A HARTE APPETITE: TOP CULINARY HAPPENINGS OF THE MILLENNIUM

To everybody's relief, Y2K has arrived without incident. Even our cable service went uninterrupted! Apparently those dire predictions about what might happen at the dawn of a new millennium were wrong, unless the next millennium, as calendrical scholars maintain, really does not begin until a year from now.

Having survived the transition from 1999 to 2000, it's only natural to contemplate the events of the past. Thus, we have recently been subjected to lists of the most influential people or occurrences of the last thousand years. But notably absent from these rosters are the major culinary figures and episodes of the last millennium, an egregious oversight, it seems to me. Perhaps Time magazine is right to call Albert Einstein the person of the century or A&E to designate Gutenberg the person of the millennium, but did they really have more impact on their times than Julia Child or Taillevent? Of course not! So for balance, I herewith offer a subjective catalog of the major culinary happenings of the last 1,000 years.

We begin with the 11th century. Iron plows were beginning to replace wooden ones, the Normans, following the Battle of Hastings, were changing our culinary language with the introduction of French words like boeuf, which was morphed into beef, and some say Roquefort cheese was discovered. But clearly the event of the century was the invention of the fork. The device, introduced in Venice in 1071, would take a while to catch on. It would not be until early in the 18th century that Englishmen would discontinue eating with their fingers.

The 12th century witnessed no less a major food event, the founding of Les Halles, the great French food market, in 1110. Louis VI, known as Louis the Fat, gave some peasant women permission to set up fish stalls outside his palace in Paris and one thing led to another. In little more than 25 years, Les Halles, called "the belly of France" by Emile Zola, would become the largest food market in the world, operating in the same spot until 1969 when it moved because of traffic congestion.

From a culinary standpoint, things picked up in the 13th century. A number of incidents could legitimately vie for the title of most significant food-related event of the period. For historians it might be the famines that swept through the century. For dieters it might be China's exporting of tofu to Japan in 1212. For drink connoisseurs it would undoubtedly be the first distillation of brandy at the Montpellier medical school in France. For the rest of us it might be the fruits, both literally and figuratively, of Marco Polo's travels. But I think a better case can be made for the Viennese bakers of 1217 who prepared crescent-shaped rolls for Duke Leopold VI as he embarked on a Fifth Crusade. A variation of this treat would be brought to Paris years later by Marie-Antoinette and, with some alterations by French bakers, become the croissant. I'll take puff pastry over tofu and even brandy any day!

Despite the Black Death, the 14th century produced some noteworthy culinary advancements, not least among them the commercial production of pasta in Italy, where noodles had formerly been only a luxury food. But even so, the most remarkable triumph had to be the career of Taillevent, the great French chef who began as a kitchen helper and ended up as France's first royal chef. His manuscript, Le Viander, finished in 1380, contains the basic formulas for meat stocks, the foundation of classic French cuisine, which have changed little to this day.

All culinary events of the 15th century, which include the world's first printed cookbook, by a Vatican librarian in 1475, are eclipsed by what is arguably the most important culinary event of the entire millennium -- Columbus' voyage to the Western Hemisphere. His discovery of more than 100 New World foodstuffs, including tomatoes, potatoes, chilies, corn and beans, and his introduction to the New World of Old World foods, literally transformed the eating habits of everyone on the planet.

But just 10 years later, in the 16th century, on his fourth and final voyage in 1502, Columbus outdid even himself when he discovered chocolate. Granted, he thought little of it and only as a curiosity brought it home where it would take another 300 years or so for it to be developed into the candy we love today, but to my way of thinking no other event of the century outranks this breakthrough -- not the first cassoulet in 1533, not the founding of the American beef cattle industry by Coronado in 1540, not even the perfection of Tempura by the Japanese in 1585. As a confirmed chocophile, I pay homage to this delicious culinary milestone every Columbus Day.

The 17th century had its share of important advancements in the art of cuisine, including the invention of the bagel, the codification of regulations governing Dijon mustard, and the creation of Louis de Be-chamel's famous sauce. But it would be hard to imagine a more important contribution to civilization than the one made by Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Perignon in 1698. Sparkling wines had been around for years, but it was he who perfected la methode champenoise wherein a secondary fermentation process takes place in a tightly corked bottle, creating the distinctive "pop" when it is uncorked and earning him the title "father of champagne."

The tempo of culinary progress accelerated in the 18th century as French cooking came into full flower, Cajun cuisine got its start, King Stanislaw invented both the madeleine and baba au rhum, the first modern English cookbook, Hannah Glasse's "The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy," was published, pate de foie gras was created, mayonnaise was invented, London's Fortnum and Mason's opened, and, according to some accounts, sushi was devised. But perhaps the most far-reaching development of the century took place in 1762 at London's Beef Steak Club above the Covent Garden Theatre when John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, reluctant to take a break after 24 hours of nonstop gambling, ordered some meat and slices of bread, put them together and ate as he went on betting. Where would Subway, Oscar Meyer or Dagwood be without him!

The 19th century was a period of such dizzying culinary innovation that a whole book could be written about it. Among the more noteworthy achievements were the patenting of the tin can in 1810, the publication of the first recipe for ketchup in 1812, the creation of the Sachertorte in 1832, the invention of the hand crank ice cream freezer in 1846, the birth of the potato chip in 1853, the concoction of baked Alaska in 1867, the formulation of Tabasco sauce in 1868, the invention of the hamburger in 1885 and the debut of Coca Cola the very next year, not to mention the invention of peanut butter, Waldorf salad, fig newtons, tootsie rolls, cracker jack, cherries jubilee, jello, the Dobostorte, and brownies. But for sheer refinement it would be hard to beat the introduction in 1840 by Anna, wife of the seventh Duke of Bedford, of the tradition of British high tea as a tide-me-over between lunch and dinner. To this day, no mere coffee break can compare.

That brings us finally to the 20th century. It has witnessed a veritable explosion of wide ranging culinary developments. It is the century that saw in the same city, Philadelphia, separated by only 67 years, the opening of the first coin-operated automat and the opening of what many regard as the finest restaurant in the country, Le Bec-Fin.

It saw the creation of vichyssoise and Caesar salad and White Castles. It witnessed the debut of TV dinners and cake mixes and Julia Child. It saw demand created for frozen foods and free-range chickens. It saw the birth of the ice cream cone and the Diary Queen, the Oreo and the fortune cookie. It noted the introduction of Land O' Lakes butter, Imperial margarine, and Crisco. It marked the invention of the pop-up toaster, the pressure cooker, Pyrex, and the food processor. It observed the arrival of Larousse Gastronomique, Gourmet magazine, and Mr. Food. It saw the advent of Teflon and Tupperware. It beheld the coming of My Daddy's Cheesecake. For anyone who loves food, it was an exciting 100 years.

But can one event out of all of this culinary activity be called the highlight of the century? Perhaps not. But if I had to pick one it would probably be the serendipitous accident committed in 1933 by Ruth Wakefield, owner of the Toll House Inn at Whitman, Mass. She chopped up a chocolate bar and stirred it into her cookie batter expecting the chocolate to melt during baking. It didn't. Surely her fortuitous invention of the chocolate chip cookie holds some claim to being the watershed culinary event of the last century.

No one really knows what the watershed culinary events of the next 100 or 1,000 years will be, but judging by the events of the past millennium they are likely to be exciting. My wish for the New Year is that you and I will be around to enjoy a large number of them!

Millennial Chocolate Chip Cookies

This chocolate chip cookie is an appropriate way to usher in the new millennium and to celebrate the old one. The recipe, after all, is indebted to many breakthroughs of the last 10 centuries, including the discovery of new ingredients like chocolate, advances in the production of already known ones, the invention of appliances like the temperature-regulated oven, and, of course, the experimentation of Ruth Wakefield.

Ingredients:

2 sticks butter

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 tablespoons grated orange zest

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 eggs

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups flour

1 1/2 cups pecan halves

3 giant (8-oz.) milk chocolate bars cut into chunks

Directions:

Cream butter, sugars and zest until fluffy. Beat in vanilla and eggs. Stir in combined soda, salt and flour. Stir in pecans and chocolate chunks. Spoon dough onto greased cookie sheets and bake at 350 degrees 10 to 12 minutes. Cool slightly before removing from cookie sheets.

Got a culinary question you'd like to ask or an idea you'd like to see treated in this column? Send your suggestions to A Harte Appetite, c/o The Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, MO., 63702-0699 or by e-mail to tharte@semovm.semo.edu.

Tom Harte is a professor at Southeast Missouri State University and writes a food column every other week for the Southeast Missourian.