»In which we have a thousand sanguinary guillotines

The enigmatic Françpois-René de Chateaubriand gives his name to a most delicious preparation of tenderloin. A very different recipe from the traditional "Pittsburgh" rare steak of my youth.

Portraits of this playboy noble show him looking rakish and dissolute -- quite probably from eating his chef's fantastic (and extravagant: anecdotal history says that the chateaubriand recipe called for three pieces of tenderloin in the preparation: two thinner pieces of meat charred, leaving the thick, inner pieces succulent) meals. The imprimatur of the aristocrat remains, but the name of the chef is lost to history.

Chateaubriand is also a noted author: a royalist, he wrote An Historical, Political, and Moral Essay on Revolutions, Ancient and Modern, putting the Jacobins in historical context. His monumental, posthumously published autobiography Mémoires d'Outre-tombe formed a theme of Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions.