The sugary delights of Nancy

In Nancy, the legacy of the 18th-century is sweet!

Nancy Passions Sucrée is a new marketing initiative dreamed up by the tourist agency of Nancy ("Destination Nancy") in co-operation with an assortment of municipal and departmental authorities.  The brand appeared in mid 2019, on the storefronts of pastry chefs, bakers, confectioners and other artisans in the city. The idea is to promote quality handcrafted products made using traditional recipes and, as far as possible, local produce. Their list now boast more than twenty specialities from a dozen different establishments.

Some of these sugary delights have a particular link with the 18th century - "les belles heures de la pâtisserie",  Pride of place goes to  the Rum-baba, which is popularly said to have been created at the instigation of King Stanislas himself. Maison Gwizdak in the rue Raugraff  (below) has long offered a traditional recipe.

According to the story, Stanislas found the local brioche too dry, so his pastry chef, Nicolas Stohrer came up with the idea of dousing it, first with Tokay or Malaga wine, later with rum.  In fact the "baba" is a traditional Polish cake, though Stanislas, who was notorious for his sweet tooth,  doubtless popularised it -  according to the historian of his reign, Pierre Boyé, a dozen variants were regularly served at his table.

In 2002, a historically-themed restaurant "A la Table du Bon Roi Stanislas" opened in rue Gustave Simon offering a tempting range of reimagined dishes from Lorraine, Poland and 18th-century French cuisine in general.  The Nancy Passions Sucrées label has been awarded to their baba made with the original Tokaji (above), and also to a candied bergamot based on a recipe from Le Cannaméliste Français.  To tempt your tastebuds still more, the restaurant website has lots of information about all sorts of other local delicacies and their origin. 

References

Destination Nancy: Office de tourisme - Nancy Passions Sucrée [In English]
https://www.nancy-tourisme.fr/en/discover-nancy/nancy-passions-sucrees

Maison Gwizdak, Nancy 

https://gwizdak.fr/nos-specialites-sucrees/

A la Table du Bon Roi Stanislas, Nancy 

The restaurant website has all sorts of information about historical dishes

http://tablestan.free.fr/

The myth of  Stanislaw and the Rum-baba comprehensively debunked by a specialist on Polish food history:

Karol Palion, "Good King Stanislas and the Forty Thieves", Forking around with history, post of 24.04.2019.  

http://forkingaroundwithhistory.pl/index.php/Good_King_Stanislas_and_the_Forty_Thieves

[When I was a student, we were served Rum-babas of unspeakable size and resilience; rumour had it that the College chef had trained in the German Navy!]

On flying tables....

The flying table at Lunéville

The famous mechanical dining table or table volante of Lunéville is one of the most evocative relics of the lost Court of Lorraine.  Both ingenious and, at the same time absurd, it  occupies an uncertain imaginative space on the cusp between Baroque love of  novelty and the newer 18th-century values of privacy and domesticity. 

A "machine pour servir à manger" was first installed by the Duchess Élisabeth-Charlotte as early as  1705-6 in her private dining room in the South wing of the old château, overlooking her kitchen garden. An ingenious system of beams, pulleys and counterweights allowed the table to be raised and lowered directly into the basement below, where it could be set and cleared out of view.  It would disappear seemingly of its own accord and reappear, fully laden, as if by magic. As well as providing a pleasing novelty, this contrivance avoided the intrusion of servants into the intimacy of the private dining room.  

The mechanism was probably designed by Philippe Vayringe (1684–1746),  known in his lifetime as the ‘Archimedes’ of Lorraine,  who was ‘machiniste’ to the Duke (designing, for instance,  a hydraulic pump for the gardens at Lunéville), and later professor at the Académie de Lunéville.

Lunéville - dreams of Nature

The following is (mostly) taken from a talk in the "Wednesday Lecture" series, given at Lunéville in May of this year by the director of the Musée du Château, Thierry Franz.   His  subject is embrace of "Nature" in the Court culture of 18th-century Lorraine, with particular reference to the lost ménageries at Lunéville and the country château of La Malgrange, which have recently been brought to life in virtual reconstructions.   Rather than through ceremonial or lavish display, Thierry Franz argues, it was by their openness to nature that the Dukes of Lorraine showed themselves to be at the forefront of European élite culture.   

The lecture focuses particularly on the contribution of the Duchess Élisabeth-Charlotte, who in 1700 chose to have herself depicted as Flora, the Roman goddess of gardens and flowers:

 Portrait of the Duchess Élisabeth-Charlotte as Flora, c. 1700. Attributed to Claude Charles (1661-1747), "premier peintre" of the Court of Lorraine.  Musée du Château de Lunéville.

During her childhood at Versailles and Saint-Cloud, Élisabeth-Charlotte had acquired a taste for open-air pursuits. Like Duke Leopold, who was a keen huntsman and breeder of horses, she was an accomplished horsewoman.  According to contemporaries, in her younger years she loved to ride at a gallop. The daily chronicles and archives of the palace are full of hunts and horse rides, but also of picnics in the woods - open air meals were very fashionable in general in the 18th century, but found particular favour with the ducal couple.

Attributed to Jean-Baptiste Martin, Equestrian portrait of the Duchess of Lorraine,
  Hofburg, Insbruck (Wikimedia)  The pendant is a similar depiction of Leopold.