La Boheme
La Boheme is an opera based on excerpts from the novel by Henri Muger called Bohemians of the Latin Quarter. In his preface Muger defines what Bohemians are. They are related to Homer, the minstrels and ballad makers of the middle age, figures like the poet Francois Villon, the artists of the Renaissance, like Michelangelo, Raphael, Cellini, Donatello, Titian and Veronese and then later Moliere and Shakespeare, Jean Jacques Rousseau and many more. In short anyone who enters into an artistic career without any other means of livelihood than his art is a Bohemian.
Muger says that "Bohemia is a stage of artistic life; it is the preface to the Academy, the Hotel Dieu, or the Morgue." But, there are several types of Bohemians. The unknown Bohemians are a "great family of poor artists, fatally condemned to the law of incognito, because they cannot or do not know how to obtain a scrap of publicity, to attest there existence in art... . They are the race of obstinate dreamers for whom art has remained a faith and not a profession. They are the disciples of art for art's sake. They die young leaving sometimes behind them a work which the world admires later on and which it would no doubt have applauded sooner if it had not remained invisible."
Then there are those real Bohemians who are called by art and have a chance of success. They are plagued by poverty and doubt as they struggle to achieve their goal. Their daily existence requires genius. They can do without if necessary, but if they do have some success and make some money, they inevitably spend it all on the best wines and food. They therefore are constantly on the hunt for money. As Balzac says the Bohemian is always on the search for a bone and kennel.
As all of our favorite characters in the novel and then again in the opera are of this class of Bohemians — a painter, a poet, a musician and a philosopher — food plays a large role. First they don't have it, then they have a feast. Then they don't have it again and soon have an even bigger celebration of food at Cafe Momus.
The opera opens in the garret of Rudolfo and Marcello. They have no food and also no wood for their stove. The heat problem is solved by burning their paintings and writings but they soon run out. They are saved by Schaunard who arrives with food, wood, cigars, and Bordeaux. He has been paid by an Englishman who has had him play music until his parrot dies. They decide however to take the money and have a Christmas Eve meal at Cafe Momus. There they order a feast but eventually discover they don’t have enough money to pay the bill and they have to trick the waiter to escape
The third act opens with the arrival of milkmaids selling butter, cheese, chickens and eggs. And in the fourth act while musing over their loves, Rodolfo and Marcello are waiting for Schaunard and Colline to bring dinner, or as they say, yesterday's dinner. They are still not eating well. They pretend that the bread, herring and water that Schaunard has brought is grand fare: champagne, salmon and trout and parrot's tongue.
The chorus and soloist in the second act allow us to know is being sold to eat and what our Bohemians order in Cafe Momus. The street vendors are hawking their wares as Rodolfo, Mimi, Schaunard, Marcello and Colline enter. The are selling oranges, dates, warm chestnuts, trinkets, crosses, nougat, whipped cream, caramels, fruit pies, finches, larks, trout, flowers, coconut milk and carrots!
Cafe Momus probably was not a premier restaurant. "Henry Murger discovered the Cafe Momus, on the Right Bank near the church of Saint-Germaine-l'Auxerrois, in the years preceding 1848. This cafe soon became a popular meeting-place of such important Bohemians as Gustave Courbet and Alexandre Privat d'Anglemont. The Cafe Momus was such an important location for the Bohemians that it was featured in Giacomo Puccini's opera La Boheme.”
In Murger's book when they sit down to eat at the cafe, Colline says, "bring us all that is requisite for a good supper." They order champagne, burgundy (Mimi asks for some Beaune in a little basket), ham, sardines, bread and butter, and radishes in addition. In the libretto to La Boheme they say, "We want a delicious dinner." They then add additional requests: salami, roast venison, a turkey, Rhine wine and table wine, and lobster without the shell. Mimi also asks for la crema, probably custard. We learn they are served chicken when Colline says “The chicken is a poem.”
Here are recipes for some of the dishes they order, found in French cookbooks of the period.
Roast Larks
French Chef Antoine Beauvilliers (1754 – 1817)
The larks and small birds, being sold by the vendors, were very popular in the context of the opera and the novel, Paris in the 1840s. The way they generally were prepared and thought to be best was to be simply roasted in their own fat. "French Chef Antoine Beauvilliers (1754 – 1817) had the first premiere restaurant in Paris during the early 19th century, called La Grande Taverne de Londres. His book “L'Art du Cuisinier” (released in 1814), and the English translation “The Art of French Cookery” (published in 1824), have been cited as a major milestone in gastronomic literature. André Simon called this book "at the time of its publication easily the best and most reliable both in French and in English.” This book contains the recipe
Roast Venison
Beauvilliers has a recipe for roast haunch of venison. He considers venison something not to be presented at every occasion. It should be appropriate to the type of dinner that is being served. His recipe follows the English version in which a venison haunch is covered with paste, pastry, and then buttered paper and roasted for a long period of time. The pastry was to hold in the fat and keep it moist as venison is very lean.
Turkey roasted with Truffles.
The Aztecs owned domesticated turkeys when the Spanish conquistador Cortès arrived at Montezuma's court in 1519. Montezuma gave 1,500 turkeys to Cortès, who took them to Spain. The Spanish first thought they were peacocks. To this day, they refer to them with the word for peacock, pavo. The name turkey, though, seemed to be derived from the fact that the Turks traded the bird, and the English just called every bird that they bought from the Turks a "turkey bird". But the French called then Dinde. This is probably because Columbus mistakenly thought he had found the route to the Indies and therefore the bird, which originated in the Americas was called dinde (short for poule d'inde, chicken from India).
Shelled Lobster
Beauvilliers seems to prepare lobster as a sauce for other fish. It is made with ham, truffles, butter, veloute or espagnole sauce, chopped whites of egg, mushrooms and lobster tail and coral. But I also found a recipe in a contemporaneous cookbook The French Cook by Louis Eustache Ude, published in 1822, where the lobster is taken out of the shell, prepared but then served in the shell as in lobster Thermidor. Louis-Eustache Ude, (ca 1769 –10 April 1846), was the best-known French chef in London. His father had been a chef at the court of Louis XVI ,where Ude apprenticed.