Cheers
Shaz

Quite maddening. (Anyone in France want to go their local baker and get and photograph all the basic breads?)

On the doubly wrong croissant origin: first of all, Alan Davidson outlined much of this in “The Penguin Companion to Food” years ago. Is it really possible that no one revising a major cooking encyclopedia thought to cross-reference the matching entries just as a control?

Davidson points out what several 19th century writers already had – that the idea that the croissant was invented at the siege of Vienna by the Turks (when bakers working late supposedly heard them tunneling and gave the alarm) is a myth. But he also points out that later editions of the Larousse mysteriously transfer this to Budapest.

What he does not say is how especially ludicrous the second version is. Why? Because at Budapest, the Turks weren’t besieging. They were besieged (by the Holy Roman Empire forces).

So no editor over several editions of the Larousse has either checked Davidson or bothered to do some elementary historical research on the underlying events.

I actually put together a book that goes into all this in some length, but for those who want the short version – the kipfel (ancestor of the croissant) has been documented in Austria since at least the 12th century and its arrival in France and subsequent renaming as the croissant can pretty precisely be dated to 1838 or 1839, when August Zang (credited for this and some other things, including a number he didn’t bring, like the baguette or the poolish method) opened his Boulangerie Viennoise.

I might, I suppose, at this point actually write the editors of the encyclopedia. But if this entry hasn’t been revisited, how many others also include out-of-date or even discredited information?

It’s a kind of salve.

Doubt there’s any direct link with mayonnaise, but still it looks like the Larousse wins this one. Its explanation is still speculative, but far more reasonable. (More reasonable still, though, is the idea that “mayonnaise” was originally “bayonnaise”, that is, a sauce from Bayonne.)

The 1938 French version and the 1961 English version both have the Budapest origin for the croissant (which in fact -as the kipfel – is documented back to at least the 12th century), Careme’s musings on mayonnaise (and the supposed word “moyeu” for yolk), and a plate of breads which includes things like the “pain marchand de vin” and the “pain joko”, both nineteenth century favorites which are rarities today.

I’ve checked the 2001 English version for the croissant story – still there, even after Alan Davidson critiqued it rather cruelly -, don’t have it at hand to check the others.

It’s particularly frustrating, by the way, that they haven’t updated the breads plate (though it would be nice if they kept the other for its history), since no serious plate showing all the modern French breads seems to exist (I asked the French bakers’ site), unless you count a somewhat confusing map of French breads by Poilane.

I know French bread and the croissant pretty well, mayonnaise more superficially. But I have yet to find the latter so much as mentioned in the 18th century, and the 19th century recipes don’t start using the egg yolk-vinegar emulsification until around 1830 (gelatin did the job at first). I’m guessing the most recent version still includes Careme’s fairly speculative account and the strange reference to “mayeu”.

@Jim: could you clarify the years of each edition you’re referring to? It’s important for the strength of this information.