Great Names In Culinary History:

Any serious discussion of French gastronomy, philosophy or literature must eventually culminate in mention of the great, yet unfortunately overlooked, Fauxnom Canard; mostly because, by that point in the conversation, you've all likely had several bottles of wine and are getting a little giddy.

Born in 1864 in Strasbourg, in the Alsace region of France, young Fauxnom was quickly immersed in both the worlds of cuisine and letters. His mother, Cecile, was a locally renowned cook, famous for her slow-braised stews that sometimes took months to prepare and were so tender they could actually be absorbed through the skin. His father, Michel, was a former Professor of Pretentious Literature at the University of Strasbourg who had resigned his position following a dispute as to whether the Empress Josephine Bonaparte had been really hot or just kind of slutty, and now made his living painting those weird little accent marks (e.g., ç)  on signs throughout the region.

It was the widespread fame of Cecile's transdermal stews that took the family from their sheltered existence in Strasbourg to the big city of Paris in 1869, as Emperor Napoleon III's medical condition had deteriorated to the point where he was unable to take any food by mouth. French doctors had attempted to sustain him by rubbing an assortment of cheeses into his mustache (a then-common medical treatment for malnourishment that goes a long way towards explaining why the average life expectancy back then was like 50), Cecile was called in to administer her famed concoctions and, in no time at all, the Emperor had recovered sufficiently mount a major offensive against the invading Germans and then relent, thus beginning an era of the Gauls talking all kinds of smack and then immediately surrendering at the first sign of trouble that would last well into the next century.

So then.

It was during the four-month Siege of Paris that young Fauxnom discovered the inextricable relationship between life and food as the desperate citizens of the capital were reduced to eating prepackaged convenience foods that were not ridiculously complicated to prepare. Traumatized, our lad decided that, if he were to survive this crisis, he would never again consume anything that it didn't take at least as long to describe in intimate detail as it did to make.

Not long after, Fauxnom discovered the works of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (which he had discovered in an ill-fated attempt to find a recipe for Danish pastry), which thus began the youngster's lifelong pursuit of truth and beauty and his later explorations of existentialism, absurdism, Christianity and needlessly complicated baked goods that would last until he hit puberty and figured out what was under all those layers of clothing women wore back then.

At fifteen, tragedy would strike our lad. His mother was felled by a sudden stroke, and spent aher final hours dictating all of her closely-guarded recipes to Fauxnom rather than his younger sister, Alsacia, whom Cecile knew would be genetically gifted with a "spectacular rack" and would thus not need to know to cook. Michel would pass away shortly after, from the combination of the loss of his beloved life partner and the general 19th century lack of televised sporting events to take his mind off things.

Left to fend for himself, and care for his younger sister, Fauxnom took an apprenticeship at the famed Restaurant Lapérouse as the coupe les fanes (or, one who cuts the tops off of stuff). It wasn't long before his initiative, work ethic, and Cecile's recipes catapulted him to the position of chef and drew the attention of the esteemed Auguste Escoffier, who hired him to work as his sous chef at the renowned Savoy Hotel in London. When Escoffier was dismissed for describing entrees to British diners in florid, polysyllabic terms and refusing to fry the jolly hell out of everything, the now-33 year old Canard found himself the executive chef at one of the top restaurants in a town that still thought of jellied eel as fine eatin'.

Disillusioned by the thought of spending the rest of his life deliberately overcooking perfectly good steaks upon request, and formulating his own unique philosophy based upon his early exposure to great thinkers, Canard returned to France, where his sister Alsacia had, in fact, developed the exceptionally nice set her mother had predicted and was now making a very comfortable living as a courtesan and model for very popular French postcards. It was she who financed not only his legendary restaurant, Bistro Cecile, and his writing career, but also her own exceptionally popular Gros Seins brand of foundation garments. She is widely considered to be the modern progenitor of under-wire.

Free to pursue his twin passions of cooking and over-thinking everything, Canard decided to combine them into the new philosophy of Culinairism. Born of a mixture of existentialism, absurdism, nihilism, and an exceptionally nice bowl of onion soup, the main tenants of Canard's aesthetic were a devotion to eternal truth in the form of a Higher Being, a firm belief in the sanctity of the individual, and application of ridiculous amounts of butter and cheese as a solution to any problem that either prayer or wine alone could not solve.

Canard would be an early influence on such 20th Century philosophers as Camus, Sartre, and Col. Harland Sanders. His seminal literary debut, Remplir Votre Vide Intérieur Au Poulet (Filling Your Inner Void With Chicken), is widely considered to be the bridge from Franz Kafka to Fannie Farmer by those who've had one damned semester of philosophy in college and now think they know everything. Canard explores such topics as man's inherent obligation to his creator, the failure of established moral doctrines to regulate individual behavior, and why the hell someone can't come up with a jarred mayonnaise that doesn't suck (Duke's would not be invented until 1917).

After that work became a major hit among both French literary and culinary circles, Canard quickly followed with One Eternal Truth, 246 Types of Cheese, which was seen as both a criticism of the growing trend of French secularism and a warning of the ominous signs of impending conflict denoted by the presence of a conspicuous number of Germans wandering around Belgium attempting to appear nonchalant.

With the outbreak of World War I, Canard attempted to join the army and do what he felt was his duty as a Frenchman. Rejected for military service due to the fact that he was 50 years old and probably had enough butterfat in his arteries to build a bust of President Poincaré, Canard set about writing pamphlets in support of the Allied war effort. From the earnestly passionate defense of his homeland, "Give Us Back Alsace, You Hun Bastards" to the more abstract "Leave Us Your Wonderful Beer and Sausages, and Just Go," he produced over 120 pieces of war-related propaganda that Allied commander General Ferdinand Foch later called "completely, if not utterly, useless."

Coming in Part II: Canard introduces Americans to French cuisine, Alsacia's fortunes sag, a dispute with Camus over how the hell to pronounce his name, Julia Child becomes guardian of Cecile's recipes after a hotly contested game of Horse.