Louis Eustache Ude

Louis Eustache Ude ( – 10 April 1846) was a French chef and writer who spent the majority of his culinary career in England. The best known French cook in Britain before Alexis Soyer, he was the author of an influential cookbook, The French Cook, first published in 1813 with thirteen new editions being written over the next three decades. After leaving an apprenticeship in the kitchens at the Palace of Versailles, Ude is thought to have tried numerous other occupations before returning to cooking and rising to the top of the profession. He eventually moved to England, where Ude was credited with introducing haute cuisine to the country. His clients included members of the British nobility, royal family and gentlemen's clubs.

Early life

Ude was born in France . Little is known for certain about his early years. In a biographical sketch written in 1835 Abraham Hayward stated that Ude's mother was a milliner, who married a member of the kitchen staff at the Palace of Versailles. According to this account Ude joined his father in the royal kitchens (he later described himself as "former cook to Louis XVI") but left to become apprenticed to, successively, a cheap jeweller, an engraver, a printer and a haberdasher, after which he became traveller for a merchant in Lyon. After returning to Paris he was for a short while an actor in a small theatre, and then worked unsuccessfully in finance and the civil service. Hayward wrote:

Career in England Ude's history after he moved to England is more consistently attested, although precise dates are mostly lacking. Despite the impression conveyed by Favre that a French chef in London was something new, Ude was in fact following a centuries-old tradition of French cooks working for the rich and powerful of London. He became chef to William Molyneux, 2nd Earl of Sefton, of Arlington Street off Piccadilly and Croxteth Hall in Lancashire. Favre describes Sefton as "this wealthy lord, who was known as the king of English Epicureans". |group=n When Sefton died in 1838 he left Ude an annuity of £100, though the chef had not by then worked for him for more than twenty years. Hannah Glasse, Maria Rundell, and Eliza Acton. Favre could not even say truthfully that Ude's was the first French cookery book published in London: works by François Pierre La Varenne and Marie-Antoine Carême, among others, had been issued in English translations. |group=n but the ODNB finds some truth in Favre's statement that Ude was among the first to popularise haute cuisine in England. By the time of his death it was regarded as "the standard work in the science of cookery". Its fame spread beyond kitchens. Lord Byron drew on it extensively for a description of a banquet in Don Juan.

Between the publication of the third edition of the book, in 1815, and that of the fourth, in 1816, Ude left Sefton's employment. (There is a story that he resigned because a guest added more pepper to his soup.) After leaving Sefton, Ude became steward to the United Service Club, where "his dinners were acknowledged to be better than any other Club could boast", according to the historian Arthur Humphreys. By the time of the fifth edition of The French Cook (1818) Ude had left the club. In 1821 he married (Camille) Barbe Lucot at St George's, Hanover Square. |group=n Following the death of the duke in 1827 Ude became chef at Crockford's gambling club. The Standard reported on 25 October 1827:

£1,200 a year was an enormous sum in the 1820s – the equivalent of more than £1m in terms of 2020 incomes The London Review praised Ude's banquets as "quasi-Elysian". The ODNB gives examples of Ude's famous creations: "an entrée of soft roes of mackerel baked in butter and served with a cream sauce" and "a most delicious sweet made with fresh stoned cherries, and which he christened Boudin de cerises à la Bentinck". The new man, Charles Elmé Francatelli, was in fact a success, and Ude did not return. In retirement he was financially well off, but bored and miserable. A friend asked him why he did not busy himself in his own kitchen, but he replied, "Bah! I have not been into my kitchen once: I hate the sight of my kitchen. I dine on roast mutton dressed by a cookmaid". He was indignant about his treatment by Crockford's but admitted, "Ah, I love that Club, though they are ingrats". At Soyer's wedding in 1837, Ude was one of the two witnesses. He continued to live in London until his death of fever at his house in Albemarle Street on 10 April 1846 at an age variously reported as 76, 77 and 78. After a Solemn mass at the French chapel in Little George Street he was buried in Kensal Green cemetery.

The French Cook The contents of the book varied from edition to edition. In the first (1813), Ude contends in a brief introduction that "The works hitherto published on the Art of Cookery are unintelligible, and the receipts therein indicated impracticable". He makes it clear from the outset that he is writing about grand cuisine. An example he gives of a typical dinner menu consists of: CourseDishTranslation First course Le potage printannier Spring vegetable soup Les tranches de cabilleau, sauce aux huitres Slices of cod with oyster sauce Relevés Le poulard à la Montmorencie Chicken in sour cherry sauce Le jambon de Westphalie, à l'essence Westphalia ham in white wine and mushroom sauce Entrées La fricassé de poulets aux champignons Chicken fricassee with mushrooms Les cotelettes d'agneau sautés, sauce à la macédoine Sauteed lamb chop with sauce of diced vegetables Le sauté de filets de poulets gras, au suprême Sauteed breasts of plump chickens, off the bone Les tendrons de veau glacés aux laitues, à l'essence Tendrons of glazed veal with lettuce and white wine sauce Dishes de rôt (roasts) Le chapon Capon Les cailles Quails Entremets Les pois à la française Peas cooked with lettuce and baby onions La gelée de fraises Strawberry jelly Les asperges en bâtonets Asparagus spears Les puits d'amour garnis de marmalade Puff pastry cases filled with marmalade Remove La tart de groseilles rouges Redcurrant tart Le soufflé au citron Lemon soufflé

The above is one of the simplest of his menus.

Ude took care with his prose, and either coined or popularised the maxim Coquus nascitur non fit— "cooks are born, not made". To Ude, sauces were "the soul of cookery".

Although Ude considered that when English cooking was done well it was unsurpassable, |

E. Cobham Brewer, calling Ude "the most learned of cooks", attributed to him the authorship of a book called La Science de Gueule ("The Science of the Mouth"). No such book is listed in WorldCat or mentioned in the ODNB or obituaries of Ude.

Notes, references and sources