Article : The Queen of France let them eat cake

The Queen of France let them eat cake

May 19 2004

By Jeffrey Herms

Marie Antoinette was the Queen of France in the in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Does that name ring a bell?
Of course it does, she was the illustrious Queen who is said to have uttered that famous phrase, Let them eat cake, a classic line in history.
At the time, the peasants of France were very poor, and it is said that they had no bread to eat. When Marie suggested they eat cake instead, she used the word cake in a different context than we use it today. Bakers of the time would scrape the leavings of cooked baked goods out of their baking pans at the end of the day and put them outside for beggars and urchins to help themselves. That is what Marie meant by cake. She might as well have said Let them eat whatever you can scrape out of an empty pot. Before learning this, you probably had a picture in your head of a sympathetic Queen lamenting the fact that the peasants had no bread. The queen of course has plenty of delicious cake and thought it would be nice to share with the peasants. Alas, that was not the case. We have learned that Marie was only being practical.
Here then I would like to coin a new phrase in the same spirit we used to think Marie had: Let them eat chocolate cake! Whether you think yourself an aristocrat or a peasant, if you are reading this you can probably get your hands on some.
Ill imagine here for you my perfect piece of cake. It has a rich velvety chocolate center, very high in cocoa for a sophisticated taste sensation, and of course a ribbon of chocolate sauce right through the middle of it. The icing is three different kinds of real chocolate, milk, white and dark chocolate drizzles to tickle the taste buds. Hungry yet? You can afford it.
Let us eat chocolate cake.