There's a movie that my friends have been trying to talk me into seeing with them. It apparently contains a live action version of this song, which, they argue, I'd love because it's basically dishes singing about food, which is more or less what I think about all the time. "You'll love it," they keep telling me. "Be Our Guest is a great song."
The problem though, dear readers, is that I can't enjoy "Be Our Guest," no matter how much singing food and French accents there are. You see, "Be Our Guest" has a historical inaccuracy. You'll see it at the 58 second mark in the video I linked as food happily marches by. It's not the souffle, not the hors d'ouevres. No, it's the flambe. I'm sorry to have to tell you that flambe being in the musical number with dancing food and singing dishes is not historically accurate.
But let me back up a moment. "Quouar," you might say, "This is a Disney movie, and Disney movies exist in a weird alternate, timeless reality." And I agree that there is some truth to that. With Beauty and the Beast, though, there are some helpful clues that help us determine roughly what time period "Beauty and the Beast" takes place in.
The first clue comes from this clip, in which we see Gaston boasting about his shooting prowess and general manliness. What's important here, though, is the type of gun he's boasting about. You can see it both in his portrait, and in the song itself when he starts shooting innocent barrels. The gun has a flared muzzle, which makes it a blunderbuss. Blunderbusses had their heyday in the 17th and 18th centuries, and while some were still owned by private citizens in the 19th century, they were considered obsolete by the mid-19th century. Given how proud Gaston is of his hunting prowess, it seems unlikely that he would have been out hunting with an obsolete weapen, so based on the gun alone, we know the film likely takes place before the 19th century.
Another major clue comes from this song. First, it establishes pretty definitively that we're in France, which means that when analysing what the presence of a bookstore in a rural French town means in terms of the time period of this film, we can look at French literacy statistics. It's important to note that the definition of "literacy" has shifted since the Enlightenment, so while it currently means "able to read and write," early statistics would have included anyone who could write their name. Taking into account the shifting definition, it's not until the 1750s to 1800s that we start seeing more widespread general literacy. That literacy was lower for women, but I think it's reasonable to say that Belle, being the daughter of an inventor, would have been educated to the best of the inventor's ability, and so would likely have been able to read. However, the fact that a bookstore is able to survive as a store at all, though, means there needed to be some degree of widespread literacy, which means the film must take place no earlier than roughly 1750. Interestingly, Belle's particular town is also likely in the northeast of France, since that was the area with the highest literacy and most able to support a dedicated bookstore in the late 18th century. Just as an aside.
The most important clue in determining time period, however, comes from the Beast. The Beast is a noble with a title and a castle and all that jazz, and there's an event in French history that had a tendency to strip nobles of those sorts of things. In 1790, the French Revolution made being a prince a rather unpopular occupation, and while the privileges of the nobility wouldn't be totally and finally stripped until the end of the July Monarchy in 1848, a castle like that would likely have made the Beast a target of some sort. We know that the film must take place before 1848, or else it would be totally inaccurate to call the Beast a "prince." We also know that as a prince, the Beast would have likely been fairly unpopular from 1790 onwards. Because of this, it seems reasonable to me to say that the film takes place somewhere between 1750 and 1790 in northeast France.
Which brings me back to the flambe. The earliest reference I could find to something being flambed comes from "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens in 1843 in which he describes a pudding surrounded by flaming brandy (pretty much the definition of flambe). While it's likely that tasty desserts were being set on fire before 1843, it's telling to me that he doesn't call it "flambe," but rather "thing in alcohol that we set on fire." It's not until 1847 that we start seeing the term in French cookbooks, implying that for Lumiere to state that the dessert is flambed, he would have to be using the term in the mid-19th century.
Well, you see the problem. All indicators are that this film takes place in the late 18th century. There's no way for Lumiere, the magical talking candlestick, to be able to use the term "flambed" to describe his cooking technique for the flaming dessert. It's a historical inaccuracy. "Flambe," while it is a French word, as a technique was likely not widespread until at least the mid-19th century.
Basically, then, films with dancing food and singing cutlery are not good sources for learning about 18th century French cuisine.
Sources!
A French cookbook from 1847 which contains a flambeed dessert
Literacy charts from 1600 onwards in Europe!
A paper about literacy and social mobility in 19th century France
A brief bit from this man about 18th century rural French literacy
A recipe for crepes suzette because yum.
ここには何もないようです