Maigret & Larousse

The new Larousse noticed at reference 1 is doing fairly well so far.

Testing with the word 'lavallière', I found nothing in Littré, but found a sort of floppy bow tie in Larousse, named for one Mlle. de La Vallière, aka Louise de La Vallière, née Françoise Louise de La Baume Le Blanc, the first serious mistress of Louis XIV. The French wikipedia entry for her confirms that she did indeed give her name to a cravat, subsequently becoming popular again in the 19th century.

Then we had 'rigolo'. Again, I found nothing in Littré, but found the word in Larousse. As it happened, my guess from the context was more or less right. Roughly amusing or funny, but I don't either word quite catches the flavour of the French.

And last night, watching Gambon do Maigret, we had 'rillettes', something from the luncheon menu of a pavement café, a something which I heard as 'riettes' or 'rietze', so I was not able to track it down until I had recovered the correct spelling from Volume XXIII of the newish-to-me collected edition noticed at reference 2. I have not investigated how the last story in volume 23 came to be the first episode of the Gambon rendering. Presumably the television people had some Maigret buff do the business for them, but he and his thinking are yet to be disinterred. For some reason I assume a he rather than a she, although plenty of ladies like detective novels; perhaps it takes a man to make a fetish or an obsession of them.

So one dictionary has rillettes to be potted meat, which I think is a way of describing a meaty version of the fish paste mentioned the other day. See reference 3. Another talks of finely chopped goose or pork cooked in fat of some kind.  While Littré just talks of pork - while going on to talk of  'rillons' which seems to be what is left when you have tried the fat out of pork or goose. So on this occasion we could have really done with a little picture in Larousse - in absence of which, I guessed some kind of meatball or meatburger, served as a starter.

All of which finally reminded me of 'La Cuisine Familiale' (noticed at reference 4), which showed my guess to have been quite wrong, as it comes down firmly in favour of a pork based paste served in little stoneware pots. But be warned: the recipe talks of a kilo of pork belly, quite a lot of other stuff and five hours cooking time. The French version of our own potted shrimps, once served in the restaurant cars of the trains running between Liverpool Street and Norwich.

PS: I was sorry to read that Louis XIV, having kept La Vallière on for five years or so, moved onto to a new model, and then, rather than letting her, that is to say La Vallière, retire quietly, treated her rather badly, nastily even. To the point of having her special shoe, designed to mitigate the effects of her having one leg slightly shorter than the other, confiscated. The fact that she had been a bit difficult about being dropped - after bearing him a number of children - is no excuse. I had thought better of him. Perhaps just one more example of Acton's law about absolute power corrupting absolutely after all.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/larousse.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/simenon-2.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/razumovsky.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/truffes.html.