Clotilde

Menu from the restaurant Voisin from 25, Dec 1870, on the 99th day of the Prussian siege of Paris. Unusual dishes include stuffed donkey's head, elephant consommé, roast camel, kangaroo stew, antelope terrine, bear ribs, cat with rats, and wolf haunch in deer sauce. Image by Chef Alexandre Étienne Choron (d.1924)

Once there was and once there was not a girl born in a brothel in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Her mother was popular and her father unknown. Wishing a better life for her daughter than her own, her mother sent her to the kitchens of Paris to learn a more respected trade and shield her from the harsher truths of life.

But even the best laid plans of loving mothers can fail. Dear Clotilde did become an amazing chef. She worked in the best houses in Paris and the surrounding countryside. She also learned how to midwife as a discreet side service, because a steady hand, strong stomach, and sharp knife are skills in many professions. She heard much and revealed nothing, but she learned.

She learned the households that ran through maids like shit through a goose. The rich husbands and sons to never be caught alone with in a pantry. One thing you can say about men that frequent brothels, at least they pay for what they take. There would be a reckoning one day. Clotilde would make sure.

One day in the fall of 1870, the Prussians surrounded Paris and we were officially under siege. At first, we thought they were ridiculous, in their silly little uniforms. My friends and I would often pitch stones and horseshit at them from the walls of the city, ducking when the bullets came whizzing back. Pietre was shot in the buttock mooning them. But the fall became winter and by the end of October things were getting desperate. We heard the nearby city Le Bourget fell, taking a good chunk of our boys with it. Then the food started running out. First we ate the rats, then the dogs, then the cats, then the horses. Finally, we started emptying the zoos to survive.

Nobody reacts well to a long period of being trapped with dwindling supplies, especially abusive bastards. Clotilde’s midwifing skills were in high demand. Nobody wanted to birth a child during a siege, especially unplanned and unwanted. Clotilde cleared and collected every piece of tissue. She noted the names that the women wept into her shoulders.

One raucous night in a wine cellar, she and I found ourselves deep among the barrels. She laid her head in my lap and told me all of it, finishing with the confession of a ghastly barrel of brine filled with fetal tissue, floating like pickled walnuts. I laughed with hysterical horror. The siege had changed us all. Local restaurants were serving elephants. What was normal? We planned until the early morning hours.

Madame Kelly was great friends with Clotilde’s mother and ran one of the best brothels in Paris. At the height of the siege, when we were all starving, even the rich were feeling the pinch. Kelly decided to host a high end dinner. All in all, twenty-seven well-dressed men in top hats arrived at the back door for their clandestine dinner with some of the highest paid women in Paris.

The men didn’t even notice none of the women ate the main course: a terrine surdoué (golden child). They assumed it was made of pickled snails and mushrooms. It wasn’t. Many were violently ill later, maybe a few poisonous mushrooms made their way into the terrine, or maybe a few well placed whispers revealed the secret ingredient.
To quote Rousseau: When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.