Réchauffé

Réchauffé (pronounced rey-shoh-fey )

(1) A warmed-up dish of food; the use of leftovers.

(2) By extension, anything old or stale brought back into service; old material reworked or rehashed.

Circa 1800: From the French réchauffé, past participle of réchauffer (to re-heat), the construct being r(e)- (again) + échauffer (to warm) (from the Vulgar Latin excalefāre, the construct being ex- (the intensive prefix + calefacere ( to warm).  In English, the spelling is usually rechauffe and the word was a direct borrowing from the French rechauffe, the feminine réchauffée, the masculine plural rechauffes & the feminine plural réchauffées.  Échauffer was related to Middle & Old French chaufer (which persists in modern French as chauffer) (to warm), ultimately from Latin cal(e)facere (to make hot), the construct being cale– (stem of calēre (to be hot) + facere (to make).  The Middle French chaufer was the source of English chafe (to wear or abrade by rubbing) although the original meaning was ”to warm, heat”, and that sense survives in culinary use, the chafing dish a receptacle which consists of a metal dish with a lamp or heating appliance beneath, used for keeping food hot at the table.

In English, few prefixes have been more productively applied than re- but, being a direct import from the French, re-chauffe never emerged.  The re- prefix is from the Middle English re-, from the circa 1200 Old French re-, from the Latin re- & red- (back; anew; again; against), from the primitive Indo-European wre & wret- (again), a metathetic alteration of wert- (to turn).  It displaced the native English ed- & eft-.  A hyphen is not normally included in words formed using this prefix, except when the absence of a hyphen would (1) make the meaning unclear, (2) when the word with which the prefix is combined begins with a capital letter, (3) when the word with which the is combined with begins with another “re”, (4) when the word with which the prefix is combined with begins with “e”, (5) when the word formed is identical in form to another word in which re- does not have any of the senses listed above.  As late as the early twentieth century, the dieresis was sometimes used instead of a hyphen (eg reemerge) but this is now rare except when demanded for historic authenticity or if there’s an attempt deliberately to affect the archaic.  Re- may (and has) been applied to almost any verb and previously irregular constructions appear regularly in informal use; the exception is all forms of “be” and the modal verbs (can, should etc).  Although it seems certain the origin of the Latin re- is the primitive Indo-European wre & wret- (which has a parallel in Umbrian re-), beyond that it’s uncertain and while it seems always to have conveyed the general sense of "back" or "backwards", there were instances where the precise was unclear and the prolific productivity in Classical Latin tended make things obscure.

Rechauffe entered English early in the nineteenth century in the figurative sense which had for some time been current in France, suggesting something (ideas, literature etc) or someone (actors, artists and (especially) politicians) old being rehashed or recycled (hence the common phrase c’est du réchauffé (meaning “it’s old hat)).  That remains the most common use in English but by the late 1800s, the original sense in French (reheated food) had been picked up across the channel, presumably because “Réchauffé Bœuf bourguignon” is a more appealing dish than “yesterday’s stew”.

Lasagna (lasagne).

Before the figurative use prevailed, rechauffe referred to reheating food left over from an earlier meal, a practice doubtless common since cooking became a thing and one commendable for reducing waste and encouraging thrift.  It needs however to be undertaken with care because cooked food cannot be stored for too long without the quality deteriorating or the risk of unpleasant bacterial infection increasing.  As a general principle, never re-cook; only reheat left-overs which retain their wholesomeness.  Where possible, cut the cooked food finely (increasing the surface area will quicken the reheating and enhance the penetration of flavor, where necessary adding additional moisture (sauces or a gravy) during the reheating.  There are some foods which probably should never been reheated (most famously chicken) and some which are said to benefit from being left overnight, notably lasagna (lasagne) which many insist seems to gain some richness once rechauffed.

The politically rechauffed

Politicians in the modern age are rechauffed with less frequency than was once tolerated.  It’s hard now to imagine major political parties allowing someone who let them to defeat at an election being further indulged but in earlier times, Australia and the United States provided a few examples:

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) who gained the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States in 1896, 1900 & 1908, losing each time.  For a generation he dominated his party but is probably now better remembered as the anti-evolutionist lawyer in the 1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial“ (State of Tennessee v John Thomas Scopes).  His daughter once had to sprint to catch a bus and remarked "I'm the first member of my family successfully to run for something". 

Dr HV Evatt (1894-1965) was a judge of the High Court who entered politics, becoming leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), leading them to defeat in three successive elections, 1954, 1955 & 1958.  They were difficult days for the ALP and Evatt’s declining mental acuity, subsequently attributed to arteriosclerosis, was noted even at the time.  Later, those who knew him would differ greatly on just when the instability began though all would agree there was madness.

Evatt’s successor as ALP leader was Arthur Calwell (1896-1973), a devoted Roman Catholic who in dress and manner appeared a figure from an earlier age.  He contested three elections (1961, 1963 & 1966) without success although he came close in the first, actually gaining more votes than his opponent though without securing the requisite number of seats.  However, he lost in 1966 in a landslide, a result which would have implications, the extent of his loss meaning not even the landslide the ALP achieved in 1969 was enough to secure victory.  His slim volume Be Just and Fear Not (1972) remains one of the better Australian political memoirs.

It was Sir Robert Menzies 1894–1978 (prime-minister of Australia 1939-1941 & 1949-1966) who thrice defeated both Evatt and Calwell.  Written-off after losing office in 1941 (the famous phrase of the era that “Menzies couldn’t lead a flock of homing pigeons” summed up the feeling) his rechauffe was all the more remarkable because he followed a path which rarely succeeds, forming a new political party as his platform, one that survives to this day as the country’s most successful electoral machine.  Menzies said of Evatt “I disliked him, I distrusted him” but served as one of the pallbearers at his funeral, some wondering what “the Doc”, whose feelings were reciprocal, would have made of that.

Adlai Stevenson, 1952.

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) had no easy task running for US President in 1952 against Dwight Eisenhower (1885-1969; US president 1953-1961).  That he lost to the popular soldier who had been supreme commander not only of the D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe but also of NATO (1921-1952) was less a surprise than the fact the general’s margin of victory wasn’t greater.  In the prosperous 1950s, the Democratic nomination to run against Eisenhower wasn’t really a good career move but Stevenson sought the party’s endorsement and it unexpectedly turned into a fairly nasty contest after the general suffered a heart attack, encouraging some previously reticent Democrats to enter the fray.  The president however recovered well and won in a landslide.  When Stevenson died in London, many obituaries ran the famous photograph of him on the hustings in 1952 with a hole in his shoe.

Richard Nixon (left) & Lyndon Baines Johnson, the White House, 1968.

Eisenhower’s vice-president was Richard Nixon (1913-1994, US president 1969-1974) perhaps the most remarkable rechauffe of the modern age.  His famous defeat in the 1960 presidential election seemed bad enough but what appeared the final nail in his political coffin was losing the gubernatorial contest in California two years later and most suspect that for any other politician, that really would have been the end.  His tenacity however was legendary and assisted by the lucky circumstances of the 1960s: (1) the huge loss by Republican Barry Goldwater (1909-1998) in 1964, (2) the various traumas of the Vietnam War, (3) social unrest and (4) the implosion of LBJ’s (Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1908-1973; US president 1963-1969) presidency, Nixon returned to win convincingly in 1968 and massively in 1972.  From there it ended badly but the Nixon of 1960 does deserve some credit.  After being told he’d lost by “an electoral eyelash” and there was evidence of much fraud (and that evidence was compelling, unlike the allegations in 2020), his advisors told him he had sound grounds on which challenge the result.  Nixon declined to pursue the matter, arguing the institution of the presidency was too important to suggest it was tainted.  “Nobody steals the presidency of the United States” he told his aides.  Not all of his successors have shared his view.

The rechauffe of John Howard (b 1939; Australian prime-minister 1996-2007) proved a remarkable success and one he’d come not to expect.  Having lost the 1987 election after a bizarre schism in conservatives politics, he’d been written off, a judgement with which he agreed, telling one interviewer that a comeback “…really would be Lazarus with a triple bypass” yet the universe shifted and he regained the leadership, winning four successive elections (even a now rare upper house majority which proved a poisoned chalice).  Howard’s internecine opponent of the 1980s, Andrew Peacock (1939-2021) was also recycled but without success, his tilt at the 1990 election no more productive than his loss in 1984.  One of his opponents, noting the rechauffe, explored the culinary metaphor further, observing that “a soufflé never rises twice”.  That was an allusion to his image as someone rather insubstantial but he’ll always be remembered for allowing the country to have two elections contested by a Mr Peacock and a Mr Hawke.  It was a time of such coincidences, the leaders of the National Party at the time being successively Mr Blunt and Mr Sharp.