houille

“Buy my coal-mine shares,” shouts Robert; “gold mines, silver mines, diamond mines, ‘sont de la pot-bouille de la ratatouille en comparaison de ma houille.’”

The Paris Sketch Book 2006

Let us see now where France is in the development of that not so new force - electricity - which she gave the poetic name of "houille blanche" - the "white coal".

The Present Day Spirit in France 1956

Without discussing whether or not the Greeks and Romans made use of coal, whether the Chinese worked coal mines before the Christian era, whether the French word for coal (houille) is really derived from the farrier Houillos, who lived in Belgium in the twelfth century, we may affirm that the beds in Great Britain were the first ever regularly worked.

The Underground City 1877

The earliest mediaeval notice of mineral coal I have met with is in a passage cited by Ducange from a document of the year 1198, and it is an etymological observation of some interest, that carbones ferrei, as sea-coal is called in the document, are said by Ducange to have been known in France by the popular name of hulla, a word evidently identical with the modern French houille and the Cornish Huel, which in the form wheal is an element in the name of many mining localities.

The Earth as Modified by Human Action George P. Marsh 1841

"gold mines, silver mines, diamond mines, 'sont de la pot-bouille de la ratatouille en comparaison de ma houille.'"

The Paris Sketch Book William Makepeace Thackeray 1837