-------------------------------------------------------------------- The French is _Qu'ils mangent de la brioche_ (not _gateau_ as one might expect). And Queen Marie-Antoinette did *not* say this. (When famine struck Paris, she actually took an active role in relieving it.) Jean-Jacques Rousseau attributed the words to "a great princess" in book 6 of his _Confessions_. _Confessions_ was published posthumously, but book 6 was written 2 or 3 years before Marie-Antoinette arrived in France in 1770.
John Wexler writes: "French law obliged bakers to sell certain standard varieties of loaf at fixed weights and prices. (It still does, which explains why the most expensive patisserie will sell you a baguette for the same price as a supermarket.) At the time when this quotation originated, the law also obliged the baker to sell a fancier loaf for the price of the cheap one when the cheap ones were all gone. This was to forestall the obvious trick of baking just a few standard loaves, so that one could make more profit by using the rest of the flour for price-unregulated loaves. So whoever it was who said _Qu'ils mangent de la brioche_, she (or he) was not being wholly flippant. The idea was that the bread shortage could be alleviated if the law was enforced against profiteering bakers. I have seen this explanation quoted in defence of Marie Antoinette. It seems a pity, after all that, if she didn't say it." --------------------------------------------------------------------
interesting.
this got me wondering about the phrase "baker's dozen," whether there was any connection ... lots of theories out there, but here's one that caught my eye:
http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorb.htm
Baker's Dozen
The popular tale behind this phrase's origin is that a medieval law specified the weight of loaves of bread and any baker who shorted a customer was in for dire punishment. So, baker's would include a thirteenth loaf with each dozen just to be safe. The story is partly true. There was such a law, but the practice of adding an extra loaf to the dozen had nothing to do with fear of punishment.
The law in question was the Assize of Bread and Ale, first promulgated in England in 1266. There are various versions of the law, but they all regulated the weight and price of loaves of bread that were sold on the market. During years of good harvests, bakers could make more bread than they could sell locally, so they would sell the excess loaves to hucksters, or middlemen. But since the weight and price was strictly regulated, the only way for these distributors to make money would be to give them extra loaves. The baker would give the huckster a thirteenth, or vantage, loaf for each dozen. This extra loaf provided the profit for the middleman.
The practice of adding the thirteenth loaf is older than the phrase. The phrase only dates to 1599.
......... laserbeam® [aka ray] metropolitan bakery rules, but their bagels--quelle dommage
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