Taken from an article by By Ray Kershaw - Independent Newspaper published on
It's the annual festival of Lord Clive's mince pies. To the lilt
of troubadours' Languedocien airs, the Mince Pie Brotherhood's procession – La
Trés Noble et Trés Gourmande Confrérie du Petit Pâté de Pézenas – winds
majestically through the medieval lanes. The participants are robed in blue
gowns. Dangling proudly from their necks are replicas of Albion's festive
comestible, Britain's most enduring gift to France.
If it all seems a trifle bizarre to strangers, the natives, the
Piscenois, care not a local fig. It is not a tourist spectacle. Although only
mid-morning, the bonhomie is flowing as profusely as the wine in Pézenas. This
small town, just inland from Cap d'Agde on the southern coast of France, is a
maze of ancient alleys and cobbled squares with fountains. What Pézenas is
famous for – in Pézenas, at least – is having guarded the secret of Old
England's authentic mince pies for 233 years.
The original version with mincemeat made from real meat never
recovered popularity after Cromwell banned it, and has long been extinct in its
native land. Yet the mince pie not only flourished in this far corner of a
foreign field, but became the town's trademark. Lord Robert Clive, Market
Drayton schoolboy hoodlum dunce, later Clive of India, father of the Raj, was
responsible. He convalesced in Pézenas in 1768, 12 years after avenging the
Black Hole and six years before his suicide aged 49. Ruthless, ambitious, cunning
and avaricious (the ideal 18th-century British national hero), the once
penniless clerk arrived in Pézenas flush with Indian loot, one of the world's
wealthiest men.
The town's library is the former Three Pigeons Inn where Lord
and Lady Clive rested after three months travelling from England. A plaque
outside it records the Baron presenting his pies to Pézenas in gratitude for a
happy sojourn. Not only is this scene hard to imagine – the ennobled town bully
with floury hands – but it is, alas, of doubtful authority.
Baker Daniel Lallemand swears his family's recipe (minced
mutton, sugar, lemon zest), came directly from Clive, although exactly how is
lost in mists of flour dust. Local English-born historian Jane Lloret, a
Confrérie member, believes the clues lie in Lady Clive's letters home. The
Clives rented the Château Saint Martin de Grave, set like a palace in an ocean
of vines. Pézenas's wonderful climate had fostered a colony of ailing nobility.
Forced to entertain themselves, they formed something called the
Picnic Club, to which members contributed favourite dishes. The Clives loathed
French cooking, "nasty, garlicky stuff". They had an English cook,
Carrington, who made curries for the club – possibly France's first Indian
takeaways. Jane Lloret surmises that the pies also came via the club,
commissioned by Carrington from a baker who discerned that such exotic titbits
would sell like hot cakes.
While their precise provenance remains a culinary conundrum, two
centuries on Lord Clive's mince pies are still going strong. Traditionally
eaten as an aperitif, they make dainty morsels any time. Buy some warm from a
baker, find a shaded café table and savour with a dry white wine that custom
dictates must be Picpoul de Pinet. To look like a local, turn them upside down,
nibbling with deference, for you are tasting English history.
With or without pies, Pézenas is a gem of southern France. Its
medieval heart is a confusion of flower-decked houses and ancient vaulted
courtyards. The "modern" parts of the town date from the prosperous
17th and 18th centuries. The elegant mansions may look familiar: the town is a
favourite location for French period films.
The Piscenois are also proud of their Molière associations. His
company's 17th-century visits are celebrated biennially with music and drama
pageants. The old Hotel Molière, with its elaborate façade of theatrical
frescos, overlooks his monument on the bank of the usually dry River Peyne. It
is the place to stay in Pézenas. But Pézenas is no museum. Though cosily sized,
its cornucopian Saturday market packs every square. It has remained Languedoc's
biggest since the 13th century. The town's enviable lifestyle may soon have you
studying estate agents' windows, but while you dream it makes a fine home-from-home
for sampling the region.
For a start, there is that Picpoul wine. The Piscenois get
theirs from the hilltop village of Castelnau de Guers across the Hérault River,
but the Picpoul de Pinet district extends to the vast l'étang de Thau lagoon.
At shellfish-breeding villages such as Bouzigues or Marseillan, oyster addicts
can satiate their lust for £4 a dozen. Marseillan is also the home of Noilly
Prat vermouth, where hundreds of barrels of James Bond's favourite mixer lie
maturing in the sun. Nearby is ancient Agde, a town founded by Greeks where the
Hérault meets the sea. Miles-long beaches girdle the lagoon.
Back in Pézenas, the Brotherhood reaches the old people's home
with its annual treat of mince pies and Picpoul. A centenarian recalls pies on
childhood birthdays – Pézenas is famed for longevity. In the market-place
hubbub, glasses are brimming and pies are being consumed. But the noble
Confrérie still has important business – the new candidates' investiture, today
including Market Drayton's past and present mayors. Swearing solemn oaths to
defend the pies' integrity, they are eligible henceforth to wear them round
their necks.
The festival lunch is in the cavernous old stables of Lord
Clive's château. First come platters of mince pies, followed by five courses
and countless bottles of Picpoul. Fuelled by wine, the troubadours seem
indefatigable. Lunch will last all afternoon.
Then several people rise. In the sudden silence the kind of
haunting song that puts a lump in your throat rings out. It is, someone
whispers, La Coupo Santo (The Holy Cup), the ancient Languedoc anthem
sung in the southern French tongue of Occitan. The day has been fun, yet you
sense this is serious; surrounded by moist eyes, a glimpse of the glue of
traditions and old loyalties that for centuries has kept Pézenas intact and of
which Lord Clive's petits patés, whatever their true origin, are now
also an ingredient.
In India, Clive was France's greatest enemy. He quashed its
Indian ambitions and paved the way for the Raj. For this, he was not only made
a peer but received that rarest of accolades, a whole sub-continent appended to
his name. As toasts to his pies resume, there seems poetic irony that a hero
neglected in the land of his birth should, in this town in a nation he thwarted,
be regarded as history's greatest Englishman because of mince pies.
Yet munching a final oven-warm pie, the thought does occur that
he served Pézenas better than India. And mince pies surely make a more tasteful
memorial than a statue white with pigeon droppings celebrating war. It could
all be, of course, a vengeful Gallic joke, but more likely it's further
evidence that in France food is always what matters most. In a Pézenas as
charming as when the noble nabob graced it, wine shops sell you their cuvée
Lord Clive and his pies are honoured even on postcards.
Link to original article:
http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/europe/the-land-of-true-mince-pies-9276775.html
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