Entertaining in Grand Style

A Return to Insouciance

“Are you really sure you want to be a chef? You must be mad! But if it’s what you really want to do, then don’t even think of getting married. The work and the hours are just incompatible with family life. It’s a true vocation: no home life can stand the pressure.” The year was 1954. Marcel Glé then reigned over the kitchens at the Hôtel de Marigny, Baron Alain de Rothschild’s mansion, a mere stone’s throw from the Elysée Palace, which was later to be acquired by the French state as accommodation for state visits. The great chef was quizzing a young man of seventeen, who had applied to be an apprentice in the kitchens of the French Embassy in London. It was a tough life, he warned him, but chefs for great private houses were highly sought after.

In the years after World War II, France yearned to live again and to forget about the war, with all its restrictions and privations. Entertaining had not stopped altogether during the Occupation. Marie-Laure de Noailles, one of the doyennes of Paris high society, continued to give dinners for close friends at her palatial residence on Place des Etats-Unis, passing a plate round at the end of the meal for her guests to donate their ration tickets and the British Embassy in Paris, with Duff and Diana Cooper, remained one of Paris’s most glittering salons. But it was after the Liberation that life in Paris really took off again – and in style.

Saint-Germain-des-Prés pulsated to the rhythms of jazz and swing, while the cafés of the Left Bank hosted a galaxy of talent, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Boris Vian, Jacques Prévert and Juliette Gréco, to name but a few. In the world of high society, meanwhile, aristocrats, members of the grande bourgeoisie, and wealthy foreigners rubbed shoulders with artists, writers, and poets. Life was one long glittering round of lavish balls and parties, even more sumptuous than before the war.

The costume balls that had been all the rage in the 1920s now made their appearance again. The Marquis de Cuevas threw a Goya-themed ball, and Hélène Rochas revived My Fair Lady at the Grande Cascade in the Bois de Boulogne. And at the Palazzo Labia, his recently acquired Venetian residence, Charles de Bestegui, dressed for the occasion as a high official of the Venetian Republic, greeted his masked guests – a veritable who’s who of the international jet set – as they stepped out of the gondolas in which they had floated along the Grand Canal toward the most lavish ball of the century.

In this newly rediscovered atmosphere of insouciance, the art of entertaining flourished once more. Marie-Blanche de Polignac, daughter of Jeanne Lanvin, invited artists and musicians, including Francis Poulenc, Georges and Nora Auric, Arthur Rubinstein and Pierre Barillet, to her estate at Kerbastic in Brittany, where the fragrance of magnolia, jasmine and wisteria wafted through the sheltered gardens. Her meticulously planned menus included not only the great classics, such as her famous soufflé aux oeufs pochés (soufflé with poached eggs), but also more experimental dishes such as paella, then completely unknown in France and greeted by Denise Bourdon with dismay: “What sort of cuisine is this?” An enthusiastic reception for such foreign dishes was still a distant prospect. In the evening her chef, René Aupicon, would come to the drawing room to discuss the dishes he had prepared, to hear her suggestions, and to offer his own ideas.

At his Neuilly residence, meanwhile, the Chilean millionaire Arturo Lopez entertained in even more lavish style, throwing dinner parties for 20 or so guests at sumptuous tables laid with silver timbales, Sèvres porcelain, and gold from the collections of Catherine the Great. Paris high society also convened at the large dinner parties given by Louise de Vilmorin at Verrières, for which, aided by her faithful maid, she would herself prepare les oeufs à la tripe, the classic combination of hard-boiled eggs, onions and Béchamel sauce that André Malraux adored. She was an exception, however. Society ladies of the period might devise menus and critique recipes, but, faced with a saucepan of water to boil they would have been completely at a loss.

In this privileged world, chefs were the key to successful entertaining. One simply had to have the best. Stealing was not unknown. Marie-Laure de Noailles boasted of having “kidnapped” the chef who worked for the Anchorenas, the wealthy Argentinian family who lived in immense style in their Avenue Foch apartment with doors painted by Braque.

Interpreting the Masters’ Recipes

“During my time with the Duchess of Windsor I learned a great deal,” James Viaene recalls, “But it was Georges Wildenstein’s chef, Roger Harmand, who really opened my eyes.” In order to take his training to a higher level and advance his apprenticeship, James entered the household of the art dealer Georges Wildenstein in 1960. Roger Harmand had learned his métier in the establishments of Cécile de Rothschild and the Princesse de Faucigny-Lucinge, and he was a pioneer in his field. In a world that was still deeply in thrall to the past, Harmand was an innovator. The recipes served at this time were exclusively those of the great masters of cuisine, such as Antonin Carême, Auguste Escoffier, and Curnonsky (the celebrated writer on gastronomy). Chefs would follow their methods to the letter, but as the quantities of ingredients were often not given, and the cooking varied according to the heat of the hob (generally wood-fired) and the oven, they would produce very different results.

Chefs were judged according to their way with the great classics, and employers – always looking for familiar flavours and tastes from their childhood – were severe. Georges Wildenstein had abiding memories of the Alsatian kouglof of his early years, for instance. He ordered all his chefs to make it and was never satisfied with the results, invariably judging them too dense, too sweet, too heavy on raisins, or whatever.
Only a young commis chef called James, who had started his working life with a pastry chef, contrived to produce the perfect light texture, an achievement that earned him the considerable surprise of seeing his employer come into the kitchen to congratulate him, for the first and only time. Compliments were rare. When he ordered an orange sorbet, Georges Wildenstein detested seeing it garnished with orange (had he asked for a fruit salad?) and when he asked for a foie gras salad he would allow a few truffles with it but never lobster, as this would be too much.