Time for a trickle?

I,for one,subscribe to the Trickledown theory. Certain dishes and culinary ideas start life much higher up the pecking order,as it were,and eventually through a series of seemingly unconnected circumstances find their way, almost like baby salmon swimming downstream to the sea,onto our tables in casual restaurants and even at home via the ambitious home cook or more often unfortunately the supermarket chilled foods section. What the hell is he waffling about now you're asking yourself? Well here's a great example. Bearnaise sauce,which of course you all know is,chopped fresh herbs,notably tarragon,shallots,reduced white wine, pepper,egg yolks and butter held in a hot emulsion,takes it's name from the old French province of Bearn,now amalgated into the region Pyrenees Atlantique. The first Bourbon king,Henry IV, was a native of Bearn and was called Le Grand Bearnaise. Now about 1830,at a restaurant at St Germain called Pavillon Henri IV, an unknown chef created this magnificent sauce to go with roast and grilled meats and it seemed natural, considering the connection, to call it after Le Grand Bearnaise. Ok,so back to the trickledown. For many years,this difficult to execute sauce remained in the domain of the grand restaurants and was reserved purely for the pampered palates of the very rich but as public demands changed,Bearnaise became one of the first "crossover artists" which started to appear initially on upmarket Grill and Chop Houses and then eventually the ubiquitous steak house. Now it has trickled down into the supermarket in a bastardised,bottled format and is even available in a shelf stable tetrapack. It would not surprise me in the slightest if it ended up on a Big Mac in the not too distant future.

I'm reading: Time for a trickle?