Book of Days Tales

In the early afternoon on this date in 1803 a meteorite shower of more than 3000 fragments fell upon the town of L’Aigle in Normandy. Upon hearing of this event the French Academy of Sciences sent the young scientist Jean-Baptiste Biot to investigate. After painstaking work in the field he reported two kinds of evidence pointing to an extraterrestrial origin for the stones:

1. Physical evidence: the sudden appearance of many identical stones similar to other stones fallen from the sky in other places.

2. Human evidence: a large number of witnesses who said they saw a “rain of stones thrown by a meteor.”

Biot drew a detailed map of the dispersal of the meteorites, and his subsequent impassioned paper describing how these stones must undoubtedly be of extraterrestrial origin effectively gave birth to the science of meteoritics. The L’Aigle event was a milestone in the understanding of meteorites and their origins because at that time the mere existence of meteorites was hotly debated. Examples of stones falling from the sky had long been recognized, but their origin was controversial, with most commentators agreeing with Aristotle that they were terrestrial in origin. Eye-witness accounts were treated with great skepticism. They were generally dismissed as lies or delusions. The meteorites that fell on L’Aigle were collected and sold or sent to numerous museums in Europe where they may still be seen.

L’Aigle is in Orne, a landlocked department in Normandy that is also the site of Camembert, the village that gives its name to the famous cheese. Coincidentally, camembert was first made around the time of the L’Aigle meteorite fall. Camembert was reputedly first made in 1791 by Marie Harel, a farmer from Normandy, following advice from a priest who came from Brie.

However, the origin of the cheese known today as camembert is more likely to rest with the beginnings of the industrialization of the cheesemaking process at the end of the 19^th century. In 1890, an engineer, M. Ridel, devised the wooden box which was used to carry the cheese and helped to send it over long distances, in particular to North America, where it became very popular. These boxes are still used today.

Before fungi were scientifically understood, the color of camembert rind was a matter of chance, most commonly blue-grey, with brown spots. From the early 20^th century onwards, the rind has been more commonly pure white, but it was not until the mid-1970s that pure white became standard.

My discovery of camembert occurred in 1966 when I was an exchange student in France. Before that time my culinary tastes were extremely limited. Cheese, as far as I was concerned, was generic Cheddar. But when I lived in France it was my duty, along with Jean-Loup my exchange mate, to get the baguettes for the evening meal on our way home from school. We frequently bought some camembert as well, sliced it, and stuffed it into a baguette is a quick snack on the way home. That, and Jean-Loup’s mother’s cooking, changed my outlook on food for life. So, why not do the same in tribute to the L’Aigle meteorite fall?  Or, if you want to be more hedonistic there is baked camembert, but I’ll leave you to find a recipe.