Dear friend,

“C’est la recette de la gran’mère de ma mère,” said Madame Francine, with a proud nod of the chin.

She stood in the midst of her kitchen, with her apron firmly tied around her waist. A profusion of plants lined the windowsill. A jumble of pencils, string, small change, grocery coupons, safety pins, a child’s barrette and other odds and ends filled a fish tank on the counter. Beside the door, a pair of pale grey kittens slept on a cushion, their paws curled under their tucked heads.

“Et ma gran’mère l’a fait comme ça, je vous assure…Goûtez!”

On a flowered plate, in a wreath of overlapping golden circles, Madame Francine had arranged gaufres warm from the gaufrier. Little crystals of sugar, scattered over the strict pattern of square pockets and straight ridges, glittered in the light.

“Take one,” she imvited, holding out the tempting platter. “The recipe of my mother’s grandmother, which my own grandmother made in just the same way.”

The waffles were delicate and thin. Golden white and pale brown, they were crisp and slightly chewy.

“I never knew Gran’mère to buy a gâteau,” she said. “Dès le petit matin, from the break of day, she was at the fourneau, cooking and baking.”

Francine still uses this industrious lady’s cookbook. It lay open on the counter next to the oven, its leaves yellow and a spot of ancient grease creating a translucent pane onto the next page.

In Francine’s family, these thin, fine, delicately crusty waffles are called “gaufres d’etrennes.” They are given out after Christmas as a New Year’s present. This, however, is a custom even more ancient than Francine’s ancestral roots in the le Nord.

The Romans exchanged strenae, from which the word “etrenne” derives, during the feast of Saturnalia from December 17 to 23. These “gifts of good fortune” hark back to the founding of Rome. Titus Tatius, co-ruler of the new city, plucked a twig from the grove of “arbor felix” sacred to the god Saturn. It was the New Year, and these “fortunate trees” had the power to extend the god’s protection to the bearer. The gifts were called “strenae” after a goddess of the New Year.

Francine widened her blue eyes and smiled at this burst of erudition. She looked down at the cookbook, turning the pages with loving fingers.

“Toute une gamme,” she said. “So many good things my grandmother used to make. Pruneau Beaujolais, poire William…have you ever had pruneau avec du thé? The prunes are soaked in tea for 24 hours. Que c’est bon! Nobody’s ever heard of it anymore. But I’ll make it for you some time.”

Francine’s cookbook came with her to Courtomer from “le Nord,” where she and our gardien, her husband, are né natif, native-born. And as every Frenchman knows, “la gaufre” is a Northern specialty; the very word is from the Frankish language, brought from beyond the banks of the Rhine by conquering Franks in the 6thcentury.

“I only put a little spoonful of sucre en poudre on my gaufres,” explained Francine. “I wish we had sucre perlé. But you can’t buy it down here.”

In France, gastronomy extends even to sugar. This has partly to do with its history and French geography. In days of yore, sugar was an expensive delight. It came from Persia in ancient times and Arab territories in the Middle Ages. And when Columbus discovered that cane would grow in the Caribbean, French fortunes were made in the “îles à sucre.”

Fortunes were lost, too. During the long wars with the English during the 18th and early 19th centuries, sugar production and sugar islands fell to naval blockades and territorial treaties. Almost as a patriotic duty, France turned to the beetroot. The Emperor Napoleon offered a prize of a million francs to the entrepreneur who could produce a pure white sugar that would replace that made from cane. Thus spread the beetroot over the vast, flat fields of northern France.

Sucre perlé, frequently used in desserts from the North of France, is prepared from compressed beet sugar. It resists heat, unlike the fine grains of cane sucre en poudre, which melt rapidly. It tastes pure, unlike sucre glâce, or powdered sugar, which is mixed with corn starch to dust on pastries. It comes in different sizes, from small and dainty to large and crunchy.

And it is perfectly delicious, Madame Francine assures me, sprinkled on a hot gaufre.

Francine took a handful of gaufres fines from her stack on the cooling rack and packed them into an empty ice-cream tub.

“Voilà!” she said. “Take these for your voyage. And be sure to save some for Monsieur!”

I took the box of “etrennes” and jumped into our old jeep. Monsieur was waiting at the steering wheel. Our bags were in the back.

Madame Francine popped her head out the kitchen door, letting in the kittens’ mother at the same time.

 “When you get back, the forsythias will be in bloom. I’ll take some cuttings for you.” 

I had given Madame Francine the yellow-flowering shrub years ago. She planted it against the old paddock walls where she now keeps her chickens.

“Arbor felix!” she called, as we pulled away from the Chateau.

A bientôt!

Elizabeth

P.S. Madame Francine explains how to make her great-grandmother’s