At this period there appeared, among innumerable cook-books, a work of four volumes entitled, "Suppers of the Court," a treatise which has been pronounced one of the best and most complete of its kind.[11] To Louis XV belongs the invention of _tables volantes_, or, to speak more truly, the revival of tables à la Trimalchio--like those devised during the times of the old Romans--which descended after each course through the floor, to appear reladen with new surprises. It was to this monarch, who insisted that women could not rise to the sublime heights of the cuisine, that Madame du Barry gave the successful supper from which, it was said, originated the order of the _cordon bleu_ for accomplished artisans of her sex. This was the menu, as elaborated by the best cuisinière that the reigning favourite could procure: _Coulis de faisan_, _petites croustades de foie de lottes_, _salmis de bécassines_, _pain de volaille à la suprème_, _poularde au cresson_, _écrevisses au vin de sauterne_, _biscuits de pêches au noyau_, _crême de cerneaux_, and _fraises au marasquin_. Lady Morgan asserts, however, that this title was first given to Marie, a celebrated cuisinière of the tax-gatherer who built the palace of l'Elysée Bourbon. Still another explanation of the term is that it originated with Madame de Maintenon, who established a school at St. Cyr for the education of the orphan daughters of ennobled officers. The pupils were carefully instructed in the culinary art, and to those who excelled a blue ribbon was presented as a badge of reward. Again, if we accept a reference of Albert Glatigny in one of his two airy poems on old Versailles, the term would appear to concern the Marquise de Montespan, who, as has already been stated, was a cook of no little merit: "Parfois le soir, au bras d'un militaire Vêtu d'azur, arrogant comme un paon, Un cordon-bleu passait avec mystère, Et l'on disait, 'Louis et Montespan!'" (Sometimes at eve, on arm of cavalier Bedight in blue, like some proud peacock's van, A cordon-bleu pass'd by with mystic air, The while one said, "Louis and Montespan!") In order to captivate the affections of her royal master more readily, the Duchesse de Châteauroux secured the most versatile kitchener who was to be found; and the wily and beautiful Marquise de Pompadour, thinking that the surest way to a man's heart is through his stomach, created _filets de volaille à la bellevue_, _palais de bœuf à la Pompadour_, and _tendrons d'aigneau à la soleil_. But the Louis were proverbially fickle--there were fillettes as well as filets; and while these culinary novelties appealed to the jaded royal palate for the time, they failed to retain the royal affections or wrest the monarch from his life of dissipation.