Le Cuisinier Méridional

In 1835 an Avignon printer published ‘Le Cuisinier Méridional’. The introduction says, ‘Only one other book about southern cuisine has been published, at a price too elevated for the common man. We publish here a book that can be used by everyone, with recipes culled from the most distinguished sources-even students of the celebrated Martel responded. ‘This celebrated Martel’ was an Avignon traiteur/caterer, born in Tarascon in 1762, who had had a brilliant reputation as far away as Paris. When he died, in 1828, gastronomes mourned, fearing the demise of Avignon’s culinary reputation. But Martel’s students, notably a Monsieur Suau in Apt, continued his tradition of fine cuisine, if not in Avignon, then at least in other Provençal towns. Suau was particularly renowned for his twelve ‘petits pâtés à Béchamelle’, of which it was said: ‘Better to have eaten this dish and lived for just one hour than continued another ten years without it’.