Behind the Scenes Minis: Foodie Fun and Bureaucracy

Holly talks about stories from Henri Charpentier's life that didn't make it into the latest eponymous foods episode. She and Tracy also talk about the Domesday Book and stories about time travel. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Fry and
I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We had another installment of eponymous
foods this week. Yeah. This one came about entirely because

(00:23):
I had the shocking discovery that prayleans were an eponymous food. Yeah. Yeah.
And it happened because one of my friends and I
were discussing praleens and text messages recently, and I thought
I haven't tried my hand at those in a long time.
I should refresh on the best possible techniques for making them.
And I did, and one of the recipes I came

(00:43):
across mentioned that it was named for Plessy Prana and
I was like, Jim, excuse. And then I was suddenly
like deep in it, and I was like, well, I
guess we're loaded up for another pondu. Yeah, delicious, delicious.
Most of my notes to discuss for behind the Scenes

(01:05):
are about crepe susette. Okay, okay. First of all, if
you can get your hands on that Enri Charpontier biography,
do it. It's a very charming read. It was republished
recently ish, so it's not hard to get hold of.
He calls this biography the recipe of himself, like, this

(01:27):
is the recipe of me, all of the things that
went into making me the person I am, And it
is very charming the way he structures stories. We mentioned
in this episode that he just kind of blurts out
his recipe for crape as he is telling the story
of inventing them, and that's how all of it goes.
There aren't like, now here's the recipes. He'll be like,

(01:50):
and then I made this thing for this important visiting noble. Oh,
here's how we threw that together. And it's like, all
of the measures are there, all of the methods. It's
just written out in prose dial instead of the way
you normally see a recipe, which is pretty interesting. He
also talks a lot about, you know, kind of the
blunders that he made and the sense of right and

(02:14):
wrong that he brought with himself from growing up in
a poor family in the country to these incredibly luxurious
spaces where they were serving very famous and important people.
I mentioned that he got fired from some jobs. He
quit some jobs basically like he thought of people weren't

(02:36):
treating their staff correctly, it was not worth staying, which
is a really interesting idea in this point in time
when we hear so many stories of people just being
kind of beaten down by their employers in service jobs
and not having any recourse, and he kind of seemed
to not care, although it did almost kill him. There

(02:57):
is a great quote though that I loved because these
jobs that he had when he was in London to
learn English, and he was working for this woman there
was essentially like the housekeeper who was a pretty young
woman herself, and he was really distraught and kind of
horrified by the way that the staff was fed because

(03:21):
at night their only meal was like cheese and crackers
for dinner, while like they were literally serving people these
you know, multi course, really beautiful, expensive meals. And so
he had kind of finagled the owner of the house,
his boss, to let him take over doing all of
the grocery shopping because he had learned how to do

(03:42):
it from his stepbrother who was a really well known
chef and would go to farmer's markets and like haggle
and teach him how to buy the best fresh produce.
Also that book if you want to learn how to
pick produce he's got you on everything, like he yeah, really,
especially for local produce. He's great. But he ended up

(04:02):
like there was a time where both he and the
housekeeper were hungry and it was not their designated meal time,
and he was like, I don't care, I'm gonna cook
us something really quick. And he mentions that he basically
just made them like scrambled eggs. But there's a quote
in it that I thought was the best thing ever,

(04:22):
which is, when you are hungry, a pair of eggs
is never a mistake. And I was like, that is
solid advice, because when I'm very hungry and I can't
think of anything, I can scramble a couple eggs really quick,
and I'm great. Yeah, that's when I'm having to cook
for myself. Something involving eggs is like a big staple,

(04:43):
quick and easy. Yeah, he got He left that job
because he had spent saving so much money on the
grocery bill that he was basically using the excess to
buy the staff better groceries so they could eat better food.
And he got caught roasting chickens for the staff and

(05:05):
got in trouble and he was like, if you don't
want us to eat right, I don't want to work here,
and that's when he left. And this brings me to
the poodle story. Okay, so he really speaks very very
I don't even know how to describe it. It's not
just lovingly, it's not even adoringly. It's somewhat reverently of

(05:27):
this poodle because he was after he left that job,
and he had initially paid up his rent in advance
on a room, but that ran out and he got evicted,
and so he started sleeping under benches in pair in London.
And this in and of itself was a big education

(05:50):
for him, like that was something he had never experienced before,
and he was really sort of shocked once again by
like what the culture of life on the street was
for kids. But he mentions one night hiding under a
bench and there was a policeman coming along and like
hitting the benches with his stick, and he found this
one that was out of the way, and he hid

(06:11):
there and a dog came and laid down next to him,
and he realized it was a poodle that like was
in rough shape. And he said he was sure the
poodle had originally in fact been in France, because it
responded when he spoke French to it. That's a whole
other story, but I love it. I love it, but
that that poodle stayed with him every single night, and

(06:33):
like the poodle would go out and hunt on its
own and occasionally bring him things back. But he was
pretty convinced that the poodle knew that if he found
something and the two of them were together, like they
would have to fight, because it was literally like every
man for himself in terms of what to eat. But
that the night that he thought he was going to
die was the one night that when the policeman came through,

(06:55):
instead of hunkering down with him, the poodle got out
from under the bench and started barking for the policeman
to come over. And so he believes in his heart
that poodle saved his life. And according to his story,
again unverifiable but pretty great, when he did recover in
the hospital, when he was well enough to actually like
speak and be functional, the policeman came to visit him

(07:18):
and had in fact adopted the poodle and then brought
him to visit before he left for France again, which
is a very sweet story. I don't care if it's true.
It's a great story. It hurts nobody for me to
believe that's true. I love it. It also feeds into
the poodle fever I've been living in lately, but that's
a different thing. Also, not ready for a poodle, not
ready for a dog at all. I have one more

(07:41):
thing to talk about. Okay. The crape sousettes of my
youth were a lie? Oh no, okay, how from someone
that grew up in a household with French speakers from
France and should have known better. So I don't know
if this was a choice, but I got crepe susette

(08:03):
as a kid that was not citrusy at all. It
was like maple ley and it was not set on fire.
And so when I had real crape susette as an adult,
I was like what And also hooray no shade to
maple syrup. But that's not crape susette. No real crape
suseet is something else. Yes, yeah, delicious. I want to

(08:26):
cook all these things now. I have not have not done,
have not done Charpontier's crape recipe yet, but I will,
right I will. And I haven't retested my my prayin
lean thing, but I will. Got to use a thermometer.
It's not going to solidify right, right. I've had some

(08:47):
failures in the past. That's why I'm a little trepidacious.
I'm not sure if I've had crape Suzette. I kind
of feel like I might have had someone we were
in New Orleans that time, maybe, But I also sort
of feel like the only thing I've ever had that

(09:10):
was served flaming tableside was Baked Alaska, but it was
like cruise ship Baked Alaska, which is prepared in enormous quantities,
And I don't know if I don't know how it
compares to something served not on a cruise ship. I

(09:32):
don't either, But you know, I like a little flombay
now and again, yeah, yeah, I mean most of the time,
if you are in a restaurant setting and they're doing flombay,
everything is so carefully controlled that, you know, like even
if you are maybe one of those people that is
afraid of fire, because I know that's a thing, it's

(09:54):
controlled enough that it's gonna burn out before it could
cause any trouble. Sure, you know what I mean, Like
the amounts of things in it that are flammable are
very carefully measured. So that even if no one blew
it out, it's gonna go out. Watch I say that,
and someone will be like, I went to a restaurant

(10:16):
and they were not careful and I caught my hair
on fire. Here's my video of a disaster. Yeah. I
hope not for anybody's safety, but yeah, every time we
do an eponymous foods I'm then like, well, I just
want to eat everything on earth now, thank you. Yeah,
Gripsy is it? And Flambey and the sandwich thing just

(10:38):
cracks me up. Yeah, We've gotten so many emails and
comments and whatever. You miss the most obvious one, it's
the sandwich, and it's like, well that's sort of sort
of a different thing, yes and no, and we kind
of there's a lot of setup. Yeah, so it was
time this time. There's really just so many food We've

(11:00):
talked about it another you said in this episode another
food history episode. So many foods that really were meant
to be like portable for people to take something out
into the fields, to be able to eat, yeah, without
having to go back to the house, and something in
Sconsdin bread is not right. We are aware of how

(11:24):
many conversations on the internet there are about whether something
is or is not a sandwich. I don't need to
participate in these conversations or hear about them. I don't
think you were in the office the day I lost
my mind over this issue. No, I don't think you
have inadvertently awakened the beast. So I hate, and I'm sorry,

(11:52):
And I know hate is a strong word, but I
hate when people argue about food in terms of like preference. Sure,
just eat what you want. Yeah, there are so few
joys in life. Take the ones that you have and
run with them and don't poo poo anybody else's. But
there was a time in our office when there was

(12:13):
a project being discussed via group email, and everyone started
having arguments about things like what is or is not
a sandwich? What is or is not the superior blobbery
blue bity blue, and I you know when you're on

(12:34):
group emails anyway, Yeah, those aren't my favorite either. They
just tend to like you're getting like an email every
thirty seconds, and if you're trying to do something like
for me, even stopping to be like remove me from
this is a pain in the neck, right, So then
you're getting the constant influx of like bling bling, bling
bling while you're trying to write or research something or whatever.
And I literally stood up and said, with expletives included,

(12:58):
that I won't put here. I do not care what
anyone likes or eats. And everyone was like, uh, oh,
is roman about something completely irrational? But I just I
had just had it. I was like, don't, don't. I
think there's a lot less of it now. But our
whole office used to have a very reply all culture.
I mean specifically in everyone replying all to the email

(13:19):
in an ongoing way, not anything else that has the
proper name reply all. Yeah. And it could get and
some of that was great, because sometimes it was workshopping.
Stem it just was like, this is a topic that
I just hate. Don't insult other people's tastes. It's not cool.
I don't care. I don't love catch Up, but I

(13:41):
don't care if people put it on their eggs. If
that makes them love it, great, that's marvelous. I feel
similarly about when someone is living somewhere and they're having
weather that is atypical for where they live, and people
start chiming in with how much more dream the weather
is where they live? Right? And I'm like, we don't

(14:03):
need you don't need to be passing judgment on the
people from Atlanta when there's three inches of snow that
brings the whole city to a halt if you live
in Maine, Like yeah, yeah, yeah, any of those just
let's all be kinder and more chill to each other.

(14:26):
That's sort of what I think right. The part where
I really get a little bit and it applies to
both of these scenarios is and actually, something I was
talking to my husband about just this morning about doctor visits,
is like, if you give me information in a way
that is condescending, I don't care how much data you
have to back it up. I don't want to listen
to you. Sure, Sure, just don't. Yeah, there's no reason

(14:51):
it's insulting to me. Why would I want to trust
your judgment if you cannot judge how to be kind
to people when sharing information? Anyway, That's all we talked
about doomsday book this week. We did. I didn't write. Usually,

(15:15):
as I'm putting together any outline, I write a bunch
of side notes of like the things I want to
talk about. I'm behind the scenes, sure, and I don't
have a ton of those. This time, because part of me,
just the whole time I was working on this was like,
did William the first understand how to not have bureaucracy
in a way we've never figured out? Again, That's all

(15:39):
I kept thinking about, you know. I mean we both
work for and have worked for a number of large companies.
So I'm not singling out any one of them, because
they all seem to have that issue of like I
have a great project idea and someone's like, that's great,
but like the execution of it becomes this long arduous
thing that sometimes years and years when it's like, but

(16:02):
if if you just let my team do it, we
could do it in like a month and a half.
That has happened at you know, almost every company I've
ever been at. That certainly applies to things. I mean,
it is a notorious joke that like government doings take
an extra long time. Yeah. So the idea that this
all happened without, as Professor Baxter mentioned, without any digitization,

(16:27):
without just really runnimentary tools in terms of what we
would think of today running something like this, and it
happened so quickly. I'm just like, what is the lesson
we can take away? Yeah? Well, and what I remember
from that twenty twenty one research that we talked about
was that like the first draft of it was super fast. Uh,

(16:48):
but like the compiling and revising part did take longer
and have more chaos is maybe not the right word,
but like the the fact checking compiling part, right, that
was that took longer. Yeah, that took a longer process,
but like still uh given everything pretty astounding. Yeah, I

(17:10):
really want to know about that one scribe. Mm hmm.
This is this is the movie I want, Okay, or
maybe even a novel, I don't care, Just this one
scribe who all they do all day long is use
their abbreviated Latin and their beautiful handwriting to collate all
of this day of things. Yeah, into one long honk

(17:34):
and list of a book. And then the person that
comes after them and does the fact checking and writes
little notations that just the whole thing fascinates me. Yeah,
it seems like dark arts must have been involved. Speaking
of novels, are you familiar with Connie Willis only by name?

(17:56):
I haven't read any other work. Uh. Connie Willis has
a book called the Doomsday Book, but it is spelled
Doomsday do o m phonetically yeah, the way one would
expect it to be spelled. And it's part of a
collection of books that are about these historians from Oxford

(18:18):
University who do their work via time travel. And it's
been long enough ago since I read the Doomsday book
that like, I don't want to try to summarize it.
I'll probably mess something up. But if I'm remembering correctly,
that's the one where somebody goes back in time, they

(18:39):
mess something up. It's not exactly that they mess something up,
it's that there's factors involved. This person winds up unexpectedly
during the Black Death, which was not the plan. Simultaneously,
back in the present, there is a massive influenza outbreak
happening that may the people on the ground that are

(19:01):
supposed to be like supporting this person who's back in
the past and bringing them home again, like they're all
out of commission with this massive flu pandemic. All of
this seems like it might read really differently now in
the year twenty twenty four, and when I originally read it,
which was well well over a decade ago, having not

(19:23):
you know, lived in a time of airborne disease pandemic.
But yeah, I find out of those books really interesting.
I'm like, did they have to violate the prime directive?
But then I'm folding in a completely different and wrong thing. No,
I think if I'm remembering the sort of premise of

(19:44):
these books correctly, the universe kind of resists time travel
that could dramatically affect the future. And that is why
when they send somebody back into the past, sometimes they
don't wind up where they expected because the universe has
been like, nah, you can't go to that moment. I

(20:06):
could be paraphrasing this badly. If this if the idea
of historians from Oxford time traveling into the medieval period
sounds interesting to you, I recommend you know, to getting
that book from the library or whatever is relying on
my how you know, decade plus old recollection of it. Yeah.

(20:28):
I you know, we talked about how we would use
the time machine in various ways. Yeah. Maybe now we
can add to the list. Figure out why they were
so efficient? Yeah. Now, Unfortunately, the problem may just be
that people were terrible working conditions. Yeah, afraid to not

(20:48):
be efficient. Yeah. Yeah, Well, and it thinks are a
little bit different when you have a king who can
unilaterally decide things, right, versteat of committees, discussions bureaucracy. Yeah,
when the bureaucratic ladder is relatively short, things do move faster.

(21:10):
That doesn't mean it's better, It doesn't mean it just
means it's faster now. But it would be nice if
things like you know, just basic home assessments, et cetera,
went a little faster. Although I will say, as a
shout out to speed, we, you know, a couple of
years ago, added a little bit onto our house as

(21:30):
part of a bigger lots of stuff that needed to
get fixed because it was in pretty dire straits. And
I mean, I don't think the inspector had like finished
signing his name to say yes, I've inspected the house
and it's done. And we had like a property assessor
out here the next day, just like on the doorstep
going on, ready to see the new stuff. So some
parts of bureaucracy move very quickly. Indeed, Yeah, I had

(21:55):
kind of the opposite experience when I I had to
do a massive amount of work on the house that
I owned in Atlanta, which is a very long story,
but that whole project took almost a year, some of it,
you know, because insurance was paying for it, and that

(22:18):
caused there to be various things that had to be
done in a certain way. But then some of it
was also like permitting, getting the permit to do the
thing just took so long. See, we had the opposite. Yeah,

(22:43):
I don't want to get too off kilter talking about permodation.
But our contractor that we ended up working with and
who we've continued to work with and we really love,
they normally don't work in our county. Oh, I see
the county you used to live in. And when they

(23:05):
put in the applications for permits, they had approvals in
like three days. Oh wow, and they were like, we
want to work in this county forever. But then we
found out where the slowdown was, and it was on
inspection because our inspector was very very thorough, to the
point of, like, really where a lot of things happened

(23:28):
that made us have to pull things out and redo
them even though they were perfectly fine. Nobody was cutting corners.
But like we discovered I don't quote me on this
because I don't know the actual code, but this is
how it was explained to me. The little tiny addition
we did to the house, the grade that the roof

(23:49):
has to be at is like two degrees different than
the next county over. And they had always worked in
that county and not live and so then they were like,
well you have to redo the roof. Yeah, And it
was like a lot of little stuff like that kept
coming up. Yeah, and that was where slow down was.
But the permitting was fast as lightning. And like I said,
they were on our door step the day after the
final inspections. So yeah, I had stuff like the entire

(24:13):
house had to be gutted down to the studs. I remember.
I remember going over there at one point and there
were no insides to it, and I don't remember which
thing had been like. I think maybe there was plumbing
that needed to be moved to bring the kitchen set
up up to code. And when the inspector that came out,
they were like, well, see the issue now is I

(24:35):
can see the wiring and the wiring is not so
now we have to fully update all the wiring. Yeah.
That is the trick if you have a dream of
buying an old house and renovating it. Yeah, in case
anybody out there doesn't know, codes change over the years
and your beautiful house that seems like it functions perfectly fine.

(24:59):
Will so be discovered to not be up to current
code and that can lead to a lot of having
to do things you maybe hadn't planned for. Yes, uh,
it's a lot. Fortunately I was not living in the house.
No one was living in the house at that moment,
and so the fact that it took forever and kept

(25:21):
having additional things that had to be taken care of
was a giant inconvenience, but like not the worst thing
that ever could have happened. Yeah, yeah, all of ours was,
like I said, on a little addition to the house
that was not right. We could live in the house
just fine without that having been completed and with it
being slowed down. But woof right, woof, William the Conqueror

(25:45):
wouldn't have let it take that long. I don't know,
that's ridiculous. I'm not you know, hero worshiping William the
conquer Or anything. That's uh. This is yet another moment
though in because I've certainly, you know, studied the Battle
of Hastings sure throughout the years, but I really just
like revisiting all of his life and like the constant battling. Yeah,

(26:10):
to preserve what you have and gain more. I once
again am like, who on earth would want to be
part of royal succession? Not this gal? I got dresses
to make. I don't have time to be defending people
all the time from trying to take my stuff. Just
doesn't sound fun to me. No, no, not even one

(26:32):
little bit. It does make me think a lot about
censuses and surveys and how they all work and what
they can achieve. And I'm glad we could peek at
Doomsday Book a little bit because it is it is
a fascinator, and I do I do find myself fascinated
at the reverence with which people talk about it, because
it is like when we say it is a foundational volume,

(26:57):
that is not an understatement. It's like it is a
very important work for history in general, and certainly English history.
So it's a cool one to think about. You know
what else is cool to think about? What time off.
So if this is your weekend coming up, I hope
that you're not caught up in any kind of bureaucratic

(27:18):
tangle that's slow in anything down for you, and that
you can just relax. If it's not your weekend up,
I double hope that for you, because it's not fun
to get caught up in. That kind of stuff can
be very stressful, so we hope everybody has the most
relaxing coming up a few days they possibly can, and
everyone is good to one another. We will be right

(27:40):
back here tomorrow with a classic episode and then I'm
Monday with something brand new. Stuff you missed in History
Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.