Alexandre Étienne Choron

Who was Alexandre Étienne Choron?

Alexandre Étienne Choron was a French chef.

As chef de cuisine of the celebrated restaurant Voisin on the rue Saint Honoré, Choron is best known for his invention of Choron sauce, a sauce béarnaise enriched with tomato concentrate before reduction.

Choron is also remembered for his dishes served during the Siege of Paris by the Prussians in which began on 19 September 1870. During the siege, Parisians were reduced to eating cats, dogs, and rats. The bourgeois were not content to eat on such low animals, and demand at the de luxe restaurants remained high. As food reserves dwindled, these restaurants, including Voisin, improvised. Choron eyed the animals kept at the local zoo, and served exotic animal dishes at Voisin. For the midnight Christmas meal of 1870, Choron proposed a menu principally composed of the best parts of the animals kept in the Jardin d'acclimatation – stuffed head of donkey, elephant consommé, roasted camel, kangaroo stew, bear shanks roasted in pepper sauce, wolf in deer sauce, cat with rat, and antelope in truffle sauce – has become legendary. The menu's wines were Mouton-Rothschild 1846, Romanée-Conti 1858 and Château Palmer 1864.