The French Cook

Lady Chesterfield called Louis Eustache Ude “whimsical, good-natured, exorbitantly vain,” but he must have been a spectacularly gifted chef, able to please the most sophisticated upper-class palates of the day. As expressed in his cookbook, originally published in 1813, when Ude was cooking for the Earl of Sefton in Liverpool (whose service he left when the Earl’s son put salt in one of Ude’s soups), his recipes definitely were not meant for everyday meals, but they do represent the epitome...