In modern Russian, the word gourmet is called both a person who loves a lot and tasty food, and a person who is well versed in cooking, a connoisseur of gourmet cuisine and fine dishes. Curiously, in French, where this word came from, these concepts are separated.
Gourmet and gourmet
According to the dictionary of the French national center for text and lexical resources (Center National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales), in the French language there are the words "gourmet" and "gourmand".
The word "gourmet", pronounced "gourmet", means a person who knows the taste and knows how to enjoy wine. In the second meaning - someone who appreciates the quality, sophistication of the table and individual dishes. The word "gourmand" is pronounced "gourma", so they call a gourmand, a person who is hungry for food or individual products, in another sense - one who loves good food and can appreciate it.
The words "gourmet" and "gourmand", as the dictionary explains, are not interchangeable. For example, “gourmand” may be a big fan of chocolates, but cannot appreciate the peculiarities of the taste of a particular type of chocolate, as “gourmet” does.
The French themselves do not know exactly the same root, whether the words "gourmet" and "gourmand" are related, or they have different origins. In the French language there is also the concept of "gourmandise" - gourmand, which can also be translated as gluttony, gluttony. The Catholic Church ranks gourmet among the seven deadly sins.
In 2003, an initiative group approached Pope John Paul II with a request to replace the word "gourmandise" with some other term for the sin of gluttony. However, nothing more suitable was found.
Famous gourmets
History has preserved the names of many famous gourmets for us. In less than eight years, the Tambov landowner Rakhmanov, who lived in the middle of the 19th century, ate the fortune inherited from his uncle in two million rubles. A simple dinner for two or three persons cost him more than a thousand rubles. It is worth noting that the ruble was then several orders of magnitude more weighted than the current ruble.
This obese gentleman invented new dishes almost every day and tried to surpass the Roman emperors in the luxury of the table. A lot of effort went into the preparation of poultry. Chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys were fed porridge with truffles before slaughter. For the master himself, not the whole bird was served on the table, but only the most delicious pieces.
Even the most ordinary buckwheat porridge was incredibly tasty at Rakhmanov's. It was cooked in grouse broth with the addition of Roquefort cheese. Of the fish, he preferred dishes made from rare carp fish, which were caught for him in the Don tributary to the Sosna River and delivered to him.
The landowner from the Oryol province of General Ragzin was reputed to be a great picker. Lunches at her place lasted seven hours. More than twenty types of cereals were served alone, and there were countless marinades and pickles. At the end of his life, another great gourmet, the son of Count Zavadsky, found himself in a state close to poverty. He just loved pineapples. I ate them raw, boiled and even fermented. They were fermented with him like ordinary cabbage.
Nikita Vsevolodovich Vsevolzhsky became famous for his frequent gastronomic holidays in the forties of the 19th century. Even in winter, he served fresh strawberries with cream for dessert. And the fish sent to him by mail from the Urals was often brought in by four people. In addition, Vsevolzhsky was a great wit. “Good cuisine is nourishing food for a clear conscience,” he used to say.
