Fine Dining vs. Cheap Eats

[g.johnson]

I'm not asking about people, I'm asking about the modernist spriit in those countries. Was there any?

If the modernist spirit (whatever that may be) doesn't reside in the people where does it reside?

[g.johnson]

How about a harder question. How does geography in Europe relate to when certain countries turned democratic and why others stayed monarchys or other types of authoritarian governments longer? Isn't one of the reasons we are so fascinated with French cuisine is that France was the country that offered the most personal freedom and it encouraged  creativity of all types including cooking?

According to this hypothesis, England, Holland and Scandinavia should have the best cooking. The worst would be Spain and Portugal with France somewhere in the middle.

[Wilfrid]

Steve, the second part of your thesis is dandy. It's also absolutely consistent with the transparent fact that there is nothing about France's geographical location which makes it more travelled by the relevant people than other European countries. Let's not overlook some of the points I made.

The assertion that Italy has suffered some sort of cultural isolation because of its location beggars belief. Rome alone has been perhaps the most consistently important cultural capital in Europe for the last two thousand years. Scholars and artists and ordinary tourists have been flocking to Rome, Florence and Venice throughout history. You've probably heard of the Papacy. How about the Grand Tour? A visit to Italy was an essential part of a European gentleperson's education throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I am sure Spain has been less visited historically, but not because of where it is.

As for modernism, in its many varieties, probably the first thing anyone learns about it is that it was an international movement.

As for your harder question, I think we would first have to find some common ground as to which countries turned democratic and when. France was under one form of "authoritarian" government or another - Jacobin, Imperial, restored monarchy - until some time in the middle of nineteenth century, by which time the foundations for its culinary achievements were surely in place. Britain was a more developed democracy than France throughout much of the nineteenth century (just in terms of the extent of the franchise). Germany I know less about, but I am pretty sure it lagged behind, as did Italy - both countries, as I recall, coming late to unification.

Nina - I am sure you're on to something. France and the French do have that reputation, and that is part of what I mean by the vague term "fashion". But the reputation must have roots, and a cultural history. I think this is a promising line.

[Wilfrid]

If the modernist spirit (whatever that may be) doesn't reside in the people where does it reside?

In the self-realization of the Absolute in History. Prob'ly.

[g.johnson]

Bloody Hegelian.

[Wilfrid]

Actually, I agree with you. Of course, of course. And I just checked my French history, and realized that they were under an Emperor or monarch even later than I realized: 1870's. I gather Napoleon III did allow some freedom of the press and of assembly during the 1860's.

[Fat Guy]

Bloody Hegelian.

Them's fighting words, g.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Wilfrid - Your response is useless. We aren't discussing cooking techniques that are 500 or 1000 years old. We are asking why France became dominent over the last 150 years. What people did, where people went, how they did it before then is not going to have as much impact as what they did over the last 150. And saying that modernism was an international movement doesn't speak to the fact that it flourished in some countries and didn't in others. Did it flourish in Britain? To me it looks like it skipped directly from MacKintosh to Richard Rodgers and Mrs. Beeton to Alistair Little.

What you are really getting at, which you have done before, is you are trying to make an argument that French cooking isn't dominant. And that is why you are picking apart every word I write. Well you can't change the facts by quibbling with my theories. While I might not have hit it on the head as to the reason why French is dominant, you still can't disprove the fact that it is overwhelmingly dominant by refuting my theories. And if you don't like the reasons I give for its dominance, choose your own reasons. I'm only trying to explain why it's the case, not if it's the case.

[Wilfrid]

French cooking is dominant throughout Europe and North America, and lots of other places too. No argument. Okay?

I think when someone posts a theory here, it's fair game to pick at it - especially if it looks wrong. People do it all the time.

I did ask you which era you were referring to. I didn't want to discuss the Roman legions. You mentioned them.

If we are concentrating on the last 150 years, which is very reasonable, geographical location is obviously not so important. Also, I don't think there's much to choose between systems of government - in most European countries at least - for much of that period.

I think the best place to look for reasons for French dominance, other than the unarguable quality of the cuisine, is to explore how it got exported and adopted as fashionable gastronomy in countries as disparate as the UK, Russia and the United States - maybe a thread for tomorrow.

Modernism in Britain? Okay, here we go: Henry Moore, Wyndham Lewis, Basil Bunting, Walter Sickert, David Bomberg, Stanley Spencer, Herbert Read, Virginia Woolf (Bloomsbury in general), and guess where Pound, Eliot and Whistler hung out?

[Jaymes]

"But that may need a different thread."  Please, please start one.

How do we know that more people are interested in cassoulet than Tuscan beans?  Which more people?  The people reading this thread?  People on egullet?  New Yorkers?   Americans?  1 billion Chinese?  What do you mean by analyze?  Are you talking about eating something and talking about it or cooking it?

Is it possible to be curious and then try to become knowledgeable about any of the non-Western cuisines without engaging in cultural appropriation?  (I'm thinking of the fusion thread which got caught up in talking about a French dish in which curry powder had been added; I think the Asian and Middle Eastern touches in French food are atrocious -- the Vietnamese, for example, did a much better job of incorporating French techniques into their cuisine as in banh mi.)  And once knowledgeable about a non-Western complex cuisine, come to see that all of the world's great cuisines are amazingly complete systems of beauty, grace and practicality?

Excellent point, Toby!

All of this "most popular" argument assumes (arrogantly, I believe) that the entire world considers French cuisine in the same light as "we" do.

In fact, there is a huge planet out there and if I were a bettin' woman (which I am), I'd bet there there are far more human beings on this earth who have never even heard of "French cuisine" in the context used here, than there are who have. And UNDOUBTEDLY there are more people on the planet who (even if they have heard of "the haute cuisine of France") don't give a rat's ass about it.

I suspect in order to prove or disprove that theory, all one would have to do is to get oneself to the interior of China and start walking. And along the way ask (in Chinese, of course), "Why do YOU think French cuisine is the most popular on the planet?"

[g.johnson]

And saying that modernism was an international movement doesn't speak to the fact that it flourished in some countries and didn't in others. Did it flourish in Britain? To me it looks like it skipped directly from MacKintosh to Richard Rodgers and Mrs. Beeton to Alistair Little.

Eliot, Auden, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, Nicholson, Moore, Lewis, Epstein, Woolf, Lawrence.

Edit: Sorry to repeat some of Wilfred's.

[Wilfrid]

Let me demonstrate my good faith by helping out here. I think French cuisine is dominant, and justifiably so, within what might be called Western restaurant culture. In other words, the mainstream of upscale restaurant cooking in the West (I'll come back to that) has its roots very firmly in codified French haute cuisine, French cooking techniques and Russian-service (popularized by French chefs - Escoffier, okay?). This pre-eminence has fed back, within limits, to home cooking.

I am using "West" in a cultural sense, if that's okay. I mean Western Europe, North America, and other parts of the world which have inherited that culture to a significant degree - pre-revolutionary Russia, Australia, parts of the Caribbean. I also, and crucially, include Western-based or Western-founded hotel businesses.

I stop short of claiming French cuisine is globally dominant, and there is indeed a lot of globe left over.

(British modernism: I was holding back on the Irish. Shaw, Synge, Jack Yeats...)

[Robert Schonfeld]

I think the best place to look for reasons for French dominance, other than the unarguable quality of the cuisine, is to explore how it got exported and adopted as fashionable gastronomy in countries as disparate as the UK, Russia and the United States - maybe a thread for tomorrow.

And fashionable language and couture and art and design and on and on. This is the really interesting topic. Unless, of course, we have to go back to cheap eats vs haute cuisine.

How and why? Inquiring minds want to know.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Wilfrid - Ah I like it when you're on the defensive

"If we are concentrating on the last 150 years, which is very reasonable, geographical location is obviously not so important. Also, I don't think there's much to choose between systems of government - in most European countries at least - for much of that period."

I think there are two things about that. Whatever theory I can prove about European travel through France, lasts until the autoroutes were built. Until they were built, France had inns at most important postal stops. All of those Hostellerie de la Postes everywhere. Second, there is a 70 year gap between the implementation of French democracy and Italian democracy. For Spain, a 100 year gap.

In order for French cuisine to be worthy of being exported, it had to be noticed by outsiders when they traveled in France. The English new about how good French cooking was because THEY TRAVELED THROUGH FRANCE on their way to other places like Rome or Vienna or to ski in Switzerland. They brought back French food to England with them for the same reason they brought back curry from India. It was a sufficiently different, and probably a better spicing regimen than what they were used to. Who's the person on this site who told the story of the song Yankee Doodle, and how the expression "put a feather in his cap and call it macaroni was the way they used to describe "dandys" who traveled to Italy and picked up the local custom and brought it back to England? Was that story on this site or another one? Well regardless, that's exactly how food custom moved around. The way the Brits brought macaroni back to London from Italy. And which country did they travel through to do that?

[Rail Paul]

How about a harder question. How does geography in Europe relate to when certain countries turned democratic and why others stayed monarchys or other types of authoritarian governments longer? Isn't one of the reasons we are so fascinated with French cuisine is that France was the country that offered the most personal freedom and it encouraged  creativity of all types including cooking? And isn't that why artists flocked there? And when someone cooks French food today, isn't that just a statement that we still enjoy that expression and what it stands for?

One could argue the father of modern democracy in France is Bismarck.

It was his destruction of Napoleon III which opened the gates of hell (the Commune) and showed the French the true face of anarchy. Although the Republics tottered, wandered, and whored for the Nazis, the democratic urge overcame the periodic lurches to the left and to the right.

[Fat Guy]

Plotnicki: Does this review of a hot dog restaurant in Connecticut strike you as interesting by the standards you've laid out above?

http://www.ctnow.com/features/food/hc-supe...-headlines-food

[Steve Plotnicki]

Only because of the condiments. The dogs sound boring. I'm very much against that split and griddle technique. Jews would never do that. Years ago when the Sterns first wrote about Zabs dogs in Rochester, and the way the grillman would skewer the things and rip it to shreds over the charcoal, I was sort of intrigued. My sister-in-law was living in Rochester at the time and she brought me dogs. They were okay. Just dogs in the end.

But the piece is good. It makes something that's probably ordinary sound interesting. Personally, I always liked Pink's Chilli Dogs. Boy are they junky. But it reminds me of that guy who opened the cheese steak place on West 3rd Street. What's it called, Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba something? Worst thing I ever ate. Mr.s P and I ordered one on a Saturday about a month ago and most of it ended up in the garbage.

[Fat Guy]

It makes something that's probably ordinary sound interesting.

Definitely better than making something that's probably interesting sound ordinary!

[Toby]

Steve P., although you've modified some of your original positions, timewise, actually the transmission of food along trade and travel routes is a fascinating, although difficult, subject. We all know about how foods of the New World were spread to the rest of the world, but the centuries before then are less clear. We can't really count the last 150 years as an unconnected unit to the past. When I was in elementary school, my father who was good in math would help me (not good in math) study for math tests. When he saw I didn't really understand what I needed to know for the test, he would start going backwards in the book, until suddenly we were on page one. I'd be frantic because the test was the next morning and all I wanted to know was how to get the answers--I didn't want to understand how they were arrived at. But now I understand what he was trying to teach me. If you want a deep and true understanding, you have to go back to the beginning, painful and tedious as that may be. While I would be the first to admit that I have only a superficial knowledge on this topic (that really could go back to prehistoric times) some books that have interested me on transmission of goods, ideas, knowledge, peoples and their foods might be:

Rome and China, a Study of Correlations in Historical Events, by Frederick J. Teggart, U of CA Press, 1939

Trade Routes and Commerce of the Roman Empire, By M.P. Charlesworth, Ares Publishers Inc., 1924

The World of the Huns, Studies in Their History and Culture, by Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen (a personal favorite), U of CA Press, 1973

The Mummies of Urumchi, by Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Norton, 1999

The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, volumes I and II, by Fernand Braudel, Harper Colophon Books, 1949, 1966

Civilization & Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, 3 volumes, by Fernand Braudel, Harper & Row, 1979

The Vermillion Bird, T'ang Images of the South, by Edward H. Schafer, California, 1967

The Golden Peaches of Samarkand, A Study of T'ang Exotics, by Edward H. Schafer, California, 1963

And for a panaromic insight into haute cuisine (among other things) in the lives of upper class Chinese and their servants at the height of the Ch'ing dynasty (c. 1760 a.d.), the greatest classical Chinese novel, The Story of the Stone, trsl. David Hawkes, 5 volumes, Penguin Classics, 1970s

[John Whiting]

 

modern conceptual art which owes nothing to skill and everything to salesmanship.

I am sure the very same thing can be, and has been, said about haute cuisine.

Perhaps, but hardly correctly. After all, haute cuisine is technically demanding if it is nothing else, while conceptual art, by its own proclamations, is more about ideas than actualities. Every individual work requires an explication, whether by the artist or by a critic. Haute cuisine, on the other hand, like the Cellini saltcellar, makes its own statement. Much may be said about it, but nothing is required.

[John Whiting]

Heresy, I know, but has anyone tried to do risotto in the microwave? It really does come out surprisingly good...

Heresy indeed. But I've seen the risotto expert Valentina Harris do it and have tasted the result. I wouldn't want to be required to spot it in a blind tasting.

But a complex dish, in any cuisine, is simply made up of a lot of simpler elements. So you have more elements to analyze, but each element is relatively simple.

A cassoulet is a perfect example of this. The various bean and meat stews which make up the separate components are simplicity itself. Anyone can make a good cassoulet who has time on their hands and is prepared to pay attention.

Anyone who has made his living selling things ...

Most of the questions Steve asks are those which a businessman would ask if he were about to launch a new product, while others are asking questions which are primarily aesthetic or historical or even philosophical. (This isn't meant as a put-down.)

The Rev Sydney Smith was once walking with a friend down a narrow London alleyway in which the upper floors of the buildings leaned towards each other so that they were only a yard or so apart. Two fishwives were leaning out of their respective windows, shouting at each other and shaking their fists in each other's faces. "Obviously they can never agree," Smith remarked, "for they are arguing from different premises."

[Steve Plotnicki]

"although you've modified some of your original positions, timewise, actually the transmission of food along trade and travel routes is a fascinating, although difficult, subject."

Toby - You know I haven't done that at all. Here is my original quote about the topic.

"When I retire to France and I write my famous book on how French cuisine came to be dominant, I am certain I will find that during the era it came to dominance, information traveled by foot. And west of Germany, to get from anywhere in Northern Europe to Southern Europe one needed to travel though France so they were exposed to more different cultures than any other country. It sounds simplistic but there has to be something to it."

I haven't taken any position other than if I did the research on it, this is what *I think* I will find. And if you notice I use the phrase "came to be dominant" which is really over the last 150 years. But in the usual, over-argumentative style of eGullet (which I've been known to take part in,) specifically driven by Wilfrid in this instance, I've had to defend my premise as if I've actually done the research and then made the statement. And despite qualifying my statement with the phrase "came to dominance," not a single person asked me what that meant. But then in a different context when I raised it, Wilfrid and now you have accused me of modifying my position.

It's as if the pendent pedantry around here wouldn't cut anyone some slack and say that the thrust of the statement is to say that France contained some major transportation routes that people used to get from Northern to Southern points, and that had a positive impact on how their cuisine developed. People are obsessed in making me prove "one needed to travel through France" when disproving that point doesn't really disprove the theory. It's as if they couldn't themselves substitute the phrase "chose to" or "often had to" themselves. Even your list of books on their face imply that trade routes and geography usually have had a major impact on how culinary culture developed. Why on earth would I have to defend what is such an obvious concept? Would it be a shock to anyone if the Italians brought pizza with them, because it traveled well when cold, through the South of France because that was the only non-mountainous route to Spain or to England and that's why its so prevelent there? I'm sure we could find dozens of those types of examples.

Again, if people were happy that France is gastronomically dominant, this type of argument wouldn't ensue. Instead of picking apart the words based on their lack of precision in order to whittle at the basic premise, they would help refine the concepts. Sometimes the amount of protest including what is being protested is more telling than any substantive point people try to make. But thanks for the recommendations of the books. I just happened to pick up "Near a Thousand Tables, A History of Food" by Felipe Fernandez-Arnesto and I'm sure I'll get to read it someday because I'm about 5,000 books behind in my reading.

John W. - Let me ask you a question as an aside, do you think that conceptual art needs an explication by the artist because we haven't the experience to decipher three dimensional art ourselves? Also, to say "The various bean and meat stews which make up the separate components are simplicity itself" avoids the issue under discussion here which is how the French managed to balance those simple things when put together. Balance is the key issue in making something complex. Loads of things that have the ingredients for complexity aren't because the technique applied to them failed to achieve the right balance. It's the trait that makes for great bottles of wine. The French, to their credit, were masters at creating that balance. Other cultures were less successful at it.

[Steve Plotnicki]

"Most of the questions Steve asks are those which a businessman would ask if he were about to launch a new product, while others are asking questions which are primarily aesthetic or historical or even philosophical. (This isn't meant as a put-down.)"

John - I saw this after my last post. Actually this particluar issue is a pet peeve of mine. I think that the greatest mistake people make is to think that consumers buy things that they don't really want or don't really like. Or in this instance, that French cuisine is dominant because they did a good job of exporting it, i.e., marketing and promoting it where the implication is they don't deserve it on the merits.

I learned this lesson well when I first opened my business. We had licensed a 12" single from a British company where the artist was a British TV personality at the time. We manufactured the record and within a matter of weeks we were able to get it on the two biggest radio stations in NYC. We had it on the radio for about six weeks and we sold a grand total of 4500 copies. A dismal total compared to the amount hit records typically sold. And it wasn't for lack of play or for lack of inventory in the stores. We couldn't figure out why we weren't getting better results but in interviewing various shop owners about it we learned the secret. People just didn't like it that much. It was a hard lesson to learn, but one I'm glad we learned at the beginning. Never again did I think that business was about leading horses to water. Successful business were about finding water horses would drink. Anyone can lead horses, but it's to nowhere if they won't drink the water.

[Jonathan Day]

People haven't mentioned the French tendency toward classification, analysis and scholasticism as a possible reason for the deeper analytic richness of French cookery. And this tendency applies in domains well outside of the kitchen -- to words, for example (the Academie). I don't find it surprising that there exists a richer and deeper tradition of analysis of French cooking than would be the case in other areas. I still remember my first serious French cookbook, Raymond Oliver's La Cuisine. It wasn't the Guide Culinaire, not by a long shot, but this was where I first encountered dishes whose construction depended on three other preparations, each of which demanded two other preparations, and sauces that were built up from other sauces -- a "layered architecture" as people in the computing world would say.

Perhaps this penchant for classification and hierarchical complexity has led to the richness of writing on French cuisine, and in a reflexive manner, to an increase in the complexity of the dishes themselves. (This is a rather French perspective on the situation). I find this a more convincing hypothesis than the view that France is geographically the crossroads of Europe.

There's also the fact that French was for many years the language of diplomacy and of many of the courts of Europe (e.g. Russia) and that French furniture, clothing, and ultimately cookery became standards of "civilisation". This social phenomenon may explain some of the diffusion of French cuisine. Which isn't to say that the "product" isn't good: it is. But conveying status is part of what makes some products valuable to their consumers. Conferred status is part of the merit.

Personally I agree with Curnonsky: " La cuisine, c'est quand les choses ont le goût de ce qu'elles sont". Loosely translated: "when you are really cooking, the ingredients taste of themselves." The issue is how to get there. And I don't think that either the French or the Italians have a royal road to success.

Consider lièvre à la royale (an elaborate, multi-step preparation of hare) and contrast it with papardelle al lepre, an Italian preparation of hare with noodles. The French cook, if I recall correctly, bards the hare, prepares a coulis, a hachis and mounts her sauce with wine and cognac. The Italian preparation is structurally simpler but not easy to get right.

Each cook takes risks here. The French cook has more tricks up her sleeve to modify the flavours, add herbal notes, balance the acidity, change the richness and mouthfeel of the sauce, etc. But she risks turning the dish into a muddle of flavours.

The Italian has to find a hare of superb quality, ensure that he captures much of the blood, and get it to the table so that it is succulent and not dry or tough.

Both cuisines can produce a delicious dish; in both cases the result is worthy of analysis and comment in forums like this.

[Toby]

"Balance is the key issue in making something complex."

Steve, I agree with you completely on the above.

Do you have a copy of the Lins' Chinese Gastronomy? I think you would find it fascinating. Immediately after the section Cabrales quotes, they talk about discerning the sweet natural flavor, the aroma, the concentrated rich flavor and the taste of fat without oiliness (Western examples: caviar, cold fresh butter, avocado) through texture. There are 2 different words to describe texture --

Tsuei -- crisp, crunchy, a texture often brought out or concocted.

Nun -- Soft and tender; non-fibrous, a somewhat resilient texture brought out by skillful cooking.

They then point out that fish balls are an example of a sweet, natural flavor, and a balance between crisp and tender. Later on in the book, 3 pages are devoted to the theory behind achieving this balance in fish balls and then the basic rule for achieving it. "The monotonous, flaky texture of fish can be made at once crunchy, crisp, resilient and tender." A description of how the texture alters is then given, including avoidance of fibers and membranes before chopping and crushing the flesh into a paste. Next, salt is added to turn the mealy paste into a sticky, shiny gum (insipid to crunchy). Then the fish balls are formed by squeezing the paste out between the circle of index finger and thumb and then dropping them into ice water. The contact with water hardens the surface of the ball. The ice water is slowly brought to a boil and then held just below heating point to poach the fish balls.

Which can then bring us back to hamburgers, the base point of which seems to be that the meat is transformed into something else -- another texture and more -- by chopping, seasoning and application of cold/heat. This changes everything. From hamburgers you can move to meatballs, meatloaf on the one hand and to the most gorgeous pates on the other.

I think the very best cooking works because it uses great ingredients, understands the strengths and weaknesses of each ingredient, has meticulous execution, and a deft understanding and imaginative use of what works with what else to bring out all desired qualities. And something else, too, the cook's love for what they're doing is present in some ineluctable way in the most delicious food, or else there will be a coldness. But all of these will be present from the simplest to the most complex preparations. Yuan Mei, 18th century poet and food writer, warns that "a good cook cannot with the utmost application produce more than 4 successful dishes in one day, and even then it is hard for him to give proper attention to every detail ... I once dined with a merchant. ... altogether more than 40 kinds of food were served. My host regarded the dinner as an enormous success. But when I got home I was so hungry that I ordered a bowl of plain rice gruel. From this it may be imagined how little there was, despite this profusion of dishes, that was at all fit to eat."

Chinese Gastronomy is really about a highly evolved cuisine's rules for the stomach. China has always been a country with a huge base of people at subsistence level and a very thin upper tier profiting from the former's labor. A recurring theme throughout the book is the interplay between "high and low cuisines" and the attitude of the gourmand to enjoyment of "low" cooking, as well as the attitudes toward cooking and eating of those who, if they are lucky to eat at all, ate only the plainest foods.