BIRTHPLACE MENU

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 92, 20 April 1939, Page 18

BIRTHPLACE MENU

BANQUET AT THE PALACE

QUEEN'S CHARMING TRIBUTE

(By Air Mail from "The Post's"

Correspondent.) LONDON, March 23. The State banquet at Buckingham Palace in honour of the French Presi- j dent was not the least interesting for the charming tributes paid to the distinguished guest and his wife by the Queen. It took the form of a birthplace menu in which dishes were named after the villages in which they were born. Poussin Mercy-le-Haut with salade Elysee was the Queen's way of telling the story of the President's life. The naming of one dish Mercy-le-Haut, his home village in the Lorraine, brought a vision of the peasant cottage where he was born, where his peasant relatives still live, and the Elysee, the President's palace, which symbolises the climax of his official career. The home-loving Madame Lebrun, stately in her silver gown, was touched at the tribute to her husband and at the charming compliment to herself. She holds no official position in the French Republic, but the Queen gave her the place of honour on the banquet menu by linking her village with her own name. Guests who enjoyed the Rouen duck, "Reine Elizabeth," brought specially over from France, and served cold in aspic jelly, were interested in the explanation of its accompaniment garniture Buzancy. Buzancy, war-swept village not far from Verdun, was the babyhood home of Madame Lebrun. The banquet took a month to prepare. The Queen had been at pains before that to find out the birthplaces1 of her guests. The ice, rejoicing in the. name of jombe I'entente cordiale. was the occasion for the appearance of 24 large gold and silver baskets. MADE IN PALACE KITCHENS. These were made entirely of sugar in the Palace kitchens and tied with the tricolour made also of sugar. They were called corbeilles Lorraine, were filled with petits fours and also with sugar flowers, symbolical of the two countries, roses and fleurs-de-lis. There was one basket to every eight guests. . The savoury that ended the banquet, cassolette Bassillac. recalled the fisherman youth of M. Bonnet. French Foreign Minister. Bassillac is the place from which he came. The soup chosen by the Queen was interesting. The consomme quenelles aux trois couleurs was served with tiny balls, about the size of robin's eggs, composed of chicken and other meats. French new peas and new potatoes were served with lamb made into small noisettes. At the banquet M. Lebrun sat on the chair used by Marshal Soult when the famous Napoleonic general was a guest at Queen Victoria's Coronation banquet in June, 1838. Another famous Frenchman once had the same experience. For King George V. shortly after the war. said to Marshal Foch at a Palace banquet: "You are sitting on Marshal Soult's chair."