Monet: a gourmet

In his first years as a rejected painter by the critics and the public, in which he could barely sell any paintings, Monet was economically helped by his friends, reaching such a point in which Renoir took the leftovers out of his parents’ home to eat. By then, they would get satisfied in taverns with a simple soup, meat, salad, cheese as dessert and bread and wine. But the more famous he got all over the world, the higher his culinary standards were. He turned into a great gourmet and a lover of good cooking, either French or international. He asked for recipes everywhere so that his wife Alice and his loyal cooker Marguerite would cook them for him at home, for example, the Yorkshire Pudding in Savoy Hotel (London) or the Tarte Tatin! Cézanne, Renoir and Millet also helped with their recipes.

They had a familiar cookbook, which is still entered and that shows us how the Monet family used to eat (and they had a lot of children…) and how they received their guests, which were also plenty. Monet was very social and he loved to invite impressionist friends, like Sisley, Renoir, Pissarro, Sargent and Cézanne to have lunch with him (never dinner because he had to wake up quite early to paint), but also politicians like Clemenceau and poets such as Mallarmé and Valéry, Rodin... he tended to offer some homemade cherry liquor, cider or Calvados afterwards. And for tea time, he would aso serve some English scones or Chocolate Cake with cream.

His Giverny home had everything needed to receive his guests: a small grove, poultry, a river to which his children went to fish… Everything was homemade. In their kitchen they had the most advanced gadgets: fridge, a mincer machine and the first ice cream machine! He liked banana ice cream with cream as special Christmas dessert, bananas used to be an exotic fruit only used in special occasions!

The lunch, 1868

He used to wake up every day at 5 am, check if the weather would allow him to paint outside, take a bath and, at 5:30 am, have breakfast. Marguerite served tea, sausages, eggs, bacon, toasts with homemade orange jam and butter, Gouda (especially because he had lived in Le Havre when little) or Stilton (which he discovered while in London) cheese.

His favourite salad was the one with endibias with garlic, croutones, dandelion and bacon. He would always use a lot of black pepper on it.

And from all their recipes, I choose to show you this one:

cristinadelrosso.com // cristinadelrosso.artproject@gmail.com

Sources: Todd, P. The impressionists at home. Londres, Thames & Hudson, 2005

http://www.monetspalate.com/index.html

Joyes, C. Monet’s table. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1989

Recipe: Joyes, page 179

Translation: Lorenzo Vigo

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