Ridiculous Situation

The event depicted here is generally believed to be the Affaire du Pâtissier of March 1874, in which the head pastry chef of the Imperial Household was formally received by four members of the Ceremonial Guard for the purpose of receiving a reprimand regarding a soufflé. The precise nature of the soufflé’s failure has been lost to history; contemporary sources refer only to un incident de cuisine d’une nature grave, an incident of grave culinary nature.

The painter, an unknown court realist working in the academic style of the period, has chosen to render the moment with all of the visual authority normally reserved for military tribunals or coronations. This was not, as later scholars have sometimes suggested, ironic. It was, on the contrary, entirely sincere. The Imperial Household understood the reprimand of its pastry chef to be a matter of state consequence, and the artist recorded it with the dignity his patrons required.

The chef, one Étienne Pommard, retained his position, retired eleven years later with full honors, and lived to see a nephew succeed him in the same role. The dog, whose name has not been preserved, is believed to have belonged to the man in black at lower left.

The soufflé was never spoken of again.