Sense and Taste Memory

The sight of a forgotten box of mushrooms in the fridge made me think mushroom soup. After a quick sniff to ensure that Doc and wouldn't be soon dead of food poisoning, I rummaged around for an old friend, my notebook from classes 38 years ago at L'Ecole Cordon Bleu. I was in Paris for a long year with husband one and baby Matthew and, in the interests of good eating in the future, I signed up for the six-week amateur's course. I bought a notebook at Gilbert Jeaunes, the one in the photograph, and appeared on the Rue de Champs de Mars.

I watched and listened and wrote in a whirl of rapid French (the course was not translated as it is now) and I struggled to keep up. My culinary skills to date included boiling eggs and horrid little meals from the “I Hate to Cook Book,” so the learning curve was fairly steep. On every page of these spattered notes, there are helpful drawings – a gutted fish, the layout of a rabbit terrine, a splayed chicken. The writing is a rich mixture of English and French, all tumbled together.

Revisiting the recipes in the notes has been puzzling at times. On many pages there are arrows to indicate that the flow of the recipe was interrupted (probably because I was taking too long to come up with a translation of what chef was saying).

Chef was Chef Narcesse. I once found a photograph of him in Gourmet looking very jolly. He was not always so as he watched us prep and cook the meal that would be his lunch. We could always tell when something on the menu was a favorite of his; he hovered, grumbled and sometimes said with great pain “Madame...”

Out in the foyer of L'Ecole CB was Mme Brassard, famous for her run-ins with a determined Julia Child. She hadn't mellowed since then.

The page above is indeed a rule for mushroom soup. I was diverted today by the list of ingredients on the middle left of the page – a turnip and blackened onions in mushroom soup? -- until I realized that my famous notes had made a detour to provide the method for making beef stock.