FOOD RESOURCE COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
RAGUENEAU
Excerpted and Adapted from Escoffier, A. and P.H. Gilbert. Edited by Charlotte Turgeon and Nina Froud. 1961. The World Authority. Larousse Gastronomique. The Encyclopedia of Food, Wine & Cookery.
is a Parisian pastrycook described by Cyrano de Bergerac in his Voyage aux etats de la lune and again by edmond Rostand.
A pastrycook of renown, keepign shop near the palais, as fat as was suitable for a shopkeeper whose sign carred the words: Aux amateurs de haulte graisse, his days were spent happily, and without any occurrence of note, between the supervision of his oven and the service of his clientele, which was composed of attorneys and lawyers, among whom had slipped in some hungry-looking writers.
Why did he have to begin to write? History suspects one beis-an author today completely forgotten-of having maliciously drawn him into it.
The patisserie of Ragueneau became a sort of academy, where the pastries and tarts served as attendance tallies. Ragueneau set himself to write a Pindaric ode, then a tragedy: Don Olibrius, l'Occiseur d'Innocents.
He neglected his oven, neglected his clients; the effect on his business was such that he felt constrained to shut up shop.
Packing up his belongings into amiserable little cart, he set off for the Midi with his wife. At Beziers he sought out Moliere, to whom he offered Don Olibrius. One may guess the response of the great humorist; but out of pity he offered the ex-pastrycook a modest part as a valet in his troupe. Ragueneau was as bad an actor as he was a writer and he had to resign himself to the function of a candle-snuffer.
These Functions he carried out subsequently at Lyons until his death, leaving as his whole fortune a hat with holes in it and a washed-out cloak. Among his papers were found four hundred and fifty-six sonnets, eight tragedies, seven epithalamiums, four elegies, sixty-three odes and nineteen heroic plays.