Membership

History of the Academy of Gastronomes

By George Smith, President of the British Academy of Gastronomes.

The British Academy of Gastronomes is one of the founding national academies of the International Academy of Gastronomy (AIG). Here is the history of the founding of the International Academy of Gastronomy.

The founding of the International Academy of Gastronomes

It was during a dinner on June 22, 1927 at Viel , a restaurant on Boulevard de la Madeleine that Maurice Edmond Saillant (aka Curnonsky) and his friends André Robine, Marcel Rouff and Baron d’Aguy had the idea of ​​founding an association of taste whose objective they defined as:

“The main function of the Academy will be to work with all possible care and diligence to encourage the art of the table and to maintain, as well as define the rules of eating well and drinking well, the traditions of French cuisine.”

The idea germinated and the Academy of Gastronomes was definitively constituted during a lunch on March 25, 1930, which approved the statutes and formed the first General Assembly. Curnonsky defined his conception of the Academy of Gastronomes:

“By founding the Academy of Gastronomes , I wanted to bring together an elite of gourmets formed by the men of letters who have best written about the things of the table, the great specialists who best know the culinary wonders and the good wines of France, the hosts who value the honour of welcoming guests, and finally the personalities who preside over the main gourmet clubs.”

This idea of ​​an Academy of Gastronomes was put forward by Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in 1826 in his Physiology of Taste . The founding of the Academy of Gastronomes was preceded by the creation of the Club des Cent in 1912 by Louis Forest. The Academy of Gastronomes and the Club des Cent are still the most renowned gastronomic associations in France today.    

Its founder, Curnonsky

Maurice-Edouard Saillant (1872-1956) was the greatest gastronome of the first half of the 20th century. He took the pseudonym Cur non sky (which translates as “why not sky” in Latin) at the time of the Franco-Russian alliance, and led a career as a journalist, publicist (giving the name Bibendum to the Michelin man) and published numerous novels and essays.

But his great passion was gastronomy. He wrote gastronomic columns in the Journal and Le Matin. He published with his colleague Marcel Rouff a monumental inventory of gastronomy, L a France Gastronomic in 28 volumes. During his life he wrote numerous books on gastronomy: The Gastronomic Treasure of France , A la fortune du pot , La table et l’amour , and at the end of his life Cuisine and wines of France.

He explored all the restaurants in France, from the simplest to the most famous, not hesitating to cross France to taste a cassoulet, he even travelled as far as China to discover its gastronomy and was well acquainted with the chefs and gastronomes of his time. He was one of the first to celebrate the alliance of tourism, gastronomy and the automobile, inventing the neologism gastronomad . In 1927 he was elected Prince-elect of gastronomes , following a vote of cooks and gastronomes organised by the magazine La bonne Table and le bon Gîte .

He lived simply, ate only one meal a day, always dined in restaurants, never entertained at home, having neither a dining room nor a cellar. During the war, he took refuge with Mélanie Ruat who ran an inn in Riec-sur-Belon. Curnonsky served as Marcel Rouff’s model for the character of Dodin-Bouffant, a gastronome, in his novel The Life and Passion of Dodin-Bouffant .

The statutes of the Academy of Gastronomes

The statutes of the Académie des Gastronomes, written by Léon Abric and René Millaud, were freely inspired by those of the Académie Française, founded in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu: it is made up of forty members (like the Académie française ), emeritus members, free members and associate members.

The name of the armchairs was chosen by the first owners of each of them: they bear the name of great gastronomes (Prince de Talleyrand, Cambacérès, etc.), gastronomy writers (Brillat-Savarin, Grimod de la Reynière, etc.), great chefs (Antonin Carême, Gouffé, Urbain-Dubois, etc.), great gastronomic writers (Rabelais, Montaigne, Balzac, etc.) and references to Antiquity (Epicure, Ausone, Virgil, etc.). Two armchair names signify the humor of their first owner: Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge (hero of a novel by Alexandre Dumas) and Bain-Marie (a cooking term)!

Free members become holders of a chair following a secret ballot, when a chair becomes available following the death or the transition of a member to emeritus after twenty years of good and loyal service.

How the Academy of Gastronomes works

The Academy of Gastronomes organises eleven lunches and six dinners per year: each meeting is organised by one of the members (who call themselves colleagues), the brigadier , who organises the meal with the chef, the ordering of the dishes and the choice of wines. The brigadier tests the meal with one or more colleagues: this is the rehearsal . Once the meal is finished, the president (or sometimes one of the colleagues he has designated) comments on the meal, criticising the dishes and wines, often literary, benevolent or laudatory, sometimes acerbic.

The December lunch follows the annual general assembly and is led by the President and the Grand Chancellor of the Academy.

To be a member of the Academy of Gastronomes , you must be presented at a lunch, have two sponsors holding a chair, be approved by the Academy office, then for a year, attend, as often as possible, Academy events as an applicant, in order to judge its gastronomic and friendly qualities. The applicant finally becomes a free member following a secret ballot during the Annual General Meeting of the Academy. The names of Academy members are confidential, and, according to the statutes, only the president can speak on behalf of the Academy. Many celebrities have spoken about the Academy, including a Nobel Prize winner for literature, members of the Institut de France, famous writers, and more.

For many years, lunches took place at Maxim’s , rue Royale, then later and still currently at Laurent , avenue Gabriel. Dinners take place in Parisian restaurants chosen by the brigadier.

The Academy of Gastronomes organises once a year an extramural lunch, outside Paris, around a good table, often accompanied by a heritage tour, and trips to France or sometimes abroad, always combining culture and gastronomy.

Publications of the Academy of Gastronomes

Following the wishes of its founder, Curnonsky, the Academy of Gastronomes has always had a literary vocation and produces publications.

Each member of the Academy must, when a chair is allocated to him, praise his predecessor and the illustrious person who gave his name to the chair. This eulogy is read before the colleagues of the Academy during a meal and is then published by the Academy.

The Academy has published several reference works: The Dictionary of the Academy of Gastronomes , illustrated by Dunoyer de Segonzac and Paul Landowski, the Hundred Menus of the President and the Book of Sauces. A new edition of the Dictionary of the Academy of Gastronomes, completely recast, reviewed, revised and largely expanded, was published in 2009 by Jean Vitalaux, the current President of the Academy , and Benoit France (for wines), under the title Dictionary of the Gastronome. A new book is being prepared for the centenary of the Academy.

The idea of ​​a prize from the Academy of Gastronomic’s rewarding a literary work devoted to gastronomy suggested by Curnonsky is currently under study.

How the British Academy of Gastronomes will operate

The British Academy of Gastronomes shall organise eleven lunches and six dinners per year. Each meeting will be organised by one of the members (who, following tradition shall also call themselves colleagues), the brigadier , will organise the meal with the chef, the ordering of the dishes and the choice of wines. The brigadier will then bear responsibility for testing the meal with one or more colleagues: again, following tradition, this will be known as the rehearsal . Once the meal is finished, the president (or sometimes one of the colleagues he will designate) will comment on the meal, criticising the dishes and wines, in a manner they see fit.