Wilfrid

Piffle. The upgrading and codification was done by the French so they upgraded and codified French dishes. Not British. Not Italian. Not Egyptian. Not Japanese. French. This means nothing about whether a British or Italian or Egyptian or Japanese dish tasted good or not. Sigh. I guess Egypt, Japan and the rest just had bad tasting peasant cuisine. That must have been where it all went wrong.

abe.books is terrific, and does indeed carry the risk that you will find every book you ever wanted on sale there. John, I had no idea Courtine was still alive. Just to draw the threads together, the article by Gopnik in the current New Yorker food issue is based on an old Courtine cooking game - there's a discussion on the Food Media board.

Not so much that I am wedded to Rosengarten - even in the metaphorical sense - but I liked to see a show that explained foodstuffs in some detail, soberly and accurately, and without the lunatic camerawork (Alton Brown).

And another distinction: Do we judge restaurants on just one visit? Of course we do, frequently, for the reasons pointed out above - chiefly, that there are plenty more restaurants out there we can try. But I think Fat Bloke is really asking whether it is reasonable or fair to judge a restaurant on just one visit. And I think it depends what the judgment is based on: a lapse in service, a straightforward error in the cuisine - no, of course those can be unlucky aberrations. On the other hand, I have often eaten in restaurants where it becomes clear pretty quickly that whoever is in the kitchen can't cook, and that the restaurant either doesn't know that or doesn't care. Unless one has good reason to believe that the regular chef or kitchen team are out for some reason, those restaurants you can quite fairly forget about.

Part One I find the arguments here very hard to understand, because I honestly struggle to follow, from sentence to sentence, whether we are discussing peasants in the true sense or ordinary working families, whether we are discussing home cooks or restaurant chefs, and who we are talking about when we say that people "preferred" one cuisine to another. Let me try to understand some of the statements just made. Tell me if I havem misinterepreted them - which is quite possible: 1.(W)hether British peasant cuisine was as good as French peasant cuisine. OK, this is not a discussion about middle class cooking, or cooking in the cities, this is about what poor agricultural workers were eating. Are we sure we know what they were typically eating in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries in these two countries? I haven't really seen that on the thread, although some of the dishes mentioned here and there might be examples of what they were eating. 2. (T)he Brits employed French chefs. Well, French and British French-trained chefs began to be employed in hotels, private clubs and restaurants in the second half of the nineteenth century, with quite a large number in place by 1890. I have seen no evidence that they were employed in private homes, except those of the very wealthy. Also, I have seen no evidence that any except the very wealthy were dining in hotels, clubs or French-style restaurants before around the end of the nineteenth century. The middle and lower classes were, of course, frerquenting chophouses and taverns, but not eating French food. 3. (T)he British *preferred* the French dishes those chefs prepared over British cuisine Now here there's plenty of evidence to the contrary. First, I can quote British author after British author from the 18th and 19th centuries who deplored French cuisine. Second, and this is a very telling point made by Amy Trubek, British clientele of taverns, chophouses, and the like did not start to demand French dishes in those venues. In 19th century Britain, French cuisine steadily became part of grand, aristocratic banquet-style dining (and I cited Queen Victoria's menus), and French hotel dining rooms and restaurants became fashionable in certain influential sectors of society. Fashionable, note. What the people eating French food actually thought of it - as food - is something we haven't yet seen. Anyway, the broad mass of British did not evince any preference for French cuisine in this period - and arguably don't today. 4. Clearly they could have told those chefs to make bubble and squeek instead of something French. But that isn't what happened. Yes it is - as far as the majority of public dining spaces were concerned, what you characterize as "bubble and squeak" remained on the menu. It came off the menu, if it was ever on it, at many grand banquets and in French-style restaurants. 5. There could be only one reason that the British accepted French cooking. It tasted better. The British didn't accept French cooking. We are discussing only a very rarified stratum of professional cuisine. French dishes were not being served in British houses, or in most public dining places. To the extent that French cooking became popular within that stratum, there are very obvious reasons for that popularity other than taste - to anyone not pushing a pet theory that is. 6. (I)f French cuisine of the 19th century is based on what were originally peasant dishes Well, which French cuisine? Adam's right here. If you are talking about the cuisine imported by elements of British society in the 19th century, everything we've seen suggests that it was precisely the opposite of peasant cuisine. It was the grande cuisine of Careme, filtered through his pupils, and simplified throughout the century, and ultimately re-thought by Escoffier. 7. (O)ne should logically conclude that "tastes better" be extended to peasant cuisine as well. Since the premise (6.) is false, the conclusion doesn't follow. Well, that was a lot of time doubtless wasted. Let's have some specific, historical facts, carefully and clearly stated, and lets see what inferences if any we can draw. Or we can just carry on watching Steve press-gang a selection of "facts" which are usually unclear, and when clear turn out to be false, into supporting his idiosyncratic world view. Part Two I see there's more. Steve: French cuisine became the pre-eminent professional cuisine in a number of countries during the twentieth century. How do your ramblings explain the countries where that did not happen? Germany, Italy and Spain spring to mind.

Lizziee, you remind me of the occasion I stepped up to a currency exchange bureau while waiting for a flight to Bangkok, and was mortified to hear myself ask if I could get some "Buy Tarts". (Er, Thai bahts is the currency...but of course you all knew that.)

One more time, in the style of free verse: What I meant was the invocation of pot au feu. got me thinking Like hoe-cake, in that the vessel, in the case of hoe-cakes a hoe in pot au feu a pot, as conveyor, gives its name to the resulting dish. Wow this is making me hungry for pot au feu. Pretty clearly going that direction, from vessel to food.

Bain-Marie...No, no, that doesn't count. That's like saying "bowl" because there's a dish called "bowl of cheerios" on the menu of the Lyric Diner on 57th Street.

Hah! I suggested to some school friends eating grouse next week, as the season tarted on August 12. They have nothing to do with eGullet, or any other foodie activities I'm aware of, but I got the immediate response: "Won't have been hung long enough." The world is getting too sophisticated.

I think English recognises hotch potch and hodge podge equally. I certainly do. Priscilla, it's a pot. And it's on a fire. And it's the name of the dish. I got one, didn't I?

Pot-au-feu. I am not sure whether Hot Pot derives from the vessel, or is a corruption of hotch-potch. I suspect the latter.

One of the plus points about Iron Chef, I suppose, is that it doesn't pretend to have a tutorial aspect. It's a contest. A lot of shows seem to me to fall between the two stools.

Listen, Tommy's fairly stable by eGullet standards. Terrifying, isn't it?

Here's a link to a description of tasty French peasant fayre.

Yes, thanks Keba. That all seems to accord with my experience. We soon got down to using our hands on the cuy, and there were indeed a lot of bones. The lower section of our cuys had been sort of spatchcocked, so they lay flat on the plate. Yours looks comparatively perky.

I have been to dB, I think, four times now. Consistently fairly disappointing. I keep trying because it always seems nearly there.

I don't?

How about a little more hard news? I don't mean CNN, but even MTV and VH1 manage to slip in a newsroom break here and there. Openings and closings, chef moves, seasonal foodstuffs. FIsh boycotts (aargh!) Wouldn't be too expensive either.

If the Food Network here in the States is drifting steadily in the direction of light entertainment, rather than serious shows about food and cooking, what would an interesting alternative look like? And do you agree with my premise? Look at the change from Mario Batali's early shows to his present format with a sidekick. Where's the replacement for David Rosengarten's Taste or Andrea Immer's Quench?

Got the issue. Packed. The Adam Gopnik article alone could keep us going for weeks. Very opinionated on the Union Square greenmarket; interesting on Dan Barber of Blue Hill. The article on martinis by Roger Angell has some very funny stories in it. Keep reading...

I mistakenly gave the sub-title of Elisabeth Luard's book on European peasant cooking in an earlier post. The correct title is The Rich Tradition. It's an excellent reference book as well as being a collection of recipes, although I now read it more critically - the eGullet effect - and I do have some reservations about what she classes as "peasant cookery". it occurs to me that, if you are going to offer a comprehensive view of such a subject, you need to explain what you think a peasant is. Oh well, a good food writer, but now I want her to be a socio-economic historian too. Anyway, Luard does indeed give bouillabaisse, but also offers some less sumptuous fish stews - for example, a French "one eyed" bouillabaisse for fishermen with a disappointing catch. Similarly, while she gives the classic cassoulet, she also describes simpler dish like the Spanish cocido and the Belgian brown beans with bacon. Since she orders dishes by main ingredient, rather than by nationality, it's possible to trace some interesting cross-border similarities. I thought it would be responsive to earlier questions to see what she identified as British peasant dishes. It's quite a list. I'm afraid some of her selections are somewhat arbitrary (she gives scrambled eggs as a British peasant dish, and omelettes as French), and I am sceptical about classing the great British roasts, with traditional accompaniments, as peasant dishes in any strict sense. Here's a partial list, though. By citing it, I do not vouch for it, although I wouldn't provide it if I thought it was worthless: Oatmeal-rolled trout or herring Stoved herrings (spatchcocked and grilled) Jellied eels Carragheen winkles (a winkle stew) Cockle pie Potted shrimps Kippers (hot-smoked herrings) Smoked salmon Smoked haddock Cock-a-leekie Brawn Raised pork pie Black pudding Sausages and mash Hams - dry salt or honey cured, boiled or baked Bacon Salted brisket and silverside of beef Boiled beef with dumplings Irish stew Barley "Scotch" broth Cawl Lancashire Hot Pot Boiled mutton with caper sauce Haggis Pig haggis Marrow bones Cottage pie Shepherd's pie Oxtail soup Pease pudding Oatmeal porridge Brose Oatmeal jelly Steak and kidney pudding Venison pasty Cornish pasty Boxty Colcannon Laverbread Carragheen pudding (seaweed) Welsh rarebit Clotted cream Sorry, I gave up before going through all the desserts.

Urgh. Try Nina.

Do we think there's an obligation on the part of chefs to engage in a de-briefing session with diners? I am pretty sure I think there isn't, and therefore wouldn't incorporate their performance in such a role in my judgment of a restaurant. I understand, of course, that Cabby's judgment was based primarily on the food.

I understand. But is there a groundswell of demand from non-smoking bar tenders for such a measure? Or are they more worried about their tips. I really don't care much about smoking bartenders in this context - and I repeatedly drink in bars where the bartender's smoke is the main annoyance, not least because they leave their cigarette smouldering while pouring drinks.

Sorry to be pedantic, but there was no verdict in Broin. It was an out of court settlement - so of course the defendants didn't challenge it - and it essentially gave money to a lawyer rather than to flight attendants. The first case brought in Florida as a result of the Broin settlement - by an attendant named Ms Fontana - didn't succeed. The jury found for the defendants. The French verdict went the other way, and as you point out is under appeal. So it's early days to be talking about a template. I'd be interested in learning about the NW attendants verdict.