Croissant

Croissant (pronounced krwah-sahn (French) or kruh-sahnt (barbarians))

A rich, buttery, often crescent-shaped, roll of leavened dough or puff paste.

1899:  From the French croissant (crescent), present participle of the verb croître (to increase, to grow), from the Middle French croistre, from the Old French creistre derived from the Classical Latin crēscēns & crēscentem, present active infinitive of crēscō (I augment), drawn from the Proto-Italic krēskō. The ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European ḱreh (to grow, become bigger).  Correct pronunciation here.  

The Austrian Pastry

Like some other cultural artefacts thought quintessentially French (French fries invented in Belgium; Nicolas Sarkozy (b 1955; French president 2007-2012) from here and there; the Citroën DS (1955-1975) styled by an Italian) the croissant came from elsewhere, its origins Austrian, the Viennese kipferl a crescent-shaped sweet made plain, with nuts or other fillings.  It varies from the French classic in being denser and less flaky, made with softer dough.  First noted in the thirteenth century at which time, it was thought a “sweet” it was another three-hundred years before it came to be regarded as a morning pastry.  Tastes changed as new techniques of baking evolved and around the turn of the seventeenth century, recipes began to appear in Le Pâtissier François using Pâte feuilletée (puff pastry), these being the first recognisably modern croissants.

Culinary histories include a number of (likely apocryphal) tales of why the croissant adopted a crescent shape.  One suggests it was baked first in Buda to celebrate the defeat of the Ummayyad (the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) was the second of the four major caliphates created after the death of the prophet Muhammad (circa 570-632)) forces by the Franks in the Battle of Tours (732), the shape representing the Islamic crescent moon although more famous is the notion it was designed after the battle of 1683 when the Ottomans were turned back from the gates of Vienna.  A baker, said to have heard the Turks tunneling under the walls of the city as he lit his ovens to bake the morning bread, sounded an alarm, and the defending forces collapsed the tunnel, saving the city.   To celebrate, bread was baked in the shape of the crescent moon of the Turkish flag.

Portrait of Marie Antoinette (1769) oil on canvas by Joseph Ducreux (1735-1802).

The official title of the portrait was Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria and it was created as the era’s equivalent of a Tinder profile picture, the artist summoned in 1769 to Vienna to paint a pleasing rendering of the young lady the Hapsburg royal court planned to marry off to Louis, Dauphin of France (1754-1973) who would reign as Louis XVI (King of France 1774-1792)).  Tinder profile pictures can be misleading (some pounds and even more years sometimes vanishing) so the work must be considered in that context although she was barely fourteen when she sat so it may be true to the subject.  Ducreux’s portrait was the first glimpse the prince had of his intended bride and it must have been pleasing enough for him metaphorically to "swipe right" and the marriage lasted until the pair were executed with the blade of the guillotine.  As a reward, Ducreux was raised to the nobility as a seigneur de la baronnie (lord of the barony, the grade of of baron granted to roturiers (commoners)) and appointed premier peintre de la reine (First Painter to the Queen), outliving the royal couple.

A more romantic tale attributes the pastry to Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen of France 1774-1792), who, as an Austrian, preferred the food of her homeland to that of the French court and, at state dinners, would sneak away to enjoy pastries and coffee.  There is no documentary evidence for her having re-christened the kipferl as the croissant but the story is she so missed what she knew as kipfel (German for crescent) that she commanded the royal baker to clone the treat.  More prosaic, but actually verified by historical evidence, is that August Zang (1807-1888), a retired Austrian artillery officer founded a Viennese Bakery in Paris in 1839 and most food historians agree he is the one most likely to have introduced the kipfel to France, a pastry that later inspired French bakers to create crescents of their own.  The first mention of the croissant in French is in French chemist Anselme Payen’s (1795-1871) Des Substances alimentaires (1853), published long after Marie-Antoinette’s time in court, the first known printed recipe, using the name, appearing in Swiss chef Joseph Favre’s (1849-1903) Dictionnaire universel de cuisine (1905) although even that was a more dense creation than the puffy thing known today.

Breakfast in Paris.

Although the famous shape is much admired, for purists, the choice is always the un-curved croissant au beurre, (butter croissant), the more eye-catching crescents being usually the ordinaires, made with margarine.  The taste in the English-speaking world for things like ham-and-cheese croissants is regarded by the French as proof of Anglo-Saxon barbarism although they will tolerate a sparse drizzle of chocolate if it’s for children and food critics reluctantly concede the almond croissant (with a frangipane filling, topped with slivered almonds and a dusting of powdered sugar) is “…enjoyed by younger women”.  Generally though, the French stick to the classics, eschewing even butter, a croissant being best enjoyed unadorned and taken with a strong black coffee and while some will insist this should be accompanied with a Gitanes, that is optional.

The cube croissant, an Instagram favorite.

Although much focused upon, the shape of a croissant of course becomes less relevant when eaten when the experience becomes one of taste and texture.  For that reason the pastry used has long attracted those chefs for whom food offers architectural possibilities and while for more than a century one-offs have been created for competition and special event, in recent years the phenomenon of social media has been a design stimulant, Instagram, TikTok et al fuelling a culinary arms race and patisseries have built (sometimes short-lived) product lines in response to viral videos.  Fillings have of course been a feature but it’s the shapes which have been most eye-catching (and by extension click-catching which is the point for the content providers). There have been “croissants” in the shape of spheres, discs, pyramids, spirals, wedges and cubes, the last among the more amusing with chefs referencing objects and concepts such as dice, cubist art and, of course, the Rubik’s Cube.  Many have been just a moment while some have for a while trended.

Dominique Ansel's Cronut, stacked and sliced.

Some have endured for longer such as the Cronut (the portmanteau’s construct being cro(issant) + (dough)nut) and so serious was New York based French pastry chef Dominique Ansel (b 1978) that in 2013 he trademarked his creation.  In the familiar shape of a doughnut, the composition was described as “a croissant-like pastry with a filling of flavored cream and fried in grapeseed oil.”  Interviewed by Murdoch tabloid the New York Post, the chef revealed it took “two months of R&D (research & development)” before the Cronut was perfected and the effort was clearly worthwhile because after being released in his eponymous bakery in Manhattan’s SoHo neighbourhood, the city’s food bloggers (a numerous and competitive population) responded and within days photographs circulated of dozens waiting for opening time, a reaction which prompted the application to the US Patent and Trademark Office.  In the way of such things, around the planet “clones”, “tributes”, “knock-offs”, “imitations”, “rip-offs” (the descriptions as varied as the slight changes in the recipes introduced presumably to fend off a C&D (cease and desist letter)) soon appeared.  Predictably, some were called “Doughssants” (the Germanic eszett a nice touch) although others were less derivative.

New York Post, August 16 2022.

Monsieur Ansel in 2015 released Dominique Ansel: The Secret Recipes, a cookbook which included the Cronut recipe and the thing in its authentic form was clearly for the obsessives, the instructions noting making one or a batch was a three-day process.  In its review of the year, Time magazine nominated the Cronut as one of the “best inventions of 2013”, prompting one cultural commentator (another species which proliferates in New York City) to observe the decadence of the West had reached the point the breakdown of society was close.  There may have been something in the idea the new “Visigoths at the Gates of Rome” were actually pastry chefs because in the wake of the Cronut the city was soon flooded with all sorts of novel sugary treats, mostly elaborations of croissants, doughnuts and, it being NYC, bagels.  By 2022 the New York Post was prepared to proclaim: “Move over cronuts! NYC's hot new baked good is the Suprême”, the defenestrator from Noho’s Lafayette Grand Café and revealed to be a “unique circular croissant filled with pastry crème and topped with ganache and crushed up cookies.”  Again of the Instagram & TikTok age, queues were reported even though at a unit cost of US$8.50 it was two dollars more expensive than a Cronut, the price of which had increased fairly modestly since 2013 when it debuted at US$5.00.

All the recent variations on the croissant are built on the theme chefs have for centuries understood is the easy path to popularity: FSS; add fat, salt & sugar, the substances mankind has for millennia sought.  Once it took much effort (and often some risk) to find these things but now they’re conveniently packaged and widely available at prices which, although subject to political and economic forces, remain by historic standards very cheap.  Often, we don’t even need to seek out the packages because so much of the preparation and distribution of food has been outsourced to specialists, mostly industrial concerns but the artisans persist in niches.  That’s certainly true of the croissant, few making their own whether basic or embellished and one of the latest of the croissant crazes is FSS writ large: the crookie.

Miss Sina's crookie (without added topping or powered sugar).

A crookie is a croissant stuffed with chocolate chip cookie dough and its very existence will be thought particularly shameful by some Parisian purists because it was first sold in December 2023 by the Boulangerie Louvard, located on Rue de Châteaudun in Paris’s 9^th arrondissement which, in an Instragram post announced the arrival: “Our pure butter croissant, awarded the seventh best croissant in the Île-de-France region in 2022, is made every morning with a 24-hour fermented milk sourdough and layered with Charente butter.  For our cookie dough, we use one of the best and purest chocolates in the world, from @xoco.gourmet.”  Offered originally in a test batch to test the market, the boulangerie soon announced “The concept was well received, so we're keeping it.  Available every day in-store!”

Unlike a Cronut which (at least in its pure form) demands three days to make, the charm of the crookie is its elegant simplicity and Instagrammers quickly deconstructed and posted the instructions:

(1) With a serrated knife, cut open a croissant lengthwise, leaving a “hinge” at the back.

(2) Add 2-3 tablespoons of your chocolate chip cookie dough (from a packet or home-made).

(3) Close the two sections of croissant wholly encasing the dough.

(4) When the dough is almost cooked (time will vary according to oven and the volume of dough but it takes only a few minutes), remove from oven.

(5) Add more cookie dough to the top of croissant and return to the oven for final bake.

(6) When the outside is crispy and the centre gooey, remove from oven and top with a dusting of powdered sugar.

Some crookie critics don't recommend either adding the second lashing of dough or the powered sugar because they tend to "overwhelm" the croissant and limit the surface area, thereby denying the dish some of the essential crispiness.  

The croissant in fashion

Louis Vuitton Loop (part number M81098).  Created by Nicolas Ghesquière (b 1971) for the Cruise 2022 Collection, the Loop is described as a "half-moon baguette" and was inspired by the earlier Croissant bag, the original a less fussy design.

Lindsay Lohan in T-shirt with croissant theme.

While a handbag lends itself well to the shape of a crescent, it does inherently limit the efficiency of space utilization but this aspect is often not a primary goal in the upper reaches of the market.  With garments however, although actually a common component because the shape makes all sorts of engineering possible such as the underwire of the bra or other constructions where any sort of cantilever effect is demanded, it’s usually just an element rather than a design motif.  As a playful touch, a distinctive crescent moon or croissant might appear on a T-shirt or scarf but it’s rare to see a whole garment pursue the theme although they have appeared on the catwalks where they attract the usual mix of admiration and derision.   

Sarah Jessica Parker in "croissant dress".

Sometimes though, such things escape the catwalk.  In 2022 the actor Sarah Jessica Parker (b 1965) appeared in HBO's And Just Like That, a spin-off (2021-2022) of the Sex and the City TV series (1998-2024), wearing an orange Valentino couture gown from the house’s spring/summer 2019 collection.  It recalled a large croissant, the piece chosen presumably because the scene was set in Paris although it must have been thought the viewers needed the verisimilitude laid on with a trowel because also prominent was a handbag in the shape of the Eifel Tower.  A gift to the meme-makers, admiration for the dress was restrained.

Charrette

Charrette (pronounced shuh-ret)

A final, intensive effort to finish a project before a deadline (historically most associated with architecture & students of the subject); it’s applied particularly to group work and other collaborative efforts.

1400s: From the French charrette (small cart), from the Middle French charrete, from twelfth century Old French charrete (wagon, small cart), a diminutive of charre, from the Latin carrum & carrus (wagon), the construct being char (chariot; wagon) + -ete (the diminutive suffix).  The sense of “work to meet a deadline” came from French, the conventional explanation of the origin being the use by groups of students of architecture who, after working all night, loaded their drawings, plans and sketches into a cart (pulled the legend suggests by the youngest member) into a small cart (pulled by the youngest member) on the day of the presentation of their work to the professor.  The alternative spellings are charette & charret.  Charrette is a noun; the noun plural is charrettes.

In the late nineteenth century, just before the deadline, the authorities of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris would send to a designated place on campus a charrette (a small cart) into which students of architecture would deposit their final drawings and models.  As every student and ex-student knows, it’s the final few hours before the deadline during which much of the work is done and the young Parisian scholars so associated the impending arrival of the little cart with this frenzied activity that the term “charrette” came to signify this burst of sudden enthusiasm.  .  Most sources suggest the use of charrette & charette (in this context) appeared in English only in either (1) the mid-1960s when adopted by university students as a verb meaning “an intense effort to compete a project before the deadline expires” or (2) sometime in the next decade when architects in Chicago added it to their project planning timelines; it’s now also used of any activity which is increased to meet a deadline.  Inevitably, charrette (used as noun & verb) has entered the jargon of management-speak to describe “intensive workshops”, “brainstorming sessions” and such where people gather to solve problems (which the management gurus often insist should be called “challenges” or “opportunities”), develop concepts and such.  The essence of the corporate charrette is said to be collaboration, creativity and a rapid arrival at decisions.

In French, the noun charrette was coined simply to describe “any cart smaller that that usually deployed for whatever purpose” and specific terms evolved to refer to devices of a certain design or function.  A charrette à bras was “a hand cart” (the French bras meaning “arm”) and described a cart propelled by a person rather than pulled by some beast of burden.  The best known of the variants was the charrette des condamnés (the cart of the doomed (ie those condemned to die) and it was in these those convicted of this and that were taken to their execution.

Execution of Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen Consort of France 1774-1792), 16 October 1793 (unknown artist).

The charrette des condamnés famously used to take victims to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror (the period in the mid-1790s after the declaration of the First Republic, marked by massacres, public executions, anti-clericalism and internecine political struggle) were properly called tumbrels although many illustrations of scenes at the guillotine depict the use of four-wheeled carts rather than tumbrels.  Presumably both types were used but historians generally believe it was usually the tumbrel because the revolutionaries preferred the symbolism of something usually used for moving dung or rubbish while artists choose the four-wheelers for compositional reasons.  The noun tumbrel (two-wheeled cart for hauling dung, stones etc) was from mid-fifteenth century French, a name, curiously perhaps, used in the early thirteenth century to describe what some eighteenth century dictionaries described as a mysterious “instrument of punishment of uncertain type” but which turned out to be (1) a name for the cucking stool used, inter alia, to conduct the dunking in water of women suspected of this and that and (2) was a type of medieval balancing scale used to weigh coins.  It was from the Old French tomberel (dump cart) (which exists in Modern French as tombereau), from tomber ((let) fall or tumble), possibly from a Germanic source, perhaps the Old Norse tumba (to tumble), the Old High German tumon (to turn, reel).

In English the charrette des condamnés was called the tumbril (the alternative spellings tumbrel & tumbrill), the English as content to pilfer other languages for words as their Empire builders would be to steal the lands of others (the Anglo-Latin was tumberellus), from tomber & tumber (to fall).  As well as being (1) the cart used to carry prisoners to the gallows, the tumbril was also (2) a cucking stool (actually based on a medieval torture device used, inter alia, to “detect” witches), used as a tool of punishment and humiliation (miscreants (usually women) accused of “social” offences such as “gossiping” or “trouble-making” strapped to the stool which was by some sort of mechanical apparatus “dunked” into a pond or river), (3) a cart designed for “dumping” its load, with a single axle and sometimes with a hinged tray or tailboard (ie the antecedent of the modern dump-truck), (4) a type of balancing scale used in medieval times to check the weight of coins and (5) a basket or cage of osiers, willows, or the like, to hold hay and other food for sheep (long extinct).

In a transition which would please historians and social theorists, the tumbrel began life as two-wheeled cart or wagon hauled usually by a single horse or ox and their most common use was the carrying of manure (horse shit, cow shit etc) and later was re-purposed to carry the “excrement” of society (criminal condemned to death).  The use of the word to describe the dunking stool is also indicative of the attitude of the establishment to another undesirable class: talkative women.  The point of the cucking stool was not to drown but simply publically to humiliate offenders and hopefully change their behavior.  It can be thought a kind of pre-modern community service order.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

La Charrette Anglaise (The English Dog Cart (1897)) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), lithograph on wove paper.

A genre scene in the tradition of post-impressionism, the original title was La Partie de Canpagne and is an example of works of Toulouse-Lautrec which would be influential in the development of art nouveau (modern).  The dog cart (also as dogcart & dog-cart) was a style of coach-building popular in England and described both (1) a small cart drawn by a dog and (2) A larger two-wheeled horse-drawn carriage with two transverse seats back to back (an outgrowth of the original design in which the rear compartment was an enclosed (usually caged) box for carrying dogs used for hunting or other sports.  It’s not clear if the phrase “in the dogbox” was an allusion to this design.  The French phrase La Partie de Campagne translates to “A Day in the Country” and both titles continue to be used of the work.  So evocative was La Partie de Campagne of the outdoors, nature, fresh air (no small thing for those accustomed to the pollution and filth of the cities of the age) and the charming simplicity of rural life that the phrase appears often in French art and literature.  The idea appealed even to modernists, so often associated with things urban.

La Partie de Campagne (The Outing (1951)), lithograph on Arches paper by Fernand Léger (1881-1955).

Léger’s art wasn’t always political but it became so (“the century made me so” he claimed) and the stilted, robotic figures in this 1951 work represent his take on man’s place in capitalist society and a rural environment ravaged and debased.  A sculptor and filmmaker as well as a painter, he was a significant (if rather neglected in the English-speaking world) figure and his creation of a style of painting he called “tubism” was the basis of much of his later, figurative works and there are critics who maintain tubism was a seminal influence on both agitprop and pop art.

1897 Panhard & Levassor with charrette anglaise coachwork.

Powered by a 1648 cm³ (101 cubic inch) two-cylinder gas (petrol) engine rated at 6 (taxable), the car is a typical example of the automobile at the dawn of the twentieth century when new innovations in engineering were beginning to be added to what had for the first decade-odd of the new type been literally “horseless carriages” in that the technique had usually been to take existing coach or cat designs and add an engine.  The example on the left was built in 1897 and fitted originally with a tiller-steering mechanism (right) but steering wheels (still in use today) were even then becoming the new standard and this restored example was fitted with one in 1898.

Thermidor

Thermidor (pronounced thur-mi-dawr or ter-mee-dawr (French))

(1) In the French Revolutionary calendar, the eleventh month of the year (19 (or 20) July to 17 (or 18) August); it was also called Fervidor (both terms now only of historic interest).

(2) As Thermidorian Reaction, a counterrevolution or coup d'état in some way recalling the events in Paris in July 1794.

(3) As lobster thermidor (both elements sometimes capitalized), a method of preparing the unfortunate crustacean for consumption.

Borrowed from French thermidor, from the Ancient Greek θέρμη (thérmē) (hot; heat) + δῶρον (dôron) (gift), the construct thus construct being thérm(ē) + (i) + dôr(on).  Thermidor is a noun & proper noun, thermion is a noun, thermidorien & thermidorian are nouns & adjective and thermionic is an adjective; the noun plural is thermidors.

In the history of revolutionary France, the noun thermidorian is used to refer to (1) a member of the politically moderate (a relative term) group who participated in the events of the 9th Thermidor (27 July 1794) and (2) a supporter of the reactionary movement following the coup d'état.  The use in political discourse was named after the play Thermidor (1891) by Victorien Sardou (1831–1908), itself named for the eleventh month of the French Republican Calendar.  The Coup d'état of 9 Thermidor (remembered in many reports as “the Fall of Maximilien Robespierre” (1758–1794)) was triggered by Robespierre's address to the National Convention on 26 July 1794), a speech which prompted his arrest the next day and his death on the guillotine the day after.  Due process is a quick business in revolutionary times.  Robespierre’s fateful words included a reference to “internal enemies, conspirators, and calumniators” within revolutionary movement but he declined to name names, giving rise among his colleagues to fears he was plotting another great purge of their numbers.

Comrade Stalin (left), an ice axe (centre) and comrade Trotsky (right).

Comrade Leon Trotsky (1879-1940; founder of the Fourth International) in The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? (1936) had a feeling for the political phrase and labelled the state created by Comrade Joseph Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) a “Soviet Thermidor” because although Tsarist era capitalism wasn’t re-created (a la the monarchy in France not being restored in the 1790s), the combination of a bureaucracy supporting a personality cult (even if the latter was in 1936 still somewhat disguised) was “a counterrevolutionary regression” which betrayed what was achieved by comrade Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924; head of government of Russia or Soviet Union 1917-1924) between 1917-1924.  The phrase caught the imagination of many, notably those in the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (The POUM, the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), a non-Communist Marxist party (a surprisingly populated fork of left-wing thought) which Stalin correctly associated with Trotskyism.  The POUM was highly productive in thought but drifted increasingly far from the moorings of political reality although rhetoric which included polemics like “Stalinist Thermidorians have established in Russia the bureaucratic regime of a poisoned dictator.”  Agents of the Narodný komissariat vnutrennih del (NKVD, The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs and one of the many predecessors to the KGB), answerable only to comrade Stalin, killed dozens of POUM’s Central Committee which ended the organization’s effectiveness for a generation.  Comrade Stalin filed away in his memory annoying phrases and in 1940 he had comrade Trotsky murdered in Mexico.  The murder weapon was an ice-axe.

Lobster Thermidor

Lobster Thermidor is a creamy, cheesy mixture of cooked lobster meat, egg yolks, and cognac or sherry, stuffed into a lobster shell and served usually with a an oven-browned cheese crust.  In restaurants, it’s an expensive dish because lobsters are now high-priced (there was a time when they were eaten almost only by the working class) but especially because it’s something with a high labor component.  Cooked at home, without the need to charge out labor, it’s a form of extravagance on a budget and it’s a favorite among the dinner party set and the ideal thing to serve as a prelude to discussions about house prices.

Ingredients

2 lobsters
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons minced shallots
½ teaspoon minced garlic
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cognac or brandy
¾ cup milk
¼ cup heavy cream
¾ teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon ground white pepper
½ cup finely grated Parmesan, plus 2 tablespoons
1 tablespoon dry mustard powder
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh tarragon leaves
2 teaspoons finely chopped parsley, plus additional for garnish
¼ cup shredded gruyere cheese

Lobster Thermidor is a signature dish at Texas-based Prime Steak & Seafood and their web-site includes photographs to encourage bookings.

Instructions (cooking lobster)

(1) Fill a large, deep stock pot with about 3-4 inches (75-100 mm) of water and add enough sea-salt to make it as salty as sea-water.  Some add aromatics like herbs or lemon to enhance the flavor but thermidor purists insist thing shouldn’t be done and that all such work must be done by the sauce.  Only ever cook live lobsters.  If this is not practical, pre-cooked lobsters are available.

 (2) Once the water has been brought to the boil, add the lobsters (head first) to the pot.  Steaming is the best way to cook lobster because the meat becomes less waterlogged and less flavor in lost to the liquid.

(3) Cover tightly and steam lobsters for 8 minutes per pound (.454 kg), for the first pound and then an additional 3 minutes per pound.  Thus, if the total weight being cooked is 2 lb, cooking time will be about 10 minutes.

(4) Using tongs, remove lobsters from the pot and check to ensure they are cooked.  A fully cooked lobster will register 135-140˚F (57-60˚C) when a quick-read thermometer is inserted into the thickest part of the tail (always insert device into the tail’s underside).

Instructions (lobster thermidor)

(5) Preheat oven to 375˚F (190˚C).

(6) Line a baking sheet with aluminium foil and set aside.

(7) Cut lobsters in half (length-wise and a sharp blade will be needed) and remove the tail meat.

(8) Gently twist claws from the body and gently crack with the back of a heavy knife to remove the meat.  Gently pull the front legs from the shell and discard (some retain them for decorative purposes.

(9) Chop the tail meat and claw meat into bite sized pieces and set aside.

(10) Place the halved lobster shells on the baking sheet and set aside.

(11) Melt butter in a deep skillet over medium heat.  Add shallots and garlic, stirring, until fragrant (about 30 seconds).  Add the flour and whisk to combine.

(12) Cook the flour mixture, stirring constantly to make a light roux (approximately 2 minutes).

(13) Add cognac and cook for 10 seconds, stirring constantly.

(14) Slowly add milk, stirring constantly until combined.  Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (approximately 2-3 minutes).

(15) Slowly add cream, stirring constantly, until thoroughly combined.  Continue cooking while stirring over medium heat for 1 minute (done correctly, this will have produced a very thick mix.  Season with salt and pepper.

(16) Remove from heat and stir in the parmesan cheese, mustard, tarragon, and parsley.  Fold in the lobster meat.

(17) Divide the mixture among the lobster shells and place stuffed side up on a clean baking sheet.

(18) Sprinkle the top of each lobster with the gruyere and broil until the top is golden brown (should take 5-6 minutes).

(19) Place 1 lobster half on each plate, garnish with additional parsley, and serve immediately.

Lindsay Lohan rescues a lobster from the ice, saving it from becoming lobster thermidor (the crustacean’s ultimate fate is unknown).  Lohan Beach Club, 2019.

Maiden

Maiden (pronounced meyd-n)

(1) A girl or young unmarried woman; a maid (archaic but still in literary and poetic use).

(2) A female virgin (archaic); used also of unmarried young females in the sense of a “bachelorette” (a spinster being “a maiden aunt”).

(3) In horse racing, a horse which has never won a race.

(4) In horse racing, a race open only to maiden horses.

(5) As “clothes maiden”, a northern English dialect form describing a frame on which clothes are hung to dry (a clothes horse).

(6) A machine for washing linen (obsolete).

(7) An instrument resembling the guillotine, once used in Scotland for beheading criminals.

(8) As “maiden name”, a woman’s surname, prior to taking that of her husband upon marriage.

(9) In land management, as virgin soil, virgin forest etc, an area in its natural state; unexploited.

(10) In pre-modern agriculture, the last sheaf of grain harvested, decorated with ribbons and regarded as a talisman (by extension the end of the harvest) (archaic).

(11) In botany, a tree or shrub grown from seed and never pruned.

(12) In cricket, as “maiden over”, for a bowler to complete an over (now six legitimate deliveries) without conceding a run; a “wicket maiden” is an over in which a wicket fell with no runs being scored (thus double-wicket maiden & hat-trick maiden).

(13) Of, relating to, or befitting a girl or unmarried woman (archaic but preserved in phrases such as “her maiden virtues”. “a maiden blush” et al).

(14) Of an unmarried woman, older than a certain age (generally past middle age), often in the form “maiden aunt”.

(15) Something made, tried, appearing etc, for the first time (maiden flight, maiden speech, maiden voyage etc).

(16) In military slang, an untested (or untried in battle) knight, soldier or weapon; a fortress never captured or violated.

Pre-1000: From the Middle English mayden & meiden, from the Old English mæden  & mægden (unmarried woman (usually young); virgin; girl; maidservant), originally a diminutive of mægð or mægeð (virgin, girl; woman, wife), the construct being mægd, mægth or mægeth, from the Proto-West Germanic magaþ, from the Proto-Germanic magaþs & magadin (young womanhood, sexually inexperienced female) (and cognate with the Old Norse mogr (young man), the Old Irish maug & mug (slave), and the Gothic magaths) + -en (the diminutive suffix).  The Proto-Germanic was the source also of the Old Saxon magath, the Old Frisian maged, Old High German magad (virgin, maid), the German Magd (maid, maidservant), the German Mädchen (girl, maid) from Mägdchen (little maid), the feminine variant of the primitive Indo-European root maghu- (“young of either sex; “unmarried person” and the source also of the Old English magu (child, son, male descendant), the Avestan magava- (unmarried) and the Old Irish maug & mug (slave)).  Maiden is a noun & adjective, maidenly is an adjective, maidenship & maidenhood  are nouns and maidenish is an adjective; the noun plural is maidens.

Iron Maiden is a heavy metal band active since 1975, their eponymous album in 1980 the debut release of studio-recorded material.  Their album cover-art has become something of a motif and is widely reproduced in posters, T-shirts and such, their music is said to possess a similar consistency.

In thirteenth century Middle English, “maiden” could be used as a slur to refer to “a man lacking or abstaining from sexual experience” and in Scotland it was the official term for a guillotine-like device used to behead criminals.  In horse racing, a maiden horse is one which has never won a race (although in the mid-eighteen century it was sometimes used of horses which had not previously contested a race.  A maiden race is one restricted to maiden horses (which can be mares, stallions or geldings).  The figurative sense of "new, fresh, untried” (maiden flight, maiden speech, maiden voyage etc) seems first to have been used in the 1550s.  The idea of the maiden name (a woman’s surname, prior to taking that of her husband upon marriage) dates from the 1680s.  The noun maidenhood (state of being a maiden; state of an unmarried female; virginity) was from the Old English mægdenhad while the adjective maidenly (like a maid, becoming to a maid; gentle, modest, reserved) was first documented in the mid 1600s.

Headbanger Lindsay Lohan in Iron Maiden T-shirts.

The term Hiroshima maiden (or A-bomb maiden) was in the 1950s used to refer to the Japanese & Korean women disfigured by the radiation from the A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki in August 1945, the term coming into use in 1955 when they were sent to the US for reconstructive plastic surgery.  In Norse mythology, the billow maidens were any of the nine daughters of the sea-god Ran and a skjaldmær (shieldmaiden) was a female virgin who had chosen to fight as a warrior in battle.  In several tales from mythology, an ice maiden was one of the ice people (or people of the ice), a woman from a place of snow and ice (in popular culture, the idea was borrowed in fantasy writing.  In idiomatic use, an ice maiden (also ice princess or ice queen) is a beautiful but cold (heartless) woman.  In Westminster parliamentary systems, the maiden speech of a member is their first substantive address to a chamber.  By convention it is (1) uncontroversial and (2) listened to by the house in polite silence although in cases where the member has not followed the convention, there have been some famous interjections.  Maiden ventures by machinery have sometimes become infamous.  Ships have sunk on their maiden voyages including RMS Titanic (1912) and the Wasa (or Vasa), a Swedish warship at the time one of the fastest and most heavily gunned in the world (1628).  In aviation, many aircraft have crashed on their maiden flights (test pilots are truly intrepid types) although it’s a myth that included the Supermarine Spitfire.  Less fortunate was the German industry in the later stages of World War II (1939-1945) when development was being rushed and at least two prototypes are known to have either crashed or suffered severe damage during their maiden test flights including the Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger (People's Fighter).  In the case of the He 162 the maiden flight actually ended without incident and it was only a subsequent investigation of the airframe (after another prototype He 162 had crashed) which revealed the adhesive used to bond wooden components was so acidic it caused the timber to disintegrate.

An iron maiden towering above other instruments of torture.

The infamous torture chamber known as the iron maiden is now though to be mythical and an invention of those who wished to characterize the Middle Ages as a time of barbarism and savagery.  It was said to be a solid iron cabinet with a hinged front, large spikes fitted throughout the interior and designed to be large enough to accommodate an adult human.  Once the door was closed, it was said to be impossible to avoid being “spiked” and with every movement, one became “more spiked”.  Although their existence has been disproved, iron maidens (most apparently built in the nineteenth century) are a popular exhibit in “museums of torture”, some probably genuine “torture coffins” to which the spikes were a latter addition.  Quite why it was felt necessary to “invent” the iron maiden given there were so many examples of equally gruesome Medieval torture devices isn’t clear but it may be there was some desire to exonerate the torturers of Antiquity who really did use such things; among post Renaissance historians, such was the veneration for the Classical world that wherever possible, things were blamed on the Middle Ages.

In the English legal system, maiden assize came to mean an assize (periodic courts with on a circuit basis were conducted around England and Wales until 1972,) at which there were no criminal cases to be heard although originally it was an assize at which no prisoner was condemned to die.  There used to be some ritualism attached to the declaration of a maiden assize and the tradition wasn’t unknown in the US:  If a judge, upon opening a session of their assize found there were no cases to be heard, the clerk of the court would present him with a pair of white gloves, the marker of a maiden assize, the significance being that judges, as a mark of submission to the Crown, were always gloveless when executing the royal commission.