All the chefs will tell you: there is a noise that is unbearable to them, that of the saucepan that resonates when you hit it too hard on the stove. In general, the culprit is good for a call to order, more rarely for a shouting match. Because a “Russian” (that’s the nickname for the saucepan in the kitchen), it needs cleaning, it’s just that you don’t want to damage it, it’s respect for the work tool. When the sound of saucepans tickles his ears, Emmanuel Macron, he responds with the contempt that we know him: “It’s not pans that will move France forward”, he estimated on Wednesday, traveling in Alsace, ensuring that “the reality of the whole country is not only those who make noise with saucepans or who complain”.
It is certain that the cordon-bleu eater is more accustomed to tear gas, water cannon and LBD when the Republic is in full fire. Once again, he didn’t understand anything about béarnaise, the Elysée cake-sauce. Because the noise of the wooden spoon, which lived through the war on the stewpot, which caused May 68, is certainly an effective way to raise the mayonnaise of protest. It is not the prerogative of the country of gastronomic meals recognized by Unesco, it is global, and it is as old as our black cast iron casserole dish. From Senegal to Lebanon via Canada and Venezuela, the people knocked on the bottom of the pans to say that they had nothing to fill them, defend their freedoms, democracy. In France, protest by the “casserolade” dates back to the 1830s and the beginning of the July Monarchy. The Republican opponents of the new regime used this practice taken from the traditional hullabaloo against the government and its prefects.
“Reason like a pan”
The concert of saucepans is far from being anecdotal, as Marcos Ancelovici, sociologist of social conflicts at the University of Quebec, in Montreal, pointed out in an interview with the Swiss daily the weather, November 26, 2019 : “Symbolically, the saucepan refers to the needs of the population, to their private concerns. There is a form of transgression when the private sphere arrives in the public space. It is more than a simple interpellation of the State. It is the very nature of the servant that resonates.”
The question that arises today is whether we are condemned to suffer another four years from a Head of State who has “reasoned like a pan” with its pension reform and grubs with blows of 49.3. In his Dictionary of gourmet expressions (1), the historian Stéphane Gillet dissects this pungent formula: “This derogatory phrase uses a play on words between “reason” and “resonate”. To “reason like a saucepan” means to have an empty head like a “bell”, to be stupid.”
It is in any case a certainty, it is that the presidents pass, remain the pans that they drag. The expression appeared as early as 1902, according to Stéphane Gillet: “In the middle of politics, it is to be pursued by a bad reputation following regrettable acts or words. It is to bear the weight of the mistakes of the past, which continue to make a lot of noise. In this regard, the Fifth Republic is quite a cookware.
(1) Ed. Vendémiaire, 2022, 26.90 euros.
