The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse (37 page)

The
caillette
olives in an authentic
salade niçoise
are found nowhere else on the planet except the area around Nice, and every French region boasts similar fruits of the earth, sea and sky unique to it (and as many government protection orders). French cuisine is really a thousand regional cuisines, of which
haute cuisine
is a rarefied distillation. Whether contemporary French cuisine retains the global top spot remains an argument between food critics, but France’s contribution to the history and development of cuisine remains unmatched. And having given the world its first restaurant, menu, restaurant ratings service, food critic, philosophy of cuisine and back office system, not to mention the delights of
tournedos Rossini
,
caille en sarcophage
and a myriad other exquisite dishes, does French cuisine really have anything for which to apologize?

Myth Evaluation
: Arguably true. French cuisine is certainly one of the greatest in the world, although competition is increasingly stiff, notably from the Orient, and its primacy is contested by a new brand of edgy cuisine which banishes garlic butter and the mother sauces in favour of liquid nitrogen and molecular mixology.

APÉRITIF

1
the last traditional French beret manufacturer.
i.e. Béatex, taken over in July 2012 by the army uniform manufacturing group Cargo-Promodis.

2
wet sock on my head.
See
L’Armée US abandonne le béret, Le Figaro
14 juin 2011.

PART 1

1
Vatel incident.
See
Lettres de Madame de Sévigné de sa famille
, Vol. I, Paris: Hachette 1863, pp. 286–8.

2
‘
lighter food, less of it, costing more.’
Elizabeth David,
French Provincial Cooking
, Penguin 1970, p. 476.

3
French cuisine was ranked number two.
Survey by Kantar market research, May 2010.

Available now

1. Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire residence of the Dukes of Portland, photographed in the early twentieth century.

2. ‘Mrs Druce’s Last Appeal Before Christmas’: Anna Maria Druce and Chancellor Tristram in the Consistory Court at St Paul’s Cathedral, December 1898.

3. Anna Maria Druce, February 1899.

4. A photograph alleged to be of the 5th Duke of Portland in disguise as the bearded Baker Street businessman, Thomas Charles Druce.

5. A photograph alleged to be of the 5th Duke of Portland as himself, clean-shaven with whiskers.

6. The North Lodge and tunnel entrance, Welbeck Abbey.

7. One of the many underground tunnels beneath Welbeck Abbey.

8. The 5th Duke of Portland from an old caricature drawing in the
Figaro
.

9. Holcombe House, Mill Hill, T. C. Druce’s home from 1861.