Essays Ali-Bab: Gastronomie pratique [French]

[Chris Jones]

Henri Babinski (1855-1931) better known to the French public of the first decades of the 20th century under his pseudonym of Ali-Bab is mostly remembered as a leading French 'gastronome' of the 1900s and the author of the monumental Gastronomie Pratique - Études culinaires (1st Ed. 1907).

The son of Polish immigrants, Babinski was a graduate of the prestigious École des Mines in Paris and travelled to many faraway places from South America to Siberia, working as a consultant for various mining companies and later managing a State-owned mining concern in French Guiana. A footnote in one the first chapters of Gastronomie Pratique suggests that H. Babinski, an engineer by trade and in no way related to the universe of professional chefs, initially became interested in cuisine during his missions as a mining prospector when he was at times deprived of the most basic foods for extended periods of time. Thanks to handsome paychecks and the money he saved during his comparatively short career as a mining engineer Babinski was able to retire early and return to Paris where he dedicated the last thirty years of his life to promoting and writing about Haute Gastronomie.

This publication of Babinski's Gastronomie Pratique attempts to recreate the look and feel of the 1923 edition that I found online at the Gallica site of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. It comes with a working Table of Contents and an alphabetically sorted Index (Table Alphabétique) with hyperlinks to the 1000+ recipes presented by the author.

Please be aware that even if great care was taken to provide the correct amounts of the ingredients required by each recipe, in the event you would try to reproduce or adapt them, there is always an outside chance of possible typos. It is therefore recommended to double check with the original scanned PDF at the Gallica web site.

Bon appétit!

Latex source available upon request.

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