famous, he began to branch out into cooking main dishes as well, becoming a well-rounded chef who could plan and prepare an entire meal of several courses.  


Chateau de Valencay, the Loire Valley home of Talleyrand,
where Chef Careme reigned supreme in the kitchen.
Photo by Jean-Christophe Benoist, CC BY 3.0


Carême also attracted the attention of the ambitious diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord. According to one story, Talleyrand challenged the young chef to create a year’s worth of menus, never making the same dish twice and using only produce in season. (This sounds much like something you might see on Iron Chef America.)

Carême passed this test, and Talleyrand hired him to prepare banquets, cementing the young chef’s reputation as a culinary star.

Carême’s contribution to French gastronomy went far behind patisserie – he developed a whole culinary system, working out the logistics of preparing and serving grand feasts.

He was one of the first chefs to have an independent career - he wasn't bound to a rich or noble family. He was also very good at promoting himself, and in the process, he raised the status of his profession.

He worked across Europe as a free agent for wealthy and titled clients like Tsar Alexander in Russia, banker Baron James de Rothschild in Paris, and even the Prince Regent in England.

Tsar Alexander, by George Dawe, 1824

During his career, Carême wrote several books about cooking, but the most influential was L’Art de la Cuisine Française. That book helped codify French cookery for generations of chefs and is still an important reference work in French gastronomy today.

There is a host of other culinary achievements credited to Carême, including major innovations such as classifying sauces based on four major, basic sauces (Espagnoleveloutéallemande, and béchamel) from which a host of minor  “petite” sauces could be derived.

Later, another famous French chef, Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935), modified Carême’s list of sauces to include Hollandaise, a sauce familiar to anyone who loves having eggs benedict for brunch as much as I do. 

Carême improved sanitation systems in restaurant kitchens, making them a cleaner, safer place to prepare food. He is also credited with inventing the hat that chefs often wear, known as the toque - a minor achievement, perhaps, but a lasting one.

A French chef wearing a toque.  

There is one dish in particular that’s associated with Carême’s time in England, a simple dessert that got a glamorous makeover from the French chef.

This dish first surfaced as Apple Charlotte in 1796, named in honor of King George III’s wife, Queen Charlotte, who loved apples and gardening and became the patroness of apple growers in Britain. This dessert, still popular today,  is basically a bread pudding made with sliced apples, pieces of white bread, butter, eggs sugar and cinnamon. (Yum!)

When Carême came to England to work for the Prince Regent in the early 19th century, he came across this rather humble dessert and elevated it to something grander.  

He transformed the hot pudding into what we’d call a no-bake cake with a rich, egg and cream custard filling, placed in a mold lined with pieces of sponge cake (or ladyfingers) and decorated with fruit and whipped cream. Apples aren’t necessarily involved, but you can find versions with fruit like cherries, raspberries or strawberries.

A Charlotte decorated with sliced strawberries and kiwis
Photo by Mythe, CC-BY-3.0

Carême was only in England a short while before he went to Russia to cook for the Tsar, where he stayed even more briefly. So he called his modified version of the English pudding Charlotte Russe, honoring Princess Charlotte, the Tsar, and possibly the Tsar’s sister-in-law, who was also named Charlotte. (And let’s not forget the dessert’s original namesake, Queen Charlotte.) When it comes to honoring people named Charlotte, that’s one hard-working dessert.

There’s even the possibility that when he was back in his home country, Carême called his creation Charlotte à la Parisienne, but later changed the name to Charlotte Russe when he served it to the Tsar at a banquet. Whether or not that’s what happened I like that story, because it highlights at once how pragmatic the French chef was, and his considerable skill promoting his own work to influential people.

In sum, Carême had a huge impact not only on French cuisine but also in the development of restaurant culture. He’s considered the first independent, international star of the culinary scene – the first celebrity chef. Unfortunately, he died at a relatively young age, 48, most likely due to a lung ailment contracted by working in poorly ventilated kitchens. You could say he was a victim of his art, or at least his profession.

But his work lives on, along with the restaurant systems and standards he designed, and in his signature dessert creations – including treats like his grosse (large) nougats and meringues, croquantes (a crisp cookie-like pastry, made with almonds and honey) and his solilemmes (a hot, yeasty roll known in England as a Sally Lunn bun).

A  croquante with strawberries.  Author ADT 04; CC BY 2.0

Speaking on behalf of people like me who have a sweet tooth and always make room for dessert, thanks Chef Carême! 



Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons


Sources for this post include:

  • Culinary Biographies, A Dictionary of the World’s Great Historic Chefs, Cookbook Authors and Collectors, Farmers, Gourmets, Home Economists, Nutritionists, Restaurateurs, Philosophers, Physicians, Scientists, Writers, and Others Who Influenced the Way We Eat Today, edited by Alice Arndt, Yes Press, Inc., Houston, Texas, 2006
  • A History of Food in 100 Recipes, by William Sitwell, Little, Brown and Company, New York, NY, 2013
  • Who Put the Beef in Wellington? By James Winter, Kyle Books, Lanham, MD, 2013


Friday Follies: A Cinderella Story

It’s impossible to think about a prince choosing a lovely but untitled “commoner” to be his bride without reflecting on the story of Cinderella, the fairy-tale with an indelible place in our culture.

That means there's an echo of the classic tale in the news of Prince Harry’s engagement to Meghan Markle. Now, Meghan hasn’t had to endure the torments of an abusive step-mother nor have we seen her dressed in rags, like poor Cinderella. But the fact that royal Harry’s glass slipper fit her, and only her,  makes all but the coldest heart beat a little faster, no matter how cynical a person may be about love and romance.

Harry and Meghan's wedding announcement this week also brings to mind the fairy-tale wedding of another American actress to a prince over 60 years ago – Grace Kelly. Like Meghan, Grace had beauty and poise, and her acting career uniquely fitted her for her new role in the public eye. 

And Prince Rainier seemed every bit as smitten with Grace as Harry does with Meghan.

Here’s a clip of their wedding in Monaco, in April of 1956:


And since we’re talking about Cinderella, I couldn’t resist including a clip of the ballroom scene from the latest movie version of the tale, starring Lily James. Her gorgeous gown was made of several layers of fine blue and purple fabric (270 yards in all) to give it a watercolor effect when she danced.  

Plus, according to IMDB.com, there was a total of 10,000 Swarovski crystals sewn individually to her dress and sprinkled into James' long, flowing hair

Fun fact about this movie: if you look closely at the last scene of this clip, you’ll see that many of the many of the women attending the ball are wearing dresses based on the iconic gowns of other Disney princesses. Among the dresses you can spot on the dance floor are ones inspired by Aurora of Sleeping Beauty, Belle from Beauty and the Beast, Mulan (from Mulan), Ariel (The Little Mermaid) and Tiana (The Princess and the Frog).

See for yourself:





As for me, I can’t wait to see the beautiful dress Meghan will wear on her wedding day!

It's a Blog Revival

The Regency Looking Glass is back! I have some good news - I'm happy to announce that The Regency Looking Glass (which I started in 2013...