On wine and food, and a seat at ‘Babette’s Feast’.
Have you ever seen the beautiful movie ‘Babette’s Feast’? (written/directed by Gabriel Axel). Based on a story by Danish writer Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen) it is a veritable legend amongst food and wine’ophiles. An evocative portrayal of joy blooming in a seemingly joyless place through wine and food.
I recently re-watched it for the nth. time and again, my food and wine mind was dazzled.
The story goes something like this…
In a remote 19th-century Danish village, two sisters lead a rigid life centered around their father, the local minister, and their church. Both had opportunities to leave the village: one could have married a young army officer and the other, a French opera singer. Their father objected in each case so the sisters end up spending their lives caring for him. Many years later — their father is now deceased — they take in a French refugee from Paris, Babette Hersant, who is grateful to work as a live-in maid. Her only remaining connection to France is a lottery ticket, and fourteen years after her arrival, she wins. Babette wants to repay the sisters for their kindness and offers to cook a French meal for them, a real French meal, on the 100th anniversary of their father’s birth. It proves to be an eye opening experience for the entire village.
I am fascinated with pairing wine and food, and when I watch this film I am further humbled by the power of wine and food together.
A background in analytical chemistry contributes to my incessant ‘Oh! why is that happening?’ response when lovely pairings occur. It gets worse when they don’t! We know chemistry is behind all of it and there’s something comforting about that. We can theoretically make sense of even the grandest food and wine tableau.
I came across an interesting quote recently. I thought about Babette, about wine and food, about chemistry and art. The analytical psychologist Carl Jung, who was also a painter (I love right & left brain people) said:
“Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakes.”
A chemist looks inside reactions to understand what’s taking place. And so it is with food and wine together, we learn more by looking at the chemical interaction. A great deal of this is new ground, so I really relate to Jung’s ‘awakening’ notion. I also marvel at how our traditional food and wine pairings actually evolved.
The curious drinkers and eaters ‘awakened’ through trial and error. They found a success, an elevated experience, and absorbed it. Our job now is learn to do that often, and share it everywhere we can. We must look inside at chemistry to facilitate magic in experience.
Back to Babette.
The film has been studied through many lenses. Social and religious commentary, women’s studies, food history. I really enjoyed this work from Prof. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson Babette’s Feast, a Fable for Culinary France. I especially like the comment referenced below. Another thought to hold onto for later.
When Babette leaves for a time and the sisters return to their task of dispensing their own unappetizingly brown ale-bread soup to the poor, one old man testily throws his spoon down when served the meal that had been perfectly acceptable before Babette’s arrival. Once good taste is learned, there is no return.
When I watch the film, I am in that little kitchen in Denmark. I see her create beauty and practice her art. We watch as food and wine selections topple walls of conflict and suspicion, years of it, between neighbors, spouses, siblings.
Food and wine pairing, eating and drinking together: commensality (think mensa: table).
During the feast preparations, the sisters are completely in awe. There is the large live turtle, the little chirping quail in their cage, and then — bottles.
‘Surely that’s not wine?!’ asks one sister, as Babette reaches towards the burgundy bottle. She, equally incredulous, replies:
‘It is Clos de Vougeot, 1845!’
To Babette, at that moment, the wine's origin is its provenance. Consider the source.
There are so many ideas inspired by this beautiful work! I humbly defer to those more expert in the social sciences for commentary on its importance there. I can contribute more ably in my world, on the chemistry of wine and food together.
To begin.
Babette’s menu has been replicated and the Feast re-enacted many times since the film’s release in 1987 and its subsequent Oscar success. The pairings are quite brilliant and I truly hesitated to analyze them but — we need to look inside, don’t we? We won’t go too deep though. This is not THAT paper.
Turtle Soup ‘Potage à la tortue’. Wine: Amontillado sherry. From the images, Babette's soup looks like a consommé with the turtle meat and croutons suspended in it. (BTW, I really like this recipe, sounds like it’s awfully close to hers). I have read that she used Madeira in the preparation — then served it with amontillado? Good move.
Having Madeira in the soup will up the already sky-high umami level in the consommé. I see what she is doing. Like with like. Balance. Umami in the broth, umami in the wine, voilà Amontillado. This sherry is typically not sweet, of medium weight, nutty, lightly concentrated — which should balance beautifully with the comparably concentrated yet light soup. It sounds like a very good partnership.
‘Blinis Demidoff’. Buckwheat pancakes with caviar and sour cream. Wine: Champagne Veuve Clicquot 1860. The dominant wine challenges I see are umami (caviar), salt (caviar), texture (caviar) and viscosity/creaminess in the sour cream. The pancakes are quite benign alongside the rest of this dish! Salt, umami, cream, and crunch — we need acid, fruit, viscosity, and ah-ha! — that great secret weapon in sparkling wine: ‘excitation’ (of our taste receptors) from the pétillance, the bubbles. Boom. She nailed it.
‘Cailles en sarcophage’ — quail in puff pastry with foie gras and truffle sauce. Wine: Clos de Vougeot 1845.
Wow, really intense work here. Once again, considering elements rather than flavor (that’s how we succeed at this) we see umami (tons) and salt in the sauce, but we also have protein in the mix now, both from the quail and the foie gras. This encourages looking at a red wine for this course. There is also the intensity of the sauce to consider and the continuity and build of the meal.
The wine will need bright acid (salt and umami), good fruit (it’s a lot of umami), some weight (balance) and restrained tannins (the proteins are quite fine). Enter Pinot noir, in this case from one of the greatest vineyards in Burgundy, Clos de Vougeot. I can only imagine how glorious, elegant, graceful this pedigreed wine was with this dish. The stuff that dreams are made of, I have no adequate adjectives.
Salade d’endives. This would be a challenge to make sense of with many wines, but no worries, Babette served water. (Yessssssss!!!)
Dessert. ‘Savarin au rhum avec des des figues et fruit glacé’. Wine: Champagne (no details).
I was super anxious when I saw she had served champagne here. I know how brutal sugar can be to wine. I mean, it will obliterate it, so I had no idea where she was going with champagne. Perhaps if it were slightly off-dry? I did not understand, so I looked inside a little more.
It turns out Savarin the cake itself is not super sweet, more like brioche. This one is soaked with rum, dressed with fresh figs and ‘fruit glacé’. Still dubious. But then —I noticed a JAR of cherries on the table in liquid (see them on the left?) and I realized the cherries weren’t hard-candied per se, they were ‘glacé’ (‘iced’) with syrup — not unusual, I had just totally blanked — so they may not have been uber sweet at all! Whew, relief. I was so worried about that champagne’ s survival.
So let’s add all this together: fresh figs (not cloyingly sweet) brioche dough (not super sweet either) dried fruits and the cherries, all showered in rum. Not a sugar bomb BUT, after a bite or two of that lot, anyone would be glad of resuscitation (the excitation thing again) from a shimmering glass of champagne! It really took me a while to get my head around this one, but we got there. I knew she had to be right, I just had to find the road she had taken.
Later there were cheeses, fruit, and Sauternes; then coffee with Grande Champagne cognac.
It is still an astonishing idea, isn’t it, that she would spend everything she had, ALL those lottery winnings, to create one landmark meal?
When she told the sisters she had no money left and was not going back to Paris, they were very distressed, asking ‘But what shall you do, now that you are poor?’ Babette replied with confidence ‘an artist is never poor’.
And that friends, is our final food and wine thought for today.
Bon appétit.
(All photographs courtesy of MGM, with thanks.)
