It was created for sextet: clarinet (B♭), bassoon, trumpet, violin, cello and piano, composed in 1927.
In response to a commission by Božena Neběská and to a scenario by Jarmila Kröschlová, Martinů wrote a witty curtain-raiser called Pokušení svatoušká hrnec (Temptation of the Saintly Pot) and with it scored his first popular success under the revised title La Revue de cuisine.
Here the dancers play a variety of cooking utensils which swagger their way through a naïve episode of kitchen life.
The full score for the ballet was discovered in the early 1990s in the archives of the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel and published in Paris in 2004.
This section switches between 2/4, 3/8 and 4/8 in an almost unpredictable fashion, generating the desired rhythmical offbeats typical of the jazz of the period.