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French Food

Working Paper · November 2016

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.10180.73600

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Charlie Mansfield
University of Plymouth
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French Food

Plate 1 Local oysters served in the Amiral restaurant, Concarneau, Brittany, Photo: C Mansfield, 2014.

The tradition that French cuisine is special can be traced through the written tradition to the work of Jean
Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), famous for his quotation 'Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you
what you are.' and the first celebrity chef, Marie Antoine Carême (1784-1833), known as 'The King of
Chefs, and the Chef of Kings'. Both men left written legacies and this, in French culture, has helped fix
them as founders of French cuisine. Amy Trubek, too, points to this written tradition and explains how,
what she calls, codification, through books, written recipes and journals have built a strong foundation for
placing French food preparation at the centre of worldwide professional haute cuisine (Trubek 200,
8). Trubek goes further with her argument, by showing how this French codification underpins the role of
food in fine dining as a commodity, and hence allows meals in the social sphere to act as markers of social
distinction; secondly she shows how haute cuisine has become a cultural symbol (Trubek 200, 9). Even
though the food preparation book from the medieval era, Le Viandier (1392) Guillaume Tirel, aka
Taillevent is extant, it is the two books Larousse Gastronomique and Le Guide Culinaire that every chef
entering the profession equips themselves with today. Le livre de Taillevent grant (great) cuysinier du Roy
(King) de France – this book started as a hand-copied manuscript but went into print as early as 1486 in
Paris. Remember printing had only started in Mainz around 1450 and had arrived in Paris in 1470.

Georges Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935) codified the 5 Mother Sauces in his Le Guide Culinaire, around
1903:

1. Béchamel milk-based, thickened with roux.

2. Espagnole veal stock, thickened with brown roux.

3. Velouté stock-based, thickened with roux or liaisons, a mixture of egg yolks and cream.

4. Hollandaise an emulsion of egg yolk, butter and lemon or vinegar.

5. Tomate tomato-based.

The concept of the mother sauce is that daughter sauces can be made from these. For example Béchamel
becomes Mornay simply by introducing flakes of crumbled cheese while Bordelaise can be developed
from Espagnole with reduced red wine and finely chopped shallots, échalotes in French. When we say
finely chopped échalotes, though, we tread in Anglo-Saxon territory since raw vegetables are cut in 4
ways, as Trubek says: mirepoix, brunoise, julienne and bâtonnet (Trubek 200, 1). The mirepoix chopping
technique and the side dish derived from a mirepoix of échalotes, carrots and celery is named after Louis
XV's senior general, the Duke of Mirepoix (1699-1757). This ennobling of haute cuisine techniques may
appear strange in a Republic but it can be found even in the name of the style of cooking, cordon
bleu. This refers to the blue ribbon from which the medal was hung around the necks of knights of the
Order of the Holy Spirit. Their blue ribbon is the collar around the Grand Royal Coat of Arms of France
and Navarre. Le Cordon Bleu today is a hospitality management school in Paris.

Mirepoix ingredients. Photo: C Mansfield, 2014.

Mirepoix after slicing and chopping. Photo: C Mansfield, 2014.

Being able to appreciate the textures of the chopping techniques requires an advanced palate, knowledge
and a readiness to enjoy sensual pleasures, diners who possess this knowledge are called gourmets. The
etymology of gourmet shows how the word took on its connotations of tasting and taste; in 1392 a
groumet, was a valet charged with delivering the wines (les vins), but by 1458 Arnoul Gréban was using
the term for someone who tasted wines and knew how to appreciate them (TLFi 2014). The gourmet, too,
is important to French haute cuisine since the knowledge a gourmet possesses is the mark of distinction
which turns the fine dining experience into a commodity. The knowledge of tasting and enjoyed food and
wine continues to develop today. The UK's leader in connoisseur wine tasting is Jancis Robinson (b.1950),
who also uses that practice of writing books and newspaper articles to transfer food and wine
knowledge. A key volume in the codification of wine tasting is:

Robinson, J. (2006) The Oxford Companion to Wine. 3rd Edition, Oxford, OUP.

The French term for the wine buyer and presenter of wines in the dining experience is the
sommelier. Sommelier's maintain tasting notes as they research the wines to accompany certain
dishes. This activity of recording tasting notes has been taken up by wine enthusiasts too, as part of
cultural consumption. In understanding tourism knowledge we have discussed during fieldwork in France
that the consumer of leisure services seeks guidance or leadership on what to do or what to do
next. French haute cuisine began to manage that leadership process between 1765 and 1804. In that
period restaurants began to shift from table d'hôte to à la carte service (Trubek 2000, 36-37). Table d'hôte
derives from the host's table, where diners sit together and are served the same starter and main course. At
the end of the eighteenth century diners would even keep the same cutlery through the meal. By the time
La Grande Taverne de Londres opened in Paris in 1804 haute cuisine and its associated fine dining gave
customers choice via the à la carte, or off the menu-card, system. The choices were managed and proposed
in a specific order, that we often take for granted around starter, main course and pudding. However, these
were always given in French and Trubek has noted that this use of French in fine dining is still evident in
the UK and the US (Trubek 2000, 46-47). The running order on a French card is:

La carte des vins (wine-list) and la carte (the menu)

un apéritif

un amuse-bouche, one or two bites to please the palate

L'entrée, the starter, beware, in America the entrée is the main course.

Le Plat Principal (Main Course)

Le Fromage (Cheese)

Le Dessert (pudding)

Le Café (Coffee)

un digestif (Digestif).

French fine dining is delivered in a series of set steps, called courses, which appeals to the cultural
knowledge of the diner. At the same time, these courses manage the service process so that the meal has
an end for practical and commercial purposes. Pierre Bourdieu discusses at great length, along with a
wealth of empirical data, how taste in both senses of the word I used to distinguish cultural practices with
food consumption in his book, Distinction (2010 for Routledge Classics edition). Bourdieu's work helps
show how the symbolic order, that is writing, can set apart one eating practice from another. For example,
he says that the working classes look for food that is cheap and nutritious whilst the professions go for
products that are healthy (Bourdieu 2010, 187-188). However, the food may be the same, a bowl of rice, it
is simply the words that describe the food that are picked up by each class and used a marker of distinction.

FRENCH ONLY - PLEASE WRITE YOUR TRANSLATION

L'entrée – the st..ter

Moules marinières ouvertes au Pineau blanc –

8 huitres au sabayon de Champagne –

Paté de foie gras d'oie -

Le plat principal – m..n c…se

Notre plat du jour est : Ris de veau en croûte de Comté -

Un savoureux pâté au bœuf assaisonné dans une croûte feuilletée -

Filets de poulet avec asperge vert, sauce hollandaise et pommes de terre –

Saumon mariné aux agrumes avec sauce hollandaise aux mini-épinards, servie avec des pommes frites –

Le dessert - Pudding or sweet

La crème brûlée

La glace

La mousse au chocolat.

The celebrity French chef continues to play an important role in the transmission of French culture. Ask
anyone in Britain who the famous chefs are in the second decade of the twenty-first century and they may
say Jamie Oliver, some will know two French names that are on British television, Michel Roux Jr of Le
Gavroche restaurant famous for its Michelin stars and Raymond Blanc. However, this is the response from
a French friend to the same question:

'Well, there are several grands chefs cuisiniers in France, it is difficult to choose just one or two from them
in particular. Today, you could say for example, Cyril Lignac, Guy Savoy, Marc Veyrat, Paul Bocuse,
Joël Robuchon, Alain Ducasse, Thierry Marx, Pierre Gagnaire, Philippe Etchebest. And amongst the
women, the most well-known are Maïté, Hélène Darroze et Anne-Sophie Pic' (Valentin Verdier, personal
correspondence, 2014)

How can you develop an assignment on French food and terroir? A starting point would be to find where
French language menus are still used, and if the French is mixed with English. These menus could be
tested on English-speaking respondents to see if there are words that are easily understood and ones that
are not. Finally, the respondents could be asked how they feel this food sounds. Another, more theoretical
approach is to follow up the reading in Bourdieu's (2010) Distinction, and interpret what he says in light of
today and from a visitor's point of view. A third approach would be to see if wine writers agree on which
French wines go with which dishes, and analyse to explain any findings. A journal called Anthropology of
food on the open journals web-site in France called revues org http://aof.revues.org is a good starting point
for academic research to use and cite in your assignment..
 This is worth a look, to see an early journal beginning to codify the art of food preparation and table
manners; available at the BNF, the French National Library: April 1856 Journal de la cuisine française et
du service de la table http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k934263g

Gault & Millau 20-point restaurant rating system www.gaultmillau.fr

Strong Theoretical Background: Codification creates the first step in making food preparation and fine
dining and important social activity but the work by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu helps to show how
distinction and class is created in consumers. A very useful podcast is available from the BBC here

Taylor, L. (2016) 'A special programme on Pierre Bourdieu' Thinking Allowed [podcast] Broadcast
22.6.2016 BBC Radio 4 http://bbc.in/1W2PnL2 [Accessed 11.9.16]

Trubek, A. (2000) Haute Cuisine – How the French invented the Culinary Profession, Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press

The book mentioned in the podcast is: Thatcher, J., Ingram, N., Burke, C. & Abrahams, J.
(2016) Bourdieu, The Next Generation - The Development of Bourdieu's Intellectual Heritage in
Contemporary UK Sociology, London, Routledge.

To Cite in your References:

Mansfield, C. (2016) 'French Food' Patrimoine - The French Heritage Papers, Plymouth [online]

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