The historic success of French cuisine

[oraklet]

in the 19th centuriy, how would the eating habits (and the techniques behind them) of a french or an english bourgeois be part of his feeling french or english? it has of course been partly answered, but it could be of further interest, as the bourgeoisie were probably those who carried on the basic techniques (cuisine grande mere as i've been lucky to be exposed to it a few times - dear memories*) of french cuisine - in france. my bid is that to be a true frenchman, you were/are supposed to appreciate good cooking and wines. and nine out of ten french bourgeois of my acquaintance have lived up to this - stereotype. as for the rest of the world, good cooking is mostly a part of celebrating one thing or other.

and jaybee, i hope you will pardon me for having unknowingly repeated your wise words from some other thread.

*oh how i wish i had the time to cook that way.

[Robert Schonfeld]

Obviously, it will be worthwhile to read the David book. I'm especially interested in the primary sources she cites, and others that might be consulted.

Steve's post does raise another interesting question, which maybe he or someone else can answer: is David saying that the Medici in Florence used French help, including kitchen help ("her entire household was French")? If so, should we understand that it was the 16th century French who cooked for the princes of Italy, and thus formed the basis for modern Italian cooking?

The great painters of northern Europe (Van Eyck, Durer, etc.) predate those of the Italian Renaissance (Leonardo, Botticelli, etc.). Yet, while influenced by the work of their colleagues in the north, the most majestic artistic accomplishments of the period were achieved in Italy. What, if anything, did Renaissance Italy contribute to the more majestic accomplishments of French cuisine in the 17th and 18th centuries?

Edited to close the quote.

[Wilfrid]

Continuing with my reading, and currently focussing on how French cuisine became pre-eminent in England to keep the subject manageable.

I put together a timeline of French cuisine in England (up to Escoffier) to help my understanding (followed by a summary):

1643-1715

Court of Louis XIV. Grand cuisine reaches an apogee which endures until the revolution.

1649

Execution of Charles I of England.

1653

La Varenne translated into English (as "The French Cook").

1688

Second English revolution - confirmation of consitutional rather than absolutist monarchy.

1702

Massialot translated into English.

1733 (onwards)

Grand cuisine modernized in La Chappelle's "The Modern Cook" and subsequent works by Menon.

1760

George III of England - continues to serve traditional English banquets.

1766

First "restaurant" in Paris.

1789-1799

French Revolution and aftermath up to Napoleon's coup.

1800

"Liberty of Pleasure" decree in France relieves post-Revolution austerity.

1803 (onwards)

Grimot de la Reyniere publishes the "Almanach des Gourmands"

1810-1820

The Regency. George III's son ruled England during his father's madness. Life in the Regency court was ostentatious, and Careme worked for two years as a chef to the Prince.

1815 (onwards)

Major publications by Careme.

1815

Restoration of French monarchy.

1826

Brillat Savarin publishes Physiologie de la Gout

1830s-1850s

Soyer cooks for Prince Albert, at the Reform Club, and elsewhere in London. Francatelli, Careme's pupil, cooks at the St James's Hotel. Ude cooks for the Earl of Sefton, then Crockford's Club.

1860s

Notable French restaurants founded in London: The Cafe Royal, Kettner's. Queen Vicotira and Prince Albert serve banquets in the "French" style.

1890

Estimated five native thousand French cooking in Britain. Arrival of Escoffier.

Summary

French cuisine was known in England, not least through translations of French cookbooks, throughout the seventeenth century, but English courtly life did not develop in the manner of the French court after Charles's execution. The monarchy, and most of the aristocracy, remained faithful to traditional English country cooking, and the aristocracy and gentry remained rooted to their country estates rather than being attracted to the court. A major French chef, La Chappelle, was chef de cuisine to Lord Chesterfield in the 1730s, but "the fashion for French food was confined to a small circle, perhaps a very small circle of the richest London society" (Mennell).

The impetus for further developments followed in the early nineteenth century with the first ostentatiously fashionable English court (the Regency) and the importation of the "restaurant" from France. Public eating in England had taken place, over the centuries, in taverns and cookshops, in chop-houses, and in coffee-houses. Typically, service was communal with no choice. The concept of a restaurant as a kind of private/public eating place, with a menu and a professional chef, was clearly a French invention (see Sprang). The French restaurant style of eating seems to have manifested itself first in London hotels, and also in private London clubs. Such clubs as the Reform, the Carlton and Crockford's would have attracted extremely influential patrons. Careme cooked for the Prince Regent (albeit briefly), and his footsteps were followed in the mid-nineteenth century by a generation of professional French chefs. Soyer spent almost all his professional career in England, and his fame should not be underestimated. I was amazed to discover that his Shilling Cookery sold a quarter of a million copies in 1850s England, a figure which might impress even a Simon Majumdar.

The growth from the 1860s to 1890 seems to have been exponential, and with the arrival of Escoffier in 1890, French cuisine was firmly established as the standard for excellence and modishness in England. By this time, "the London diner...was as appreciative of the French restaurant as a French critic" (Trubek).

I think this lays out the bones of how and when it happened. Key reasons seem to have been:

1. Major differences in the structure of the aristocracy (delaying English adoption of grande/haute cuisine by some one hundred and fifty years).

2. The importing of the French invention of the restaurant.

3. The importing of several superstar chefs.

Two observations: Ironically, it seems to have been England's comparative liberalism which delayed its culinary development during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And the estimated start date for French culinary expansion, given on a different thread as 1870, seems to be about forty years too late. This is important, as it undermines the hypothesis that French political liberalism was an important factor.

I do still have some why questions I'd like to answer, but I need to formulate them carefully first.

[macrosan]

My God, this could be the end of Plotnickism (sic single i)as we have come to know it. Wilfrid has rung the death knell of an era. He has brought the harsh light of detailed scholarly research into eGullet

Wilfrid, I sit in awe .....

[Wilfrid]

Thank you, old bean. I am doing the reading out of interest, but it's worth posting the results here so I can just quote myself the next time a Plotnickiist theory is advanced.

[helenas]

May i share with you a quote from the late Raji Jallepalli":

"...The problem I had with ethnic cooking, as it was, is that it typically doesn't respect the texture of the food. So the food gets overcooked, the presentations are not respected, and the bouquets are overloaded with too many spices and too many herbs and are too strong. By borrowing French technology, I was able to respect the textures and incorporate a lot more items than Indian cuisine typically is known for. But I feel I'm barely scratching the surface..." (quoted from "Becoming a Chef")

[Steve Plotnicki]

I can't possibly be the end of P-ism. Wilfrid tell me, when you say culinary expansion, do you mean that the French public started to practice some of those rituals? And what disparity might there be between how the culture spread amongst French society, and how it spread among British society? For example, where does the lowly bistro fit into this puzzle. Or the brasserie, something that I believe was founded in Paris in the 1870's? How about cafes? I think you did teriffic job of figuring out how the aristocracy ate, but the sexy part of the story is how the French populace ended up with oysters on their plates and the Brits with pie. Mind you, the North Sea off the coast of Britain is loaded with oysters. But as Paul Richardson points out, the British oyster industry died deacdes ago and every French port town is overflowing with restaurants that serve a Plateau de Fruits de Mer Royale. Can you get back to us with this bit?

[jaybee]

I am sparing myself reading this thread just yet but I thought an observation made by Daniel Boulud as desccribed in Leslie Brenner's book The Fourth Star was interesting. She said that Boulud was offered an opportunity to return to France to open a major restaurant and decided to stay here. He felt that there was more innovation and interesting cooking going on here, new frontiers and the like, while France was too static. That's not an exact quote, but it's the sense of the report. Leslie, if you happen to read this, please comment.

[Wilfrid]

Whoa, slow down a little there, Mr P. I have only attempted to get up to 1890, so far. It's a convenient cut off point, because with Escoffier in place, French cuisine is firmly established as the benchmark for upscale dining in England for at least the next sixty, or seventy years, and arguably to the present day. My original question was how and why this happened, not only in England, but worldwide.

England was a good example to take, not least because I had references ready to hand. The story may vary from country to country. I think the role, not so much of the British aristocracy as such, but of London-based fashion-leaders and opinion-formers was important. Throughout the eighteenth century, and into the nineteenth, one finds no shortage of English writers attacking French cuisine as a disgusting attempt to disguise lousy ingredients - even compliments are somewhat backhanded: "The variety given by their cooks to the same thing is astonishing; they dress an hundred dishes in an hundred different ways" (Young, 1792). The adoption of French cuisine, and employment of French chefs, by leaders of society doesn't seem to have happened, except in aberrant cases, until the Regency (1810-20). This coincided, very roughly indeed, with the importing of the French concept of the "restaurant"; those two things together explain much.

Given what I've said about the restaurant, which seems to have got a foothold in London via the dining rooms of hotels, I'm not sure I understand your question about bistros and brasseries. What do we need to say about them? I imagine a lot of the five thousand cooks who had arrived in England by 1890 came from relatively humble establishments, unless there was a mass migration of upscale chefs.

With the oysters, I think you've jumping to a completely different period. Oysters were a staple of the British diet until well into the twentieth century, not least because of their abundance. Shellfish was still, in part, a poor man's food in Britain in the early twentieth century. By the nineteen fifties, I know that many varieties of shellfish (not all) had become more of an expensive treat. We could look at the reasons for this, but it seems a separate question.

What I would like to discuss, when I have a chance, is what eating French food meant to the mass of middle class nineteenth century British consumers. Trubek has a wonderfully on point comment: "Would the bourgeoise have gone to a pub for chaudfroid de volaille?" In other words, weren't the customers buying much more than food when they bought into a French dining experience?

(Clue: the answer's yes. )

P.S. - "French culinary expansion". The phrase was yours on a different thread, and I agree it's vague. You were arguing that it was associated with French political and social liberalism, and were therefore compelled to date it from 1870, before which time the French had nothing which even looked like a liberal social structure. Of course, none of this turns out to sit very well with the facts.

[macrosan]

You were arguing that it was associated with French political and social liberalism, and were therefore compelled to date it from 1870, before which time the French had nothing which even looked like a liberal social structure.  Of course, none of this turns out to sit very well with the facts.

See ? I told you ! The end of Plotnickism as we have come to know it.

[Wilfrid]

Just for a bit of fun, I took a look over the weekend at just how widely the French style of dining (which is a little broader than the French style of cooking) got exported. As a snapshot, I took Vincent and Mary Price's collection of menus in their Great Restaurants of the World - a fairly representative glance at upscale dining in the fifities and sixties, I would say, although with a heavy bias towards the States.

Here are the restaurants outside France with menus completely in French - presenting themselves, in essence, as French restaurants:

Amstel (Amsterdam), The Ivy (London), Belle Terrasse (Copenhagen).

Here's a rather longer list of restaurants where a significant number of French dishes and French terms are to be found on the menus. Some suprises here:

Royal Daniel (Venice), The Rivoli (Mexico City), The Pierre (New York), Luchows (New York), Sardi's (NY - with some weird Franglish mix-ups), Locke-Ober (Boston), The Old Original bookbinder (Philadelphia), Whitehall (Chicago), The Rauqet Club (Palm Springs). The Blue Fox (San Francisco) democratically peppered its menu with french and Italisan terms. Gage & Tollner (New York) and Antoine (New Orleans), are a little bit different, as they are each serving a cuisine derived from a French speaking part of the States.

And the restaurants which eschewed Gallicism entirely, and rested on their native wits:

Tre Scalini (Rome), Sobrino de Botin (madrid), Longfellow's (Massachusetts), Super Chief (Santa Fe) and Hana Maui (Hawaii). The Four Seasons, to be fair, had a few French terms, but was mainly an American menu.

[Adam Balic]

The thread about Fine Dining vs. Cheap Eats opened up a discussion about why and how French cuisine achieved dominance in so many territories beyond its borders.  The fact of the success of French cuisine - not worldwide, I

These are first thoughts.  Better ones are solicited.

How about this. Catherine de Medici (and others) brings haute Italian cooking to France from Italy, were it had been established for some time. French Upper-crust like, cuisine waxes in France, wanes in Italy. Society realtively stable, wealthy and epicurian at the top end for some time. Many highly trained chefs working for French toffs. French toffs have heads cut off, unemployed Frenchies look for jobs with the nearest bunch of living toffs (=English). Britain rules world, takes fame of French cooking everywhere. Mean while new class of French toffs develop, along with the invention of the "restuarant" re-establishment of French cooking back in France.

[Wilfrid]

Nope. I like my version better.

[Adam Balic]

Wilnicki then is it?

[Wilfrid]

That took me a while to figure out. A bad sign. Doesn't Plotfrid have a ring to it?

[Adam Balic]

Nope. I like my version better.

[Wilfrid]

Toushay!

BTW, this is not directed at you Adam, as I salute your omniscience, but I have gained the impression from a number of threads that there are some out there who think the French disposed of their monarchy and aristocracy in 1789. Can I just confirm that the monarchy was restored after Napoleon, and persisted for quite a bit of the nineteenth century. As for the aristocracy, there were toffs a-plenty right through to the twentieth century. Open up any chapter of Proust.

Just while we're setting things straight...

[Adam Balic]

Toushay!

BTW, this is not directed at you Adam, as I salute your omniscience, but I have gained the impression from a number of threads that there are some out there who think the French disposed of their monarchy and aristocracy in 1789.  Can I just confirm that the monarchy was restored after Napoleon, and persisted for quite a bit of the nineteenth century.  As for the aristocracy, there were toffs a-plenty right through to the twentieth century.  Open up any chapter of Proust.

Just while we're setting things straight...

Oh, sure they had several attempts at monarchy (I know this from all the book learning I have), but the light-hearted, off the cuff comments I made were a reference to my belief that during much of the 19th much of the hot French cooking action was occuring outside of France. Escoffier would have be just some guy, if he hadn't left France. Careme ditto. BTW before French chefs came to England too many chefs spoiled the broth (Hehehe).

[Wilfrid]

Dat true, dat (as Tommy would say).

[Steve Plotnicki]

Wilfrid - I was asking when the ritual of fine dining in France filtered down from the aristocracy/bourgoise to the common folk. If you only look at haute cuisine, of course you will find that the aristocrats and monied classes all over the world exported it. But how about the general population of France and their eating habits? Because not only is French cuisine dominent because they developed culinary genius like Escoffier, but their peasant food triumphed over the peasant food of other cultures as well. And in the context of the original question posed about why we are inclined to speak about French cooking technique and restaurants, much of what we discuss occured because of plainfolk, and not because of what Escoffier did at the Ritz in London. And this point dovetails with your comment about the Brits and oysters. Why did the culinary fortunes of the French populace soar so high in the 20th century when the fortunes of the Brits went into the crapper?

[Wilfrid]

Your final question has been answered repeatedly. What is it you don't understand about two world wars, neither of which significantly affected the French food industry or agriculture ?

As to your more interesting question about French cuisine below the level of Escoffier, I haven't yet found any evidence that such food travelled internationally in advance of haute cuisine. It seems to have been the other way around. Kettner's, opened by Auguste Kettner (formerly chef to Napoleon III) in the 1860s, was the first French restaurant in Soho, and a glamorous place it was. Now, by the turn of the century, Soho was London's center for inexpensive French (and indeed Italian) dining, and I expect you'd have found dishes there which at least derived from French "cuisine paysanne". But the upscale places seem to have led the way. If anyone believes this is wrong, I'd be very interested to hear.

One thing struck me when I was doing some research. There was an earlier influx of French immigrants into London - the Huguenots - but while they left some marks on London culture, I haven't found any reference to them introducing French food. But this is way before there were such things as "restaurants", so i guess they probably just ate it at home.

[Steve Plotnicki]

"One thing struck me when I was doing some research. There was an earlier influx of French immigrants into London - the Huguenots - but while they left some marks on London culture, I haven't found any reference to them introducing French food."

Well that's an easy one. The Hugenots are Protestants and everybody knows that Protestants eat pie .

As for the Brits and the wars, are you saying that oyster eating in Britain died, almost to the point of extermination because of the wars? They are so cheap. How could that be?

[Wilfrid]

As for the Brits and the wars, are you saying that oyster eating in Britain died, almost to the point of extermination because of the wars? They are so cheap. How could that be?

No, I am not saying that. One question at a time, please, and don't forget to raise your hand.

For some easy introductory reading on rationing, try this. Also, for a reference to rationing in the First World War, often forgotten, click here.

Britain was at war from 1914-1918. It entered an economic depression in the 1920s, and didn't emerge until the next war - the Jarrow Hunger March took place in 1936. The war lasted, of course, until 1945, but food rationing continued until 1952. That's almost forty years of problems with food supply and distribution; enough to have an effect, I would say. If you have an alternative, and better, explanation, fire away.

And this will tell you about the British oyster industry. A curious story, but I suppose the BBC are a fairly reliable source.

[lizziee]

This is probably a rehash of what has already been said and certainly not as scholarly as Wilfrid, but ......

In the July/August issue of Food Arts there is an interesting article on "Tastes of history, histories of taste" by David Lincoln Ross.

"The cookbook exposition at the Musee de L'Arsenal offered an intimate look at perhaps the most crucial bibliographic tipping point in French culinary history - the first appearance of authoritative cookbooks written in everyday French. Prior to the late 1400s, nearly all books and guides, including cookbooks, were published in Latin.

The moment books were printed in the French vernacular, their popularity spurred new refinements in French cooking practices; accelerated the evolution of the professions of chef, baker, and pastry maker; and, perhaps most importantly, solidified the widening influence of French cuisine across Europe and the world.

At the Musee d'Orsay there was a rich array of culinary objects, all signaling the most important change in French (and ultimately Western) dining habits. The change roughly coincided with the French Revolution of 1789, when aristocratic dining traditions dissolved, as many of its most blue-blooded devotees were carted off to the sharp-edged guillotines of the Terror.

In that aftermath, French cuisine became decidedly more egalitarian, chefs became restaurateurs, and commoners emerged as customers. In this democratization of the table, the old reigning culinary paradigm 'service a la francaise' - in which a four to eight round series of numerous dishes were set mid-table and diners could pick and choose according to their whim - gave way to 'service a la russe.'

What was the difference? The luxury of whim was replaced by the discipline of sequenced choice: patrons were now required to choose an appetizer, first dish, second dish, a side dish, dessert and coffee. revealingly, these 'Russian' rhythms still pretty much rule restaurants to this day."

Wilfrid, if nothing else, I think we ought to send you to Paris to the Musee de L'Arsenal and the Musee d'Orsay for further study.

[Steve Plotnicki]

"In that aftermath, French cuisine became decidedly more egalitarian, chefs became restaurateurs, and commoners emerged as customers. In this democratization of the table, the old reigning culinary paradigm 'service a la francaise' - in which a four to eight round series of numerous dishes were set mid-table and diners could pick and choose according to their whim - gave way to 'service a la russe."

An ode to Plotnickiism .

Wilfrid - Okay from 1914 onward, dining in England went into the crapper. But what about before that. How did the common British person eat during the Victorian era. To me that is the period analagous with "French culinary expansion."