I Love a Soufflé! Trivia Quiz

Answer: He included the hooves and bones as well

Benoit's fame rests primarily on his "use of cider and apple brandy in food" as his main "contribution to French cuisine", but it was this dish that he was also famed for. The recipe included "all four chambers of the cow's stomach...part of the large intestine...plus the hooves and bones". I feel ill. To this he added a whole pile of vegetables, an entire bottle of cider, and a glass of apple brandy.

A pile of fat was also added, and then the contents were covered in a layer of dough and cooked on a low heat in the oven for an astonishing fifteen hours! You'll be pleased to know the hooves and bones weren't served up at the table.

They were removed prior to the dish being presented. Thank goodness for that. Otherwise, I would have to moooooove back from the table.

Answer: Haute cuisine

Haute cuisine is the list of foods prepared and served in extremely fancy and expensive restaurants, the most luxurious of hotels, and in the homes of the rich and powerful. This preparation and serving has to follow the most intricate of rules and directions. Such was Sir Lancelot the Cook's skill in this area that he worked for not one, but three different members of royalty during his life.

Many of his speciality dessert recipes included fancy whipped creams and even fancier choux pastry.

Answer: Mushrooms

Mind you, they weren't just ordinary mushrooms. They were "finely-minced mushrooms, seasoned with herbs and shallots" and this recipe is still used today for enhancing painstakingly prepared fish and vegetables. The honour of having a mushroom dish named after him goes to "Nicolas Chalon du Ble, the Marquis of Uxelles". Francoise Pierre worked for this Marquis de Mushrooms for ten years. Francoise Pierre was really rather impressive when one reads his background.

He did his initial training in the household of a member of the Medici family. During his career, he gave us the "first bisque and Bechamel sauce...replaced crumbled bread with roux..lard with butter..." and created many new syrups, compotes, jellies, fruit drinks and salads. Yum!

Answer: Potato

Antoine was a pharmacist by trade originally. While serving in the French army in that capacity during the Seven Years War (1756-1763), he was captured and held prisoner by the Prussians for some time. During this ordeal, he was forced to eat potato or starve. Potato up until then was considered only fit to feed to pigs by the French, and definitely not a food for humans. Parmentier remained quite healthy during his incarceration by eating this humble food, and, intrigued by its properties, he began studying nutrition on his eventual return to Paris.

Becoming convinced of the potato's nourishing value, he commenced a hard sell campaign to France's most influential figures. These included hosting many dinners featuring various dishes made from the humble spud. The potato began to slowly gain ground. This burst into full flower during two famines in that country in 1785 and 1795. The potato came galloping to the rescue and proved to be the miracle food that held starvation at bay. Today, any fancy food dish that includes the word Parmentier in its name, is a dish featuring the pratie.

Parmentier went on to study and improve the food value of an astonishing number of other agricultural products during his career. His contribution to the improvement of the human condition has been overlooked for the most part by history. We don't teach about the man who improved and encouraged the acceptance of the little potato to an under-nourished world. We talk instead of great warriors, great leaders, great scientists and landing man on the moon. How many of these great figures, I wonder, owe their good health to the work of Antoine-Augustin Parmentier?

Answer: Preserving food in sealed bottles

After fifteen years of experimentation, the remarkable Appert finally had the solution on how to keep foods fresh for months at a time. He put his food products in jars, sealed them tightly with "cork and sealing wax, and then placed them in boiling water". It seems so simple now that we know how it is done. Appert (I keep wanting to call him Appetite) subsequently wrote a book called "The Art of Preserving Animal and Vegetables Substances" in which he described all the foods that could be preserved and the exact methods to do so. These included "soups, vegetables, juices, dairy products (wow!), jellies, jams and syrups...beef, fowl, eggs" his own recipes, and other dishes. So skilled did he become with his preservation methods that he even once preserved one large sheep.

As a result of Appert's work, a factory was quickly established in the town of Massy, which was not far from Paris, in order to mass produce preserved foods. All this took place long before Louis Pasteur came along to design his methods of pasteurisation. By 1810, a British merchant, Peter Durand, perfected a method of preserving food in tin cans. This however didn't take off in a big way until the onset of the 20th century because can openers hadn't been invented yet. That's so peculiar - and comical. Prior to that invention, cans had to be opened with a hammer and a chisel.

Answer: Television

Boulestin tried his hand at a number of occupations before he finally settled down to the one that brought him wealth and fame. He began his career by studying law, but spent most of his time at concerts and with musical groups in Bordeaux instead. Then he tried his hand at writing musical reviews. This encouraged him to try his hand at writing. His first book "Le Pacte" was an outstanding flop. His next career step was compulsory service in the French army in 1899, following which he moved to Paris where he became a secretary and ghostwriter for the author Henry Gauthier-Villars. He tried acting and translated works by foreign writers into French at this stage as well.

Over the years, Boulestin had developed a great fondness for the British way of life, and in 1906 he moved to London to live and work. For a short while he enjoyed all that London life offered, and earned enough to live on by writing short articles on the side, and a novel with the main theme of homosexuality. This was definitely not successful in England of the time, but was relatively popular elsewhere. He followed this up with another novel, writing more articles and reviews, and translating foreign plays into English. It seemed that his feet were well and truly set on the pathway to a full time career as a writer.

Suddenly, in 1911, he opened an interior design shop instead. It promptly went broke. Then he was called back to serve in the army during the First World War, where he designed costumes for army concert parties and began to teach British army members how to cook. Oh my goodness, he next tried his hand at more writing, editing books, giving French lessons, advising on various wines to wealthy private home owners, and designing candle shades. Finally, finally, his long journey to the oven crossed the finishing line when he wrote a French cookery book which was an outstanding success. This led him to his final and very successful career as a restaurateur and chef.

He opened several restaurants which became immensely popular and he built up a very impressive culinary name as one of the greatest chefs of the time. His restaurants also built up a reputation for being the most expensive in London. On the side he also wrote and published several culinary themed books filled with his recipes, all of which brought the money rolling in. Boulestin was a man who was canny enough to spot a market - and fill it. Such was his skill and reputation that he also became Britain's first television chef. That was in the years 1937-39 when television was making its first stumbling steps into the home - and we've been deluged with cooking shows ever since.

Answer: Stuffed head of donkey

The donkey was well and truly stuffed you could even say. While the poor people of Paris were reduced to eating cats, dogs and rats during the time the siege took place, the wealthy turned up their elegant noses at such common fare. They demanded the top classy foods at the fancy restaurants of the time. One of these restaurants was the famous Voisin located on the rue Saint Honore. Choron was chef de cuisine there, and, as the food supplies dwindled in Paris, he "eyed off the animals kept at the local zoo".

Oh this is awful, but funny. His snooty, self-centred customers, without realising it, were served not only the stuffed hee-haw, but also dishes of roasted camel - bump and all; kangaroo stew - even though it tried to hop off the plate; bear shanks roasted in pepper sauce - that 'bearly' satisfied them; wolf done in deer sauce - the dearest item on the menu; cat - with a side serving of rat; antelope in truffle sauce - with an antler chaser; and, of all things, elephant consomme - even though it packed its trunk and tried to flee.

(Help, help, I can't stop making puns!)

Choron's speciality was in fact several dishes made from elephant. There was plenty to go around, you see.

Answer: Dinner of the Three Emperors

This meal really is famous. Echoes of it are suggested in various historical films, and it has featured in at least one television series which discusses and tries to emulate what was served on the occasion. Even today, such was the fame of the meal, that the dinner set used on the table is displayed "at the oldest existing restaurant in Paris". The feast, created under Duglere's eagle eyes, was served to "Tsar Alexander II of Russia, his son the tsarevitch (who later became Tsar Alexander III), and King William I of Prussia". The great Otto von Bismarck was also present on the night, chomping away.

The menu for this dinner is astonishing and way too long to type in here, but if you wish, you can look it up under the Three Emperors Dinner on the internet. It's worth it. From that night on, Duglere, with good reason, was dubbed "The Mozart of the Kitchen". The one speciality dish particularly associated with his name is Pommes Anna. And it's absolutely yummy - every Irish person's delight!

Answer: Dishwasher

Though born in America (1960) Batali is of French and Italian descent. Of course he is. Not only is he a well known chef, he's also a writer, restaurateur and media personality. He moved to Spain with his family in 1975 where he attended university and graduated from there with a degree in economics, Spanish language and theatre. He moved then to a "le Cordon Bleu" institution where he commenced training in the culinary arts. His career took off rapidly from there, and today he owns several restaurants, various businesses and several homes. Not only does he appear regularly on various television shows, he also contributes generously to his foundation whose purpose is to "educate, empower and encourage children". It also funds research into children's diseases, and hunger relief programs for children in third world countries.

Controversies associated with Batali include his so called feud with fellow chef Gordon Ramsay (that was completely blown up by the media), his support of same-sex marriage, and his public statement likening bankers to Stalin and Hitler. He had to issue an apology for that remark. Oh, this is funny: The restaurant where Batali commenced his career in the humble position of dishwasher was called "Stuff Yer Face". Now who could resist dining at such an elegantly named venue as that? Absolutely idyllic for a romantic evening out.

Answer: Best Restaurant in the World

Not only has Blumenthal's restaurant won this award, it has also been runner-up in the world rankings in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009. In 2007 and 2009, it was voted Best Restaurant in the UK by The Good Food Guide, a book listing all the top restaurants in the UK. Blumenthal has also had several books published on cooking techniques and recipes, and is a regular face on various television shows relating to this art. Amazingly so, he also holds "multiple honorary degrees in recognition of his scientific approach to cooking". Gosh, the world has gone from chasing dinosaurs for lunch to scientific methods of cooking.

Some of his unusual techniques include the use of a vacuum jar to increase the size of bubbles in cooking; and his experiments with "amplification to enhance the sounds, such as the crunch, created while eating various foods". I can't think why I find that immensely funny. Oh no thanks - two of Blumenthal's famous dishes are, believe it or not, "snail porridge and parsnip cereal". He's got to be kidding! Snail porridge? After what they've done to my petunias, I flatly refuse to eat breakfast in the same restaurant as a bunch of snails.