Feasts and All Their Finery: Elegant Dining in Old Regime France - Softcover

Le Grand d'Aussy ends his three-volume history of French food with these exuberant chapters , bristling with colorful details, about how fine dining in France grew more formal and more ambitious, remaining extravagant (by today's standards) even after the sometimes stunning, sometimes laughable excesses of the Middle Ages were reigned in and more sophisticated service and entertainment replaced a host of mechanical devices, pantomimes, and outright exotica. Le Grand draws on a classic cookbook and several forgotten memoirs to bring a wealth of details on menus, table decoration, royal households, customs, and entertainments to those who study the Middle Ages, food history, decoration or simply France in all its infinite variety. For the first time, this rich and unique text is available in English

Food historian Jim Chevallier is a performer as well as a researcher, having worked as a radio announcer (WCAS, WBUR and WBZ-FM), acted (on NBC's "Passions", and numerous smaller projects). He has published several articles in reference works on food as well as an essay on breakfast in 18th century France (in Wagner and Hassan's "Consuming Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century") in addition to researching and translating several historical works of his own.