The historic success of French cuisine

[Adam Balic]

Plotnicki - haven't we done this one to death? It always ends in tears with the rest of us shouting "Pie!" at you.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Adam - Nope. Even the great Wilfrid himself said he didn't research that era. In fcat he asked my it was important? Showing that aristocracies ate well is one thing, but showing why *everybody in France ate well* as compared to other countries is at the heart of P-ism .

[Adam Balic]

Who is saying that a 19th C. French peasant ate "well" compared to their English cousins? Where is the data?

[Steve Plotnicki]

Well that's what I want Wilfrid to research. The argument that a more liberalized political system caused the populace in France to eat better than their British counterparts (this is 1870 onwards) is one of the cornerstones of the discussion. Or another way of putting it, was it just the wars that caused Britain's food troubles or did they have them 50 years earlier.

[jaybee]

I heard an interview with the former director of MOMA last night where he made the point that liberalism in government was the driver behind the development of "modern" art. In fact he took the period from 1870 to 1910 as the era which birthed "modern" art.

So perhaps there is a relation between innovation and eating well, too.

[oraklet]

shooting from the hip:

1) in the second part of the 19.cent., france was not industrialized at the same speed as great britain. thus they had less migration from the countryside and smaller towns to the big cities.

2) a much larger proportion of the french population worked in the administration of state/province/commune.

these two factors may have led to a more stable and well-off middle and lower-middle class (including farmers), who had the tradition, time and money to eat well.

[Adam Balic]

Well that's what I want Wilfrid to research. The argument that a more liberalized political system caused the populace in France to eat better than their British counterparts (this is 1870 onwards) is one of the cornerstones of the discussion. Or another way of putting it, was it just the wars that caused Britain's food troubles or did they have them 50 years earlier.

Not much of a cornerstone, this is the period when a great deal of English cooking books were published specifically for the middle-classes (not so dissimilar to what is occuring now). Where is the evidence that English cooking was "crappy" at during this period?

[Steve Plotnicki]

Adam - I haven't said the English ate worse during that period. I've only asked Wilfrid to do the research. But the restriction laws must have had some negative effect on how the general populace dined don't you think?

Britain is suffering from them to this day. Surely they were sufferng from theim in 1870-1914. In fact isn't that why pie became popular in the first place?

[Adam Balic]

Look, you can't just pick a few varibles, haphazardly, and hope to get a conclusive answer to a complicated question, especially when the question itslf hasn't been that well defined. Why are oranges, "orange" and strawberries red? Is it because strawberries come from Peru? I mean really, come on.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Okay let's frame the question.

Was there a disparity between British and French household and how well they ate (both in and out of the home) in the period between 1870-1914?

I suspect there was, in large part because of the restriction laws. But if it is the case, what were the factors behind it? Maybe Wilfrid will come up with every thing being ducky and maybe he won't. And maybe my gut is wrong and the general French populace didn't really start to eat well until after the wars. But central to my theory, is that what drove French cuisine to the heights it achieved was that a larger percentage of the French population had access to a bountiful table and that is what really drove French culinary expansion. Because along with how dishes the Escoffiers of the world were transplanted into other countries, I think the real question, as it was originally raised was, how did cassoulet get in to homes all over the world? For hard core eaters of course. But let's see what Wilfrid comes up with. He might prove my "gut" theory wrong. Or you can add or reframe the question if you like.

[Wilfrid]

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.

I look forward to receiving my eGullet study grant.

Thanks, Lizziee, that all seems correct, and your observation about the change from Latin to the vernacular is clearly important. And it was the style of public eating which developed post-Revolution which was imported to England, and other Europeanm countries, apparently along with professional French chefs and French menus.

[Adam Balic]

.......it was the style of public eating which developed post-Revolution which was imported to England, and other Europeanm countries, apparently along with professional French chefs and French menus.

That's what I said.

[Wilfrid]

Don't worry, Adam, everyone's saying it except Steve.

Wilfrid, believe it or not, is going to research what interests Wilfrid. or to put it more constructively - Steve, why not just buy the Mennell book. He deals with, not all, but most of your questions.

As you've just framed it, I thought I'd answered it: all the evidence I have reviewed suggests that French cuisine in the broadest sense (including cassoulet) entered England via the following route - Regency court and a small number of fashionable nobles (1820s) > London hotels and private clubs (1840s) > fashionable restaurants (1860s) > more moderate restaurants (1880s). I see no separate, parallel route by which cuisine grand-mere made its way across the channel. I am assuming that the more modest French establishments which opened in the wake of the Cafe Royals served more modest food. But I may well be wrong - the arrival of that kind of French cooking might well be a much later development. Remember that Curnonsky and others worked quite hard to rehabilitate rustic French cooking in France itself in the first half of the twentieth century.

The challenge is to find some descriptions of Soho bistros from the turn of the century. Now, the cellars of the London Library have stacks of that stuff, but I'm in the wrong country right now.

Finally, can we put to the sword, once and for all, this nonsense about the French eating better than the British because of the "liberalization" of French society from 1870 onwards. Deny if you will, Professor Plotnicki, that you got the 1870 date from an earlier post of mine which indicated that the Emperor Napoleon III, who had ruled as a dictator, had begun to lift some restrictions on civil liberties around that time. Some freedom of the press was permitted, and - later - freedom of assembly. Nevertheless, the early Presidents of the republic, such as MacMahon, was scarcely liberal figures.

In Britain, on the other hand, such civil liberties had largely been secured in the 1820s. Suffrage steadily increased from 1830 onwards.

Steve, you need to demonstrate two things, or withdraw your theory:

1. France was a significantly more liberal society than Britain in the period 1870-1914.

2. French gastronomy (however you want to define it) significantly improved after 1870.

Good luck.

[Adam Balic]

Wilfrid, believe it or not, is going to research what interests Wilfrid.

Thank God for that, I thought there was a danger of you becoming Plotnicki's Winged-Monkey-Bitch-Whore.

[Gavin Jones]

Surely 1870 marks the date of the Paris Commune. Where notoriously outstanding cooking was to be had.

If you like rat mornay.

[Adam Balic]

Surely 1870 marks the date of the Paris Commune. Where notoriously outstanding cooking was to be had.

If you like rat mornay.

When was the Franco-Prussian war? Them were real rat eating times. And Dog and zoo animal eating times.

[Gavin Jones]

1870 your Balicship.

[Steve Plotnicki]

1. Liberal meaning a larger segment of the French population had access to good food and good preprartion of that food than their English counterparts. "Liberalization means" better distribution of wealth and information and to a larger percentage of the population. Okay that will be an easy one.

2. I feel like that question is a joke. Since 1870 French gastronomy completely ruled the world, if not earlier than that date. Look at all the famous chefs France produced and all the dishes they created? Whether it is 1870, 1880, 1890 or 1920, French gastronomy improved and the others didn't. What's to prove? It's like telling me to prove than an orange is an orange.

[Wilfrid]

I'd just like to mention that France gave women the vote in 1945. Very effing big and generous and liberal of them.

Adam: as I see it, I am the teacher, and Steve is the kid at the back of the class who is still asking questions about last week's lesson.

[Wilfrid]

Steve:

1. If you define "liberal" to mean "had good food", find someone else to discuss with. If you define it to mean distribution of wealth, Britain was at all levels more prosperous than France in the second half of the eighteenth century. If you define it to mean distribution of information, read what I said about freedom of the press.

2. Let me explain very slowly. It is precisely my point that many major developments in French cuisine had taken place BEFORE 1870, but you will find nobody to argue that France was a liberal society before 1870 (and it wasn't all that liberal after that date). And of course French gastronomy was great AFTER 1870. It's your argument that the development/expansion/achievement of greatness has something to do with France being a liberal society. If you can't explain why, why not stop pushing the theory?

[lizziee]

In Blake's and Crewe's Great Chefs of France, the authors mention a number of important factors that allowed a larger proportion of the population to "indulge in the pleasures of the table." Between 1789 and 1815, the small property owner emerged;"the number of small peasant-owners of land increased by a million." Also, hunting laws were altered allowing more and varied produce to more people. "The seigneurial dues had been abolished, so that wealth was gradually more widely distributed." But, and I think this is the most important fact, "the close liaison between cuisine and the produce of the land - perhaps the most distinctive feature of present-day French cooking" (copywrite date of the book is 1978) ---"was guaranteed by the fact that France, in contrast to Britain and Germany, remained a predominantly agricultural nation until well into the nineteenth century. Even today, when France is a leading industrial nation, its soul is rural -- and the roots of good cooking are always in the soil."

Another important development during this time was the emergence of the restaurant. In 1789, there were only about 100 restaurants in Paris. By 1804, there were more than 500. It was not just the chefs who opened restaurants but "jewellers,goldsmiths, embroiderers, haberdashers." This new proliferation of restaurants and "the uncertainity in questions of manners among the nouveau riche both created the need for guides and critics." Grimod de la Reyniere instituted the Jurie des Gourmands in which the jury tried out dishes and gave a certificate to those that they approved of. Their findings were published in Reyniere's Almanach des Gourmands. In 1814 Blanc's Guide des Dineurs was published and Michelin was started in 1900. "The gourmet-writer, as opposed to the producer of cookery books, is a singularly French phenomenon. The great difference between the two is that the cookery-book writers, of which Britain and the United States have always had a plethora, are prescriptive and dictatorial, whereas

the gourmet-writer is descriptive and encouraging; not tramping on the imagination but, by intelligent speculation, prompting it to soar."

[Wilfrid]

Thanks again, Lizziee. More good information.

Let me introduce a concept developed by Mennell, which is partly responsive to Steve's questions, and partly just interesting. Mennell speaks of the "decapitation" of English cuisine by the French.

Prior to the arrival of restaurants in the nineteenth century, british public eating places had fallen into one of the following broad categories: cookshops, taverns, chophouses and coffee houses. Cookshops, if the expression is unfamiliar, were just places with big ovens, turning out food primarily roasts - from which people could purchase cuts. Each of these types of eating place catered for different clientele, but they tended to offer communal tables, few comforts, and little or no choice of food. The French restaurant offered comparative privacy, comparative luxury, and menus.

At home with the aristocracy and the gentry, with the exception of a very small, travelled minority, who relished continental cuisine, the table was set with home-grown produce: simple roasts of meat, fowl and game; boiled meats; home-grown vegetables and dairy products from the local herd. The peasantry ate a more modest version of the same cuisine. English cookbooks, up to and including Mrs Beeton, primarily offered cooking instructions for this type of food.

What Mennell means by the decapitation of English cooking is that the swift triumph of French chefs and restaurants in the first half of the nineteenth century seems to have inhibited the development of any luxury/upscale/"refined" version of the traditional English table. Society led the way, and the middle class swiftly followed, in adopting the French restaurant as the model for public dining, and the cuisine of the French chef as the model for fashionable entertaining. Mennell finds, even in middle class Victorian homes, that where families attempted to put on culinary displays, they did so by introduing French touches to their service.

Two points. "Decapitation" is not the right word, because no "head" ever grew in the first place. Also, it's not clear which way the arrow of causation points: did English cuisine fail to develop a luxury extension because the French had the market sown up, or did the French triumph so decisively because there was no English competition.

Either way, something to cogitate over.

[Adam Balic]

Very interesting. In the older British cookbooks I have, the "Pudding" came before the meat. This became a sign of being old fashioned by the mid-18th. C. From this and many other examples, I don't get the feeling that English/British food was ever un-dynamic from the 15th C. onwards, but these comments indicate an obvious reason that the French cuisine became so popular, namely the emergence of the restaurant trade.

Even the 18th C. books I have mentioned things cooked in the "French" manner, but other books carry on about French "gee gaws" and "ragouts". So the was some resistance to the introduction of French cuisine, at least amounghst the middle classes.

[Wilfrid]

You're right, Adam. I have numerous citations to eighteenth and nineteenth century authors expressing disgust at fashionable food in general, and French food in particular. Tobias Smollet's discussion of metropolitan eating habits in Humphrey Clinker, contrasted with the healthy simplicity of the country, is exemplary.

[Adam Balic]

My current favourite book (Pub. 1831) is divided into French, English and Scottish cuisine. The basic feeling I get from these books is that they (you Brits) felt that the quality of the beef was so good, there was really no reason to cut it up into "sippets" and sauce it like the Frenchies, who's cattle were obviously pretty poor quality. Could you make a case that the common dominace of French cuisine is an English fad that has refused to die?