I'm Giles Coren.
I'm a writer, restaurant critic and general 21st century food hero.
I'm being joined by writer, broadcaster and world famous maestro, Sue Perkins,
as we supersize our way through the diets of the past.
That's one of the reasons the peasants revolted.
Each week, we'll be medically tested, dress the part
and work our way through the banquets of our ancestors,
from the roaring Twenties to ancient Rome.
This week, we'll be travelling back to the France of the 1780s.
We'll be starting off as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
We'll experience the last heady days of their reign
before the guillotine got its way.
Look, there's a little orphan boy! Here.
Here.
As the revolution hits Paris, we'll end up on the streets,
eating pigeons with the paupers.
And we'll discover that the revolution created,
not only the first restaurants, but the first restaurant critics.
No!
Actually, I'm going to vomit.
This week, Sue and I will be experiencing
the ten most tumultuous years in French history,
from 1785 to 1795.
It was an age of amazing new discoveries, electricity and the hot air balloon.
But, it was also one deeply divided between the rich and the poor.
As the aristocracy gorged on banquets at Versailles,
just a few miles away the Paris mob were rioting for lack of bread.
SHE SHOUTS IN FRENCH
As the week proceeds, we'll trace
the whole history of the revolution through the food people ate.
How very, very French.
'But, before we head off, I'm taking Sue to a French doctor
to see if we can cope with what's in store.'
This period, it's a revolutionary diet.
We're going to lose a lot of weight from about here upwards.
Louis XVI was served 50 huge plates of meat for dinner,
so I'm curious to know what all that food is going to do to us.
Your liver is going to increase size
and your gall bladder is going to get lazy.
Not in a week? Yes. Ooh, yeah!
My liver's going to increase in size? Stop going, "Ooh, yeah!"
Mine's going to as well! I'm gonna have a massive liver.
Maybe we shouldn't do it. Course we should!
I don't want to have an engorged liver.
'I don't want to end up as foie gras.'
What about the gall-bladder?
They would die in their bath because their metabolism was so slow, suddenly.
'So many aristocrats died in their baths after huge meals,
that many gave up bathing altogether.'
Thank you. Thank you.
Vive la France. Vive la France.
I think he's pessimistic. Yes. I've never trusted French doctors.
We're lucky to get away without a suppository. That's all they do.
As long as I don't get in a hot bath, I'll be fine.
Which means that I won't wash,
so I'll whiff a bit. It'll be very French.
Great. So I'm spending the week with a fat, flatulent frog? Good.
Allons-y. Oui.
It's our first day and we've arrived in Paris.
So I sold my one-bedroom flat and got this.
The credit crunch has really bitten in France, what do you think?
Our home for the week will be one of France's grandest chateaux,
Vaux-le-Vicomte the inspiration for the palace of Versailles itself.
And, to get into character, there's nothing better than being dressed by servants.
'The rules of protocol required that the King and Queen did not lift a finger.'
Hee-hee-hee!
You've done this before, haven't you?
Ooh! Urgh!
What size of waist did you say you were? 10 inches!
'Marie Antoinette's corset was the tightest of all.'
25 1/2. Oh, that's rubbish!
We've got another 16 inches to lose.
'Reserved for only the highest ranking ladies, it was so restricting
'it made eating, breathing and even moving one's arms difficult.'
I want the sort of waist that I can challenge Keira Knightly
for those big, meaty period drama roles.
I can't breath, is that a bad thing?
This is how to achieve the J-Lo look in 0.3 seconds.
'Marie Antoinette took so long to get ready
she didn't emerge from her bedroom for hours.'
Hey, hot britches.
What do you think of my child-bearing hips?
I think you could have triplets all at once.
Guiding us through our revolutionary diet for the week
will be our very own French chef, Mickael Weiss, from London's Coq d'Argent.
Standing in for the 500 servants in the King's kitchen,
he'll be cooking with a truly obscene amount of food.
All this represents only two days of Royal eating.
Aww! You said you were preparing a feast(!)
SHE LAUGHS
Blimey. That's quite something.
The Royal kiss goes to you.
Welcome to my kitchen. L'office de la bouche, the office of the mouth.
I'm your officer for this week.
This is some of the food on the table you're gonna be eating this week.
Just some of it? Some of it. This is going to last you about two days.
Maybe two and a half days. So what have we got?
We've got game. Lots of game.
Fresh fish, vegetables. What kind of fish is that? A huge salmon.
Brioche. Loads of brioche. And white fluffy bread, just for the aristos.
'Your class determined the bread you ate.
The aristocracy pecked at the fluffiest white,
believing their digestive systems were too refined to cope with anything else.'
It's true, I can only eat very refined food!
'The poor subsisted on the coarsest brown.'
It's tough, hard.
You have to soak it in broth to be able to do anything with it.
You'd probably die if you ate brown bread.
So what happens, we head off to the posh dining room and you go downstairs?
You guys head off, and I'll get cracking
on your breakfast and suppers and lunches and things.
Hate to ruin your display, but I am the queen. Now I need to make another.
I have the divine right to eat it. Just the one.
Come on, stop eyeing up the peasant.
90% of the population survived on nothing but bread and soup.
But, luckily for us, our food is coming from the grandest cookbooks of the age,
The Royal Cook and The Gifts Of Comus.
The recipes are from that time are very vague.
And there's a lot of ingredients.
Some preparation takes three to four hours to make something that now
would probably take half an hour to an hour to make.
There was just loads of ingredients put together,
huge quantities of food, and hope for the best.
So, Louis, my king, can I get you a big fat capon?
Yeah.
Louis was a puppyish 15-year-old prince when he married Marie Antoinette in 1770.
She was a naive 14-year-old princess,
brought up in the simpler surroundings of the Austrian court.
We'll have one each, yes? I'll give you the bigger one.
Even breakfast was a power meal.
So, every single day, the king would sit down
to a whole chicken, a whole ham, however many eggs.
Four of these, four chops.
And...
And, uh...
Oh!
Oh, that's all right.
'Devouring a breakfast of this size every day,
it's no wonder Louis's courtiers called him "The Fat Pig".'
'Critics of the king's table manners said that he ate like a monkey in a zoo,
which gives me carte blanche to relax into character!'
Watching the king eat is like watching
a half-starved hog let loose on a compost heap.
HE BELCHES
Oh, dear!
I'm playing Louis XVI, for Christ's sake! I've got fantastic table manners.
HE BURPS Aww!
But I am a queen, and... HE BELCHES
Oh! For the love of God!
HE BELCHES
Your... Your bow's the wrong way round!
You're remarking on the fact that my neckwear is slightly incorrect,
while you're belching over your own fingers!
I'm going to try this. This is the orange swirled egg vortex,
which is basically eggs and...Chanel No 5.
It's rosewater and eggs.
They thought, "Scrambled eggs - too nice,
let's put some orange and flower water in it."
"Oh, orange flower water!"
'Orange flower water was the perfume of Versailles.
The court was so smelly, they perfumed everything, even their eggs.'
Urgh! Can you give me a hand with this ham, my dear?
Ready? Just lower it on to me.
Come on, get stuck in. Can you put it up again?
I'm going to suffocate him.
I could have been a contender! I was somebody in Austria!
Suffocated by gammon! The revolution doesn't come for a week!
But I could have finished you... Oh! That does look good.
The Monarchs were seen as sour and miserable looking.
We've just done all that without laughing, just really sour-faced.
Belching... Yeah, just...
SHE PRETENDS TO BELCH
Between us, we've consumed over 5000 calories,
and it's only the first meal of the day.
It's playing havoc with our 21st century constitutions.
Where are you gonna go? I'm gonna go here.
OK, well I'll go over here.
'Versailles had been built 100 years earlier, with very few toilets,
so courtiers generally answered the call of nature
behind curtains and under stairs.
'Described as a "stinking swamp land" by the Duc de Saint-Simon,
the Palace was emptied once a year, taking two whole weeks to scrub clean.'
Hello, lovely to see you.
Thank you. I'm Diana Haig.
I'm the Queen. And this is my husband.
Your Majesty. The King.
'After breakfast, we meet historian, Diana Haig, to brush up on our etiquette.'
The most important thing we do at Versailles is learn to walk.
There's a special walk, called the Versailles glide.
No one wants to step on any lady's train, so we walk, and we walk,
head up, we smile, we nod. We walk, we smile, we nod...
People might think there's something wrong with us.
'The 14-year-old Marie Antoinette was used
to the informality of Palace life in Austria.
When she arrived at Versailles, she quickly had to master
the many nuances of the most complex court etiquette in Europe.
Here, ladies were forbidden to link arms with a man, or cross their legs in public.
And elegance was the most prized quality of all.'
And silent nod!
And not too much! And pat the dog!
Pat the child! Look at the peasants! La, la! That's wonderful! Wotcher?
You're my favourite, might have it off with you later.
Goodbye, take care, farewell!
She didn't point. No pointing!
There was no pointing involved. There we go. And slide. And slide.
'Marie Antoinette mastered the glide to perfection,
and became the leader of French fashion.
'Sue, on the other hand, has a little way to go.'
Do you think I have it?
LOUD THUMP
Oh, dear!
You went down quite hard there, my darling. Are you all right?
And a one, and a two, and a three!
Un, deux, trois!
Very nice. Are you all right?
Er... Where am I? No, I'm fine, really.
I'm so inbred, I don't really notice when I take a heavy fall to the head.
'After a short rest, it's time for the main meal of the day, dinner.'
'Called the Grand Couvert, this was no ordinary meal.
In a ritual that was copied by all the kings of Europe,
the entire court would stand and watch
as the King and Queen were served an enormous banquet.'
This was food as theatre.
Hello! You know what those are? I don't know. You're such a vegetarian.
Bogies with match sticks? You've never seen those?
I'm surprised to see the frog's leg potage on the menu.
The frog's legs were supposed to be eaten by the commoners,
so I'm very surprised to see it on an actual court menu.
The frog's legs are cooked in three different ways.
Some in a stock of verjus,
others in a ragout of mushrooms, and the rest deep-fried in batter.
They're then all placed in the same groaning pot.
This is show-off cooking,
intended to inspire awe in those watching the King eat.
Is that your first frog's leg?
I'll have it.
When in France...
eat the thigh of a frog.
You're allowed to enjoy it. You can be converted.
If I can separate what it is and what it tastes like, it's delicious.
But as soon as I get into the chickeny delicious salty,
slightly sweet richness of it all,
I just think of Boing! Boing! Boing! Slice.
'The dishes arrived in waves, carried by a choreographed train of 15 plate bearers.'
How many eggs do you need to eat a day?
'As one course was being eaten, the next course was loaded onto the table.
A display designed to illustrate the wealth and glory of France.'
Melon soup. Sharp and oniony,
but with really sweet, ripe melons on top.
It's like scratch and sniff melon. Not very nice.
What's the etiquette?
If you don't like the front row, the first division of food,
can you skip over that to the Conference League,
or do you have to go in order?
I don't want a mountain of eggs.
I don't think we have anything like the same bourgeois concerns you're describing.
Part of the revolution, surely our noblesse obliges says
we don't care about the effort that went into it,
and we don't care about the waste, or what it symbolises.
We have whatever the hell we want.
Is it rude for me now to have a langoustine arrow?
I don't think that's how it works.
I just don't want my soup, because it tastes of melon and BO!
I want to have this nice thing here.
The melon is melon, and the BO is the smell of your armpit
as you reached for the thing. That's charming, that is!
So, this is like a conveyor belt basically.
In about 40 courses time, the fluffy toy appears.
And a holiday for two in Ibiza.
'First in our next wave of food is roast mutton,
stuffed with ham and truffles and covered in a crumble of breadcrumbs.'
That tastes like lamb MDF.
What do you suppose a chap has to do to get a glass of wine around here?
Scream, "I'm the King and I'll execute anybody
who doesn't bring me a glass of wine!" Wine!
Wine!
Oh, dear.
'Etiquette forbade the Royal Family from pouring drink for themselves.
'When the King called for wine, it took a pourer,
a taster and a server seven minutes to serve it.'
Louis XV had an egg trick.
'To entertain the enormous crowds that came to watch the royal family eat,
'French royalty played their favourite food game,
'egging the egg.'
People would gather round hushed when a soft-boiled egg
was placed on a thing, in this case we use a bottle of wine.
It was way before television, wasn't it?
He'd stand up and she'd move her head well back
so he could get a swing at it, and he'd attempt to cut in half...
You couldn't say it didn't work.
The King is about to egg his egg!
Why didn't that break in half?
Oh, I say! Oh, yes!
That was more of a scalping. That is ready to be eaten.
You pay a million livres a year for him, the King is about to egg his egg!
Oh, for the love of God! But the egg is fine.
Sit down, man. Sit down.
While we're behaving like spoilt royalty in the Grand Hall,
Mickael plates up his piece de resistance, a giant jelly.
It's come out in one piece, which is good.
I'm worried about flavours, because we're using so many ingredients in the dishes,
you wouldn't be able to tell what is what inside.
Made from roast beef and diced vegetables
suspended in molten calves feet, it was designed to be looked at,
not eaten.
Oh!
It's got sweetcorn in it!
Oh, dear. You see, that's the sort of thing
that could turn a children's dinner party sour.
That is a beautiful thing. Let's see what it tastes like.
Oh, it's very rare!
Given that it's intended to show their concern for display
and prettiness over content and taste, I think it's all right.
It's just loads of pieces of finely sliced rare roast beef, lots of vegetables,
in a soup, left to go cold overnight and gone solid.
Do those jellies mark the end of the line? Or are there more?
Because I'm peaking.
I imagine that's probably it.
'Marie Antoinette hated eating in public so much
that she hardly touched her food, and yawned extravagantly at the table.'
That needs a wash.
Left alone at table, Louis would gorge himself on pastries,
making himself so sick so often,
that Marie Antoinette banned them from his menu.
Step away from the dessert trolley. Come on, just say no.
People are blaming me for the fact that we haven't got any babies,
and it's because little Mr Piggy is getting impotent from too many cakes.
Up we go.
'Once the King had finally finished his meal,
the courtiers would dive in like a pack of wolves and ravage the leftovers.'
And I'm the one with big hips! How does that work?
After hours of eating, we head straight to bed.
Ow!
'Yet even here, Louis and Marie Antoinette had a duty to perform.
Shy, nervous and full of food,
they would take seven years to consummate their marriage.'
Shall we make a dauphin? I'd rather have a macaroon. Goodnight.
So, just a few hours after being in a corset,
you get a real sense of poor old Marie Antoinette.
She's in this whalebone prison, she's being constantly primped
and pushed and prodded, and moved from pillar to post.
She probably just wanted a bit of downtime,
let it all hang out, but she never got it.
That's not that different from my normal eating. In fact it's better,
it's just on demand. You just click your fingers and in comes the food!
They've even be so good as to leave outside my bedroom door, some grub.
I've been left some sort of a giant game pie, which, er...
You might think I wouldn't fancy after a meal like that,
but, Louis used to eat these,
a couple of bottles of wine, a leg of something, some leftovers.
After a day of scoffing like that,
it's only right that the King's bedchamber
should have a little, wee delivery outside.
By 1785, the King and Queen had been on the throne
for 11 years and now had 3 children.
They'd also introduced new ideas to life at court,
including the modern, or plumbed bathroom.
Well, today I'm going to have a typical Marie Antoinette bath.
I've got some of the ingredients here.
First of all, really important, ass's milk.
Now, because we're in France, it was always long-life UHT ass's milk.
A big pitcher of ass's milk, in there. Just to give it a nice bit of moisture.
On top of the ass's milk, Marie Antoinette would then add
blanched almonds, pine nuts, linseed, lemon peel, rose petals,
marshmallow and lily bulbs into her extraordinary bath.
She liked to bathe more than anyone else at court.
People thought she was odd, because she liked to have two baths a week.
Other people would have one bath a fortnight, a month.
Some only bathed once a year.
Marie Antoinette was the first to introduce
bathing etiquette and the flush toilet to Versailles.
And for the sake of modesty, she would get in fully clothed.
We have the grit. The pure grit!
It's like walking on Brighton beach.
It really is.
It's quite a heavy tread underfoot.
And just... Just in there like that.
Oh, that's good. Just sat on a lemon.
Sitting in her sodden chemise, Marie Antoinette would receive visitors,
crochet, and even have breakfast in her bath.
Ah! Le croissant!
The croissant, a symbol of what it's to be French.
It's as French as striking, sullenness and baguettes.
Yet, it isn't French at all. It's got nothing to do with France.
It's a Viennese pastry, called a kipfel, which was actually invented
to commemorate the victory over the Turks in 1683 - there was a big siege.
The croissant, the crescent, is supposed to resemble the Islamic moon.
'So, there you go. One of France's most treasured exports,
'actually originated in Marie Antoinette's Austria.'
I'm taking Sue into town, fresh from her bath and smelling of roses,
to witness the latest novelty in Enlightenment France.
Electricity, freshly imported from America,
was wowing crowds hungry for scientific knowledge.
I'm going to be investing in wind.
HE BLOWS RASPBERRY Yes, exactly.
Benjamin Franklin, the supposed discoverer of electricity, was now living in Paris.
Even the King and Queen went to see demonstrations exactly like these.
The next one, you'll have to go and stand over this metallic plate.
You have to take off your shoes.
'Uncertain about what's ahead, I'm letting Sue go first.'
Oh no, this is like the electric chair. This isn't right.
Instead of charging the metallic ball, we will charge you.
Negatively, with electricity.
I've got enough negative energy,
so anything positive you can put in there...
You don't have to worry. It will be OK.
Oh! Ah! My glasses are stinging!
'Marie Antoinette was so fascinated by electricity,
'that she passed currents through her body as a health cure.
'It's taken down Sue's beehive in one fell swoop.'
Ah! I don't like it! This is horrible!
Did people... Ah! Did people... Ow! Did people actually...
Turn it up! Kill her!
Don't! What do you mean, "kill her"?!
Let's have a look, where's the full power?
Where do we turn it up?
It says maximum!
No, no, no! AH! It's like lizards!
No, Giles! No more! No more! Ah!
'Radical thinkers of the day fell in love with electricity,
'and made it a symbol of the revolution and the New World Order.'
The hair's going up more and more.
'This current is so strong,
it's making sparks appear at the ends of our fingers.'
Too close. Not too close.
Can I make sparks come out of my arse?
Not too close!
OH! Jesus Christ! That went right through me, really badly.
I just seriously got...
You didn't seriously get it, I seriously got it!
I'm surrounded by metal and you're not,
and you stuck your anus into my force field! And look at me!
That's how the rich used to pass their time, electrocuting themselves.
A big cigarette lighter, basically.
'Back at home, and fired up for food, we sit down to a private supper.
In private, the King and Queen dropped the showy food of the Grand Couvert,
and tucked into the stuff they really liked.'
This is just for the King.
The King revelled in roast meats and game,
while the Queen, keen to keep her figure, hardly ate anything,
just simple broths, and biscuits dipped in water.
Broth for her.
The Queen's supper was very much like a nouvelle cuisine type of eating.
The way of eating was a plain soup, with a roast. Really nice and simple.
A very modern way of eating.
The King, still, after the extravagance of breakfast and lunchtime,
still managed to get three or four different roasts.
I don't know how he does it. No wonder he was called a fat pig by his friends.
Royal soup? I think that's what it's called.
Urgh.
Oh dear, that's sort of salmon roe...
It's not salmon roe. Might be cod roe.
'Eel flesh, pike livers and fish eggs
might be Louis' idea of a simple soup, but it's not mine.'
Carp roe? Carp roe.
Then there's death row, which is what you'll be on as soon as your...
gastric juices have felt that. It's not as good as the frog's leg soup.
'Ditching the soup, I'm moving on to an even scarier dish.
'These rabbits have been stuffed, rolled and roasted,
'then placed, facing each other, in a sea of gravy.'
I don't know what he felt about these Rabbits In Love...
Don't separate them! Oh dear, that rabbit's...
Is the head gonna come off?
It is!
The silence of the lapin.
That was horrible.
The decapitated head.
That's gonna remind us of the moment
after you've been decapitated and I haven't yet been.
You were decapitated before me. Was I? Sorry, but you were. No.
You lose your head about ten months before I lose mine.
'Overburdened with the weight of monarchy,
the king hid his unhappiness in hunting and eating.'
They said I was a medieval glutton.
I don't know how they got that impression.
You're one big, bad, greasy bourbon, aren't you?
Over done.
So you take comfort in food and eat yourself half to death
and I take comfort in buying lots of dresses.
I'm coquettish and silly and I go and buy a new frock.
They were a miserable pair.
The thing is, in truth, I'm sad now, afterwards.
I was reasonably chipper before.
I think it's one of those things about managing expectation.
That's what makes you happy when your life is that boring.
You look forward to a meal, so you make a big deal,
have 40 courses and it's great fun.
Once you've ploughed your way through,
you feel sad, your blood goes to your stomach.
I've drunk too much.
I've got indigestion and now I feel miserable.
'Although King Louis hated his job and Marie Antoinette detested life at court,
they found solace in each other.
Marie Antoinette made Louis happy, and he indulged her every whim.'
It's day three, and it's 789, the fateful year of the revolution.
In the grip of a severe famine,
grain riots broke out across the land.
Oblivious to it all, I'm off to the mother ship, Versailles itself.
Bonjour! Bonjour! Bonjour.
Leaving the main palace far behind me,
I'm heading straight to Marie Antoinette's toy town farm
she built at great expense at the bottom of her garden.
Here, under the influence of the leading thinker of the day, Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
she rejected the rigidity of court life, milked beribboned animals,
collected eggs and lived the life of what she imagined to be the perfect peasant.
I can't tell you how fortunate it is
to find these perfectly cleaned Versailles eggs.
This is a perfect example
of how the starving masses of France are existing right now.
Basically Disney World.
They're not starving, they're living a lovely, idyllic existence and I,
the Queen, wish I could have just a sliver of what they've got right now.
In the midst of her fantasy of a farm,
Marie Antoinette invited all her lady friends to tea.
On our menu is brioche cake, Austrian apple strudel,
orange flower, rosewater and lemon meringue, macaroons, jellied fruits,
candied violets and bowlfuls of the latest sweets.
Meringues. A filthy chalice of confectionary, it really is.
There you are. Isn't that wonderful?
'Stocked with expensive imports of green tea from Asia
and sugar from the West Indies,
'a dainty feast like this was the most expensive meal of all.
'It was like putting all the Queen's tiaras on one plate.'
A person coming in wouldn't really recognise this as food.
This would be something, an ornament,
something which was devised quite simply for a different world,
and a world which had no relation to work and survival.
'Even the porcelain was custom-made.'
I'd like to talk about your breast cup, your majesty.
How dare you? We've only just begun and already you're on breasts.
I'm so excited to be here with one of your breast cups!
'Specially commissioned for Marie Antoinette's private dairy,
the jug was a symbol of fertility and nourishment,
and a sign of the Queen's role as mother of France.'
They were modelled on Marie Antoinette's real bosoms, as you can see. Nipple!
She was quite buxom.
These were modelled on my own bosoms.
There's a slight contrast of shape.
'On being told that the starving populace had run out of bread,
Marie Antoinette answered with the most famous phrase in French history,
"Let them eat cake."'
I'm dying to find out whether she actually said it.'
True or not true? Not true. I think probably not true.
There's lots of rumours about what actually happened,
one being that Rousseau wrote a story about a little princess who said it.
It wasn't based on Marie Antoinette but everyone took it as such.
She wouldn't have said that, she was around 10
when Rousseau's book was released that had that line.
Marie Antoinette wished desperately to be a loving wife and mother,
a very straightforward person.
Earlier, you mentioned Lady Di
and there's something of this awful paradox
which poor Diana Spencer went through as well
of wanting to be a happy wife and mother,
but at the same time having to conform to a court etiquette which,
frankly, was extremely repulsive to her.
The tragic ending is almost inevitable.
'Ensconced in her hideaway, Marie Antoinette was nicknamed
'Madame Deficit, and accused of spending France in to ruin.
'By now, she was the most hated woman in the nation.'
Leaving Sue to her macaroons,
I've escaped in to Paris for a very different kind of meal.
As the grain harvests failed across the land, the King launched a competition
to find a new crop that would save France from famine.
So, today, I'm having a banquet
created by the visionary pharmacist Auguste Parmentier,
made entirely from the ingredient he called the saviour of France...
the potato.
To make potatoes accepted, he made a banquet
with very nicely prepared potatoes.
'Popular legend had it that potatoes caused leprosy
and they were dismissed as pig food.
These early recipes were Parmentier's way of proving their safety.'
Pomme puree avec de l'eau.
That's just mashed potato and water, isn't it? Yeah.
Dipping potato bread in to potato soup is just like eating potato.
It is an experience, anyhow.
Ah, more potatoes!
'After potato soup and potato salad,
'it's time for mashed potato disguised as a fish.'
'But not even starvation persuaded the peasants to eat potatoes,
'and with recipes like this, quite frankly, I'm not surprised.'
At that time it was completely new.
It was really new and these potatoes which only pigs ate,
it was something wonderful to have a meal like that.
In that case, we should toast to potatoes.
Let us toast to the future of la pomme de terre!
On the eve of the revolution,
Marie Antoinette held the last private dinners for her favourites
with an abandon that defied the mood of the times.
So tonight, with revolution in the air,
we're having a feast of our own.
You have first to start with your complexion.
'Beauty historian Elisabeth de Feydeau has come to help us with our make-up.'
Are you absolutely certain I have to do this?
Yes, you have to, because men and women are...
The same? Yeah, the same. In France, perhaps.
You have to let go of the idea of the masculine, Giles.
I look like the Phantom of the Opera!
Next is the red, it must be furious on your face.
Perhaps you can do it more natural?
You think this is too staged?
You look like a clown.
'The aristocracy's reliance on perfume, powder and rouge was seen
as effeminate and debauched, the sign of a nation in decay.'
HE LAUGHS Oh, God!
So women would paint on extra blue veins
to show how aristocratic they were? Yeah.
Bit on the boobs as well?
Not too much.
Yeah. Perfect.
You are very aristocratic! D'you think so?
'The next step in the toilette was the beauty spot,
'to be placed in different locations on the face
'as messages in a secret, saucy language.'
You have nine positions, each has a meaning.
Perhaps you can put it on your eyes because you'll be gallant.
There?
No, in the corner of your eyes.
'And last but not least, the powdered wig, called a pouf.
Anchoring it to the real hair was so complex
that ladies wouldn't take it off for weeks.'
I feel like an ornate cotton bud.
Marie Antoinette's private dinners were still lavish,
but the cooking was very different from the food displayed at the public meals.
These dishes used fewer ingredients combined in simpler ways,
a philosophy that would become the bedrock of modern French cuisine.
Basically everything we are making today are classic dishes
that we learn at school when we're about 14, 16.
Refined the great chef Antonin Careme after the revolution,
these private court dishes would become France's greatest export.
Champagne is good for dinner during the...
'Joining us for our supper would be a mix of our own favourites,
'including a French TV star, Sandrine Voillet, a ballet dancer,
'and a common floozy.'
'And it's always good to get off to a cracking start.'
Don't point it at me!
Or at my wig!
BREAKING GLASS
I love hearing girls shriek!
Ooh!
Cup-A-Soup chicken, my favourite!
Is that Creme du Barry?
Oui, it is the cream of du Barry.
'Made from just three ingredients, cauliflower, chicken stock and cream
the vegetables in Creme du Barry soup were a visual reference
to the wigs of the ladies at court.'
You can put the head of the du Barry in your in your potage if you want.
Mickael, you genius!
'Next is poached salmon served with langoustines
on a bed of newly-invented mayonnaise.'
'Created in 1756 to commemorate a French naval victory.
over the British on the isle of Mahon, it was now the court's favourite sauce.'
Just at the opposite of the table, you've got the brown bread.
The people were eating only brown bread, but, during the revolution,
the monarchy was eating brown bread to sympathise,
maybe, with the population. To be closer to them.
Having brown bread with their entire salmon and lobster?
Absolutely!
'Last in this course is a delicate carrot and ginger mousse.'
Ow! The blood of the king! It's not blue.
Oh no, he's got a tiny prick.
LAUGHTER
In the next service are some of the greatest dishes
ever created for the French court.
Fillets of sole stuffed with truffles and mushrooms...
...duck a l'orange...
...mille-feuille of foie gras with truffles...
and crayfish in champagne.
This food is so good, I'm throwing etiquette to the wind.
Oh, man, that is some serious foie gras!
This one is the sole. A la Pompadour? A la Pompadour. Ooh!
That's the perfect example of the type of meal Marie Antoinette
could have had at the Trianon,
You can see it's very fresh, very simple. English manner.
Very unlike the court of the Ancien Regime.
'Ladies' wigs recreated the events of the day
with elaborate objects such as fleets of frigates and babies in cribs,
so this is our comment on the state of Sue after four bottles of champagne.'
I'm representing the very best of France.
And to this, we drink. To France!
Yes, to France. To you!
Anything goes! This is exactly what Marie Antoinette liked, no etiquette.
She didn't eat during...
'In our last course, we have some of the Queen's favourite desserts.
Chantilly cake, rum babas, and little custard pies called Wells of Love.'
That is absolutely delicious.
You want to try the preferred drink
of Marie Antoinette and the libertines.
'In this chocolate is vanilla, musk and ambergris,
a liquid secreted by the intestines of the sperm whale.'
'This is 18th century Viagra.'
It was drank at the end of meal to have good sex afterwards.
So where do I put it? Do you just put it straight in? Go on.
You have to drink it!
That's horrible.
That's like a fox has just...in it.
It has a Jeyes Fluid element.
HARP MUSIC PLAYS
'As we digest our dessert with a dance,
in the kitchen, Mickael's made us a final surprise,
a sugar sculpture of the Bastille prison.'
A sending off to the aristocrat, I'm gonna set fire to the Bastille.
This is the beginning of the revolution.
Oh, my God, what's going on here? Wow! La Bastille! La Bastille!
'On 14th July, 1789, the Bastille, the symbol of the King's absolute power,
'was stormed by the revolutionaries and burned to the ground.
'This was the beginning of the end for the King and Queen,
'who had only three months left of their charmed life at Versailles.'
I've got to sleep now with this on my head,
which is apparently what all the great ladies
with huge wigs used to do. They would just...
That is how they would sleep, basically.
It's a cross between a coffin and a petting zoo,
because there'd be so many creatures crawling around in your wig after a while.
It was literally crawling with vermin. Good night.
'We're terribly hung over from the night before
and this non-stop feasting is getting to both of us.'
'In a last-ditch attempt to stave off the revolution,
Royalist newspapers encouraged the nobility to fast one day a week.
The saved money was to be donated to the state.'
'So we're spending today walking.'
'And playing billiards, both of them indigestion cures of the day.'
How did it go?
'We then say a final goodbye to the world of the Ancien Regime,
for, on October 5th, 1789,
Versailles was stormed and the King and Queen
were taken to Paris with their two surviving children.
The days of grand dinners were over.'
That's so nice.
It's day five and it's 1791.
By now, the King and Queen have been under house arrest for two years
in the Tuileries Palace in central Paris.
'Afraid for their lives, they disguise themselves as servants
and attempted to escape.'
Ha. You two, out. Go on!
'Alongside six royals, two servants and four coachman,
they stuffed their carriage with so much baggage
that they could only travel at seven miles an hour.'
It is awful having to flee the Palace,
but on one level you do get to see the sights.
Records still exist of the meal they took with them,
and today we're having it for our lunch.
Only the monarchy could have such a closed mind as to think
it would be appropriate to have a banquet whilst escaping the mob.
You wonder where they stashed it.
Cos I assumed they tunnelled their way out of the palace.
It's basically groin in gravy, I think.
It looks like airplane food, doesn't it?
It's tinned petit pois with...
Ooh, I quite like it!
I don't know why I put on that voice, I'm suddenly the Queen.
"Ooh, I quite like it!"
The invention of aspic was for this meal, cos the Queen loved carrots
but the problem was, like Travel Scrabble, that the pieces would all fly out,
so you would set it in jelly.
'It seems the food was better thought- through than the escape itself.'
Did I get any revolutionaries with my cork? I was aiming for Robespierre.
I'm supposed to be disguised, but this is just... I can't stop myself.
Can't stop myself. Once a queen, always a queen!
Look, there's a little orphan boy. Here!
You moved a bit too fast and covered us in poo, my dear.
'The journey was to end in failure.
'The King's face was recognised from a coin
'and the royal family was captured half-way to the Austrian border.'
Escorted by 6000 soldiers, it took the King and Queen three days
to return to Paris and to prison.
The country was now run by a rebel government
led by the fiercely anti-Royalist Robespierre.
On January 21st, 1793, King Louis XVI was finally sent to the guillotine.
Her husband dead and separated from her children,
Marie Antoinette was now alone in prison awaiting her own fate.
She was eating in a tiny, pokey cell.
She was forced to strip in front of the guards. She was humiliated.
They sheared her hair off.
She wasn't allowed to go to the loo in private.
She tried to huddle behind a curtain
and the jailer swept the curtain to one side and just stood over her.
When she sat down for her last meal, people wanted to say that
it was huge great cuts of meat and patisserie,
and that she gorged up to the end.
But in reality she had a very simple soup,
and even that she could only manage a few drops of.
No recipes of that soup survive so today I'm having the dish created in her honour
after her death by the great chef, Careme,
who added vermicelli to her usual watery broth.
What Careme loved about Marie Antoinette was that she never broke,
despite all her persecutors trying to bring her
to a point of malnutrition and degradation.
Even at the end when she stepped up to the guillotine,
and everyone expected her to crumble, she refused to do so.
Her original soup would have just been very bare and very thin.
But Careme posthumously gave it a little of pep, just something extra
to give her that oomph she needed for her trip to the scaffold.
On October 16th, Marie Antoinette was executed on the guillotine.
Over the next 12 months, in a period known as The Terror,
60,000 people would follow her to their deaths.
Today we've woken up to a very different world.
The Terror is in full swing, and we are no longer the King and Queen.
With Louis and Marie Antoinette dead,
Sue and I must now live as revolutionaries.
So we rendezvous in the centre of Paris to dress the part.
Sorry I'm late. Load of decapitated heads on the road.
'All those loyal to the nation wore the red, white and blue
of the new revolutionary flag, the tricolore.'
Get this on.
There must be a shortage of women if I'm suddenly Miss France.
The guillotine was installed in this very square.
So today we're having a revolutionary picnic as we watch the heads roll.
No less than anything else. A chestnut, Citizen Sue?
Thank you, Citizen Giles. I'm going to try some pain d'egalite.
It's great, because if you don't want to eat it,
you could just use it to smash windows.
What an irony that it's impossible to share the pain d'egalite.
'Now the new government decreed
that only one type of bread could be baked in the city, equality bread.
'Mixing the white flour of the rich with the brown of the poor,
this truly was a utopian loaf.'
Anybody making anything with fine white flour or sugar - guillotine!
It's got to be a couple of parts wheat flour
and then some rye flour, and then everyone's happy.
'It wasn't just what you ate but how you ate it
that could send you to the guillotine.
'Everything to do with the aristocratic table was banned.
'So there was no cutlery, no etiquette, and all food was shared.'
We're not allowed knives and forks because knives and forks are bourgeois.
Pigeon? Thanks. And the serving suggestion, really, is just lovely.
This one's still having a little...
I don't even want to talk about this one's doing.
Not even my cat wants to eat it - look.
A healthy animal doesn't want to touch it. Got a glass?
No glasses, Citizen Giles.
This is the proletariat - we drink from the bottle.
'Here, watching the guillotine, woman knitted
'and Madame Tussaud made waxwork models of the decapitated heads.'
That looks more delicious than the pigeon.
'She would later display these in London.'
Food of the poor?
'In the midst of all this madness,
'a truly revolutionary recipe was born.'
Ah, the very first French fries.
These are actually the very ones, which is why they're a bit soggy.
'Blessed with a decent recipe, the potato was finally adopted by the people
'and became the food of the new republic.'
That is as bad a meal as I've ever had!
SHE SHOUTS IN FRENCH
'It's 1794 and it's our final day in France.
In a revolt against the endless killings,
the leader of the revolution, Robespierre himself,
was sent to the guillotine and the Terror was over.'
'No longer in fear of their lives, the nobility came out of hiding
and returned to fancy fashion, 'this times as a macabre means of self expression.'
'In honour of those killed, women gave themselves short guillotine haircuts,
sewed the executioner's cross on their backs,
and wore some very twisted jewellery.'
In this celebration of death, the final touch was a red ribbon around the neck
to mark the strike of the blade.'
Lovely.
'Bent on revenge, angry young aristocrats would roam the streets
'looking for revolutionaries to beat to death.'
'In a wave of retribution called the White Terror,
'more people were killed than in the Terror itself.'
After battering revolutionaries, I like to eat a massive feast.
You were engaging in that with some gusto.
It gets the blood up. This was before gymnasiums.
What do you have to do to get a restorative broth around here?
I'm getting twig happy now.
'For our lunch we sit down at the newest craze
in revolutionary Paris, the restaurant.'
Bonjour. Bonjour.
'Named after the broth they sold, called restaurer,
'these new establishments were counted as the health spas of the day.'
It's sort of ironic that a soup designed for the weak-chested
should resemble phlegm.
Oh, but it's really nice.
It is really nice. The meat is quite chewy, isn't it?
'As a new class flooded into Paris looking for places to eat,
'the restaurant developed into what we know today -
rooms in which you sat at your own table
'and ordered the food you wanted off a new fangled "menu".'
Une omelette, s'il vous plait. Une omelette. Avec 12 ouefs.
Twelve eggs.
'Within a few years, the restaurant would take over Paris.'
Into this new culinary explosion
came the world's first restaurant critic, Grimod de La Reyniere.
Today we are holding a feast in honour of the man who invented my job.
Post-revolutionary Paris went party mad, and to celebrate,
this extraordinary man held extraordinary dinners
to mark the end of the old world and the beginning of the new.
In his mocking tribute to the revolution's obsessions with death and gluttony,
food was served off coffins and live pigs were invited to his table.
I've never eaten in the shadow of a coffin before,
or within smelling distance of a pig, which is a good idea.
With the cataclysm of the French Revolution,
a lot of the nobility have to emigrate.
And their chefs suddenly are out of work. What do they do? They create restaurants.
There weren't half a dozen of them before the revolution, now there are 500.
'To continue our macabre theme, Mickael is cooking us our strangest menu yet.
'A sort of cuisine noir, in which every dish will be black.'
This venison, we're going to marinade it in red wine with some chocolate,
trying to make everything look black or as black as possible.
'We kick off the evening with an oil slick of a soup,
'made not from real turtle but from squid ink and oxtail.'
It was very glutinous. A little stringy.
The soup's good. Cold. A bit cold.
We've got the egg here cooking.
'Downstairs, Mickael's cooking the strangest dish we've seen this week,
'a monstrous egg made from boiling 48 eggs in a pig's bladder.
'Mmm, yummy!'
Aw! It's the...
the rotten egg type of smell.
Tastes pretty bad.
Oh, my word!
Oh, no! What is that?
Is that the monstrous egg?
This is real pig's bladder which, of course... God, it's leaking!
Is it? Bladders will do that in their old age.
'Originally a 15th Century recipe,
this appears to have been Grimod's savage comment
'on the birth of a monstrous new world.'
I'm sorry, that IS Alien. We've recreated Ridley Scott's seminal film.
'I can't believe anyone really ate that.'
That's the pig bladder mostly done.
'At Grimod's dinners, male guests were encouraged
'to wipe their hands on their lady's hair between courses.'
Does anybody want any of the...
Can you pass me that pig's bladder? Pass me that pig's bladder.
Today there shall be nobody touching my hair.
Actually I'm going to vomit.
It's the wrong colour.
Meanwhile, the pig is being squirted to hide the smell of me!
Black Feast or the Black Fraud, as I would call it,
hasn't been a really pleasant experience today.
And having to cook very dark food with very horrible dark flavours
like burnt flavours, everything is black and covered in chocolate,
it hasn't been really nice.
I think Grimod was a bit crazy.
Ahhh!
What is it? I dunno. The menu said mule.
'Next up is venison in chocolate and mule steaks.'
I think the surface is reflective
so you can see your own look of horror as you tuck in. Argh!
'In 1795, Grimod set up the world's first jury of food critics.'
It's a bit more like ostrich.
'Paris' new restaurants sent their dishes to be judged
during weekly, five-hour dinners at his house.
For the first time food becomes something
that everybody can appreciate, if not afford.
Suddenly dining is out there.
It's not the preserve of people in palaces
and kept away from the ordinary person.
'The revolution had democratised food.
'Now the colour of one's bread was no longer determined by one's class,
'but by whether one could afford it.'
The truffle jellies have come out nice, looking good,
but they taste absolutely disgusting.
Just got to finish the cake and that's it really.
But it's probably one of the worst meals I've ever cooked.
It's absolutely disgusting.
I can taste truffles, which is the thing I like.
And I can also taste Basset's liquorice allsorts.
'As an initiation circle into Grimod's critics' circle,
'guests were obliged to drink 17 coffees after dinner.'
'In the spirit of my forebear, I can think of no better end to a bonkers week.'
So, after you. After the eggs... It's hot!
'Despite tonight's horrific meal,
Grimod went on to guide French food into a triumphant new era.'
Oh, come on, man - keep up!
'In a world of restaurants, critics and food available to all,
'the refined dishes first created for the court
would become the classics of a national cuisine
'that would go on to rule the world.'
I win! Unlucky!
You lose! Have another cup of coffee.
Vive la revolution! Vive la revolution!
I loved it. What can I say? Before I've even finished that sentence,
you know. This is a meal to die for.
When you're swilling in pig's excrement,
with the stink of 17 coffees, you know you've lived.
This is what the revolution was for.
We've lived the whole of the French Revolution,
four or five years of terrifying history,
in a very brief space of time.
And without 17 coffees I would have no way of dealing with it.
'Back in the 21st Century, it's time to see
what a week of revolutionary food has done to our bodies.'
So how do the results look this time?
Very surprising.
I'm not too sure if I'm a good doctor or not,
but everything is much better for Giles and Sue.
You see, this king and queen thing really works for us. It did.
So Giles, your cholesterol was 6.7.
After one week of French food it's 6.1.
Your bilirubin was 32, now it's 16, half of it. And the rest is perfect.
'How amazing! Our weight's the same, our sugar levels are lower,
and our livers have actually got healthier.
'Thank God the revolution got us in time.'
Apparently one week of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette diet is very good for people,
so maybe I'm going to prescribe it right now.
What a result. Yeah, nice one.
Just goes to show that the diet you live 24/7 as Giles Coren, restaurant critic,
is actually worse for you
than all that binging and scoffing and truffing you did as Louis XVI,
the most famous pig in the entire history of France.
The idea that I could follow the example of a man reviled
and ridiculed by his people for being a glutton, and get healthier,
just shows that they didn't know the half of it, did they?
My cholesterol was down 10%!
Next week, Sue and I will be eating our way
through the roaring twenties.
It was the era to be young and beautiful.
In the few hours we're sober, we'll be living the high life,
and I'll be delving deep into Sue's psyche.
Yah, my darling!
That was all a myth. Oh!
No, you don't have to pay! No, no, I've got...
We're not begging, we're not begging, we're not begging.
Who are you? It's the Scarlet Pimpernel!
Oh dear, you look so bald!