The Mothers of Invention

This weekends article celebrates two of the women that shaped modern French cuisine. I wish there were more stories about the Meres Lyonnaise but there aren’t. I am surprised no one has made a movie about them.

Pictured here is La Mere Melie. Born in Saint-Nizier-d'Azergues, a small village in the Beaujolais hills north of Lyon, Marie-Louise Émilie Deschamps married Albert Carton, a man nearly ten years her junior from nearby Poule-les-Écharmeaux. She became known as La Mélie, a nickname derived from L'Amélie, which appeared on the facade of her establishment and on countless postcards.

She ran the Hôtel Carton-Deschamps in Lamure-sur-Azergues, one of five hotels in the town, and reigned as its chef and undisputed patron throughout the Belle Époque. Her cooking was rooted in Beaujolais terroir: saucisson cuit, andouillette, poires au Brouilly, local cheeses, and seasonal specialties. Yes farm to table and hyper regional existed long before they became buzzwords for a cuisine that had existed since, well, forever.

But La Mélie's fame rested as much on personality as on food. She was a shameless self-promoter with a sharp tongue and a gift for spectacle. Thousands of postcards circulated across France showing her posed on tables, astride chairs like a man, riding in her cart with her dog, hands stuffed in her cook's pockets. She shocked, she charmed, and she made sure everyone talked about her. People traveled from far beyond the valley to eat at her table.

Her life held private tragedy beneath the public bluster. She bore her only child, Albert, at thirty-six. He was killed in the opening weeks of World War I on October 8, 1914, at twenty-two. Her husband died in 1929. She sold the hotel to a Monsieur Bancillon and lived to eighty-five.

La Melie was one of the manu unsung woman who shaped French cuisine!