French cuisine

French cuisine is the set of foods, drinks and culinary techniques of France. It is known for its regional diversity and its refinement, and it has shaped much of Western cooking. Since November 2010 it has been on UNESCO's list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

History

The story of French cooking begins in the Middle Ages, when everyday food was simple, repetitive and depended on what the immediate surroundings could provide. The most elaborate dishes were reserved for aristocratic banquets, where many courses were served at once in a style known as service en confusion, and diners ate with their hands. Meats dominated, served with thick, heavily seasoned sauces and strong mustards, while pies were common, their pastry serving mainly as a container. The most celebrated cook of the period was Guillaume Tirel, known as Taillevent, whose Le Viandier is one of the earliest recipe collections of medieval France and departs from the Roman tradition of De re coquinaria.

Under the Ancien Régime, Paris became the centre of culinary activity. Guilds regulated the production and sale of food, with a clear ladder running from apprentice to cook to master, and that structure shaped the trade for centuries. Over time, foods from the Americas entered the repertoire, such as haricot beans, which lie at the heart of cassoulet. Early in the seventeenth century, François Pierre La Varenne argued for letting the natural flavour of ingredients speak: exotic spices gave way to fine herbs, sweet and sour combinations were dropped, and sugar was kept for desserts. This shift is often seen as the starting point of haute cuisine. In 1691 François Massialot published Le Cuisinier roïal et bourgeois, a book that listed recipes alphabetically and, in later editions, added more technical detail for less specialised readers.

The French Revolution abolished the guilds, so anyone could now cook and sell food. In this setting Marie-Antoine Carême, trained as a pastry cook, worked for Talleyrand and later for Napoleon. His lasting contribution was the codification of the mother sauces, including espagnole, velouté, béchamel and hollandaise, from which many derivatives were made, and which remain part of the repertoire today. His books Le Maître d'hôtel français, Le Cuisinier parisien and L'Art de la cuisine française au dix-neuvième siècle systematised the cooking of his age.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Georges Auguste Escoffier ran the kitchens of prestigious hotels such as the Savoy, the Carlton and the Ritz. There he organised the work into brigades, so that each dish was prepared by a team in which every cook handled one part. He also championed service à la russe, which Félix Urbain Dubois had popularised in the 1860s, and his Le Guide culinaire, published in 1903, became a standard reference. His cooking reduced the weight of heavy sauces and aimed for garnishes that enhanced the flavour of each dish.

From the 1970s, nouvelle cuisine reacted against classic cooking. Its leading figures, many of them former students of Fernand Point, such as the Troisgros brothers and Paul Bocuse, simplified preparations, shortened cooking times to preserve natural flavours, dropped flour as a thickener and favoured lighter dishes with carefully composed presentations. By the mid-1980s many chefs had returned to parts of haute cuisine, though they kept some of the lighter techniques that the movement had introduced.

Today French cooking continues to change. Bistronomy blends the spirit of the bistro with haute cuisine techniques, and cooking from other regions has become part of everyday life. Couscous, of North African origin, is among the most widely eaten dishes in the country, and Lebanese, Vietnamese and Cambodian cooking has a strong presence in French cities.

Culture

A formal meal usually follows a recognisable sequence: the apéritif, the entrée, the main course, cheese and dessert, often followed by coffee and sometimes a small digestif. The aperitif is typically a sweet wine, a pineau or a kir, served with something cold in a way that resembles Spanish tapas. The starter tends to be lighter than in many other cuisines, with salads, soups, raw vegetables, pâtés or savoury tarts such as quiche. Cheese has its own place between the main course and dessert, and wine accompanies most meals, with colours chosen to suit the dishes. Beer has a strong place in the north and east, and in Champagne the sparkling wine of the same name is served throughout the meal.

Commercial opening hours set the weekday rhythm, with lunch around midday and restaurant dinners from about eight, but family meals at weekends can stretch for hours. Breakfast is traditionally simple, with bread, jam and a hot drink, although pastries such as croissants and pains au chocolat are now eaten daily by many people.

Regional variety is the most visible feature. Alsace offers choucroute garnie and flammekueche, with German influences; Brittany is known for crêpes and galettes made with buckwheat; Burgundy for escargots, Dijon mustard and bœuf bourguignon; Lyon for its bouchons and quenelles; the south-west for confit de canard and foie gras; and Provence for bouillabaisse, ratatouille and tapenade. Dishes such as coq au vin, pot-au-feu and hachis parmentier are found across the country. Cheeses and wines with protected designations of origin are also universal emblems of French food.

The image of expensive haute cuisine is real, but it does not describe most people's daily lives. Older people tend to keep the dishes of their home region, while younger people more often eat food from other regions and from abroad. Restaurants are classified by time of day and style of service: the restaurant, the bistro, the brasserie, the café, the salon de thé and the bar. The estaminets of the north and the bouchons of Lyon preserve the memory of working-class meeting places and of the city's traditional cooking.

Trivia