Peasant Origins?

[oraklet]

there was an effort made earlier on this (?) thread by somebody. something like peasants being ruled by a landowning lord, and farmers being (relatively) independent.

distinction makes sense if applied to development of recipes, history of england v. france etc.

edit: i made a few post which, though not precise, and one of them almost illegible, had a few things to say on this, feeling that it was an aspect that had been overlooked.

[Adam Balic]

OK a peasant basically pays "rent" to the land lord, what the actually terms of the rent etc vary quite a bit, depending on where and when this occurs. So a peasant may have to work on his landlords property for 3 months of the year or he may have to supply a certian amount of produce per year from his own property of both or something else again. Wilh few exceptions this was bad for the peasant. These conditions existed in some parts of Italy until he 1960's! In some parts of Tuscany you can still see people that great up in these conditions - they are very short.

Truly independent farmers working their own little plot of land are pretty rare, and in European history a fairly recent phenomena.

[oraklet]

but how about post cromwell state of affairs and development in england?

compare with pre/post revolution france, perhaps.

[Steve Plotnicki]

"But, not much to do with modern French cooking and even less to do with French peasant cooking, which I thought were the cornerstone of French cuisine and why it is so great? "

Adam - Well let me print this excerpt by the Hymans about La Varenne in rebuttal;

"As has been previosly noted, La Varenne's recupes are markedly different from any we find in European cookbooks printed prior to the 17th century. Not only has the repetoire of dishes changed but the spices, so frequently called for in previous centuries, have all but disappeared from savoury dishes with the exception of pepper, cloves and nutmeg. And the way these spices are used is very different indeed from 16th century French practice. Pepper, once marginal, has become the dominant spice; cloves, used more sparingly than in the past, are now stuck into an onion before being added to a soup or a stew; and nutmeg is now considered primarily to pates and tourtes, egg-based dishes and vegetable preparations. All of these traits subsist to this day in French cuisine as do La Varenne's reliance upon two quintessentially French flavouring agents, mushrooms and the bouquet garni which are encountered here for the first time. It also introduced a wide range of new terms including "au natural", "au bleu", "a la mode" and for Oeufe a la neige."

One need only to look at the spices and condiments used in contemporary English texts to immediately understand the shock waves the publication of The French Cook must have engendered. In John Murrel's "A New Book of Cookery (1615), for instance, sugar is used in 50% of the savoury recipes, followed by cinammon (31%), ginger (27%) and mace (15.5%). Some forty years later, the publication of Joseph Cooper's The Art of Cookery (1654) confirms that these specicifically English tastes are still in vogue. All of the aforementioned spices are still important in savoury dishes albit in slightly different proportions. Cooper preferes cinnamon to all other spices (40%) followed closely by sugar and ginger (roughly a third of the recipes contain one or the other or both) and mace (14%). In comparison sugar is used in less than 5% of La Varenne's recipes, cinnamon and ginger in less than 1% and mace not at all.

In addition to the recipes that were new to the French, La Varenne's book also contains the first omelet recipes in an Englsh language cookbook. Unlike the old English "Fraize", often described as a pancake, La Varenne's onmelet is often rolled much the way the French omelets are today."

So if one accepts La Varenne as a cornerstone of modern cooking, the question becomes why? Is it the great man theory? Did La Varenne create a unqiue system of cooking and does it stem from him? Or did he just codify the basic retinue of a chef employed by the aristocracy in his day? But once you get past that question, you then get to the nub of why France? Where did those chefs in 1540-1650 draw their inspiration from?

Was there already a system in place propelled by the types of dishes eaten by peasants and farm cuisine, or did they create it from scratch?

As to the precise definition of the word peasant, for the purposes of this discussion, I've always meant it to be someone who lived on agricultural land, regardless of their fee arrangement with their landlord, and cooked using the ingredients they farmed and were able to trade for complimentary ingredients.

Here is also an excerpt and then a link from an article that shows how the exportation of French wine is probably an important part of the stage neing set for French chefs;

"In 1359, Jean de Bussieres, abbot of Citeaux Abbey, presented Pope Gregory XI with some of Clos de Vougeot's production. Four years later, the pope promoted the abbot to cardinal. In the 15th century, the powerful Dukes of Burgundy called themselves, probably accurately, "the lords of the greatest wines in Christendom". Napoleon is said to have had his troops salute the Cote d'Or vines when marching past them."

A Taste for Burgundy

And an excerpt from the history of Bordeaux and a link;

"The history of wine production in Bordeaux dates back to when the Romans settled in St. Émilon and immediately established vineyards to gratify the Bacchanalian inclinations of their troops. Our Origins page traces the intriguing developments of the Bordeaux wine industry, over the centuries. It explains how the period between 1152 and 1453, when the region owed allegiance to the English crown, was fundamental to the development of Bordeaux’s burgeoning wine trade. The British, and soon afterwards the rest of the English-speaking world, rapidly developed a taste for Claret. The English description “Claret” derives from the French word “Clairet,” used to distinguish the light style red Bordeaux wines of that period, from the more robust reds of Portugal and Spain. The name Claret is still widely used today and applies to all red Bordeaux wines, while Clairet now refers to the rosé style wines of the region."

A History of Bordeaux

So it would also seem that based on their ability to export their superior wine at such an early date, they could create an infrastructure to export foods to eat with those wines. But that is probably limited to items surviving shipping. But one can easily see how a food industry (liberal use of industry) would form around the wine business, including the hiring of cooks by the aristocracy who could rise to a culinary level to match the wines. Is that the answer? The noblemen told their chefs to cook to the level of the Bonnes Mares? But there is a more important aspect about the export of wine which is that it brought them fame outside of their borders. And since their wine was superior than their competitions wine, Spain and Italy, it set the stage for their culinary technique being superior. And I don't mean it's the cause other than specified above, I mean it was an easier sell to the Brits and others.

[Adam Balic]

Steve - that bit about the spices is very interesting and is pretty much the meaning of "Post-medieval", as I wrote before. I am V. busy today, so I will write at length at a later date. However, before you go leaping off into the deep end of the pool, you still have to show that food at this level is based on peasant cooking. I don't think you can do that.

If your logic about taste and betterness is correct, does this not mean that the French know squat about wine, as it wa the English that really developed the two main wine regions in France?

[Steve Plotnicki]

Adam - Good try. The English were the customers (punters ) not the developers . It's clear that much of the wine was developed by monks and royals. As for peasants, as I stated earlier, the jury is still out in where the aristocracy sourced their recipes from. In this period of conversaion from medieval to modern cookery (1540-1650,) I need to research their sources. But it seems that better researchers than I have yet to crack this nut so I'm not hopeful.

[Wilfrid]

La Varenne was clearly important - according to Mennell his book was a bestseller for decades. At the same time, other writers were denouncing him as "rustic" and "vulgar" within just a few years. Mennell does credit the La Varenne school with moving away from mediaeval spices and developing bouillons/stocks as the basis for a range of soups. The next major development does seem to have been in the 1730s and 1740s, when there was actually talk of a "nouvelle cuisine". Writers like Menon made the important advance from bouillons to fonds and laid the foundations for modern saucing. So it's a long story.

Steve, we can certainly do a library trip, maybe in the second half of September? Let's PM.

In the meantime: Mennell cites two articles by the Hymans. There isn't a book by the Hymans too, is there?

The story of French cooking up to 1789 is tackled in a lot of detail in Barbara Wheaton's Savoring the Past. That may be the quick way to answer some of these questions. I hadn't referred to it much on the French cuisine thread, because I was interested in how French cuisine got exported after that time.

[Adam Balic]

Oh, and a large part of the reason why he using more pepper in his cooking, while other chef used other spices, was that he could. Black pepper was always a very prized spice, but its rarity and cost made its use prohibitive for many cooks/chefs. Until the late 15th.C that is when the monopoly was broken. Below is a link to some pretty good information on pepper. It would be interesting to know how the price of pepper corresponds to its use in cooking, country by country, can't find that information.

http://www-ang.kfunigraz.ac.at/~katzer/eng...l?Pipe_nig.html

[Steve Plotnicki]

Wilf - It will have to wait until the last week of the month as I will be in Europe till then.

I think you guys are making short shrift of my wine theory on a commercial level. It makes sense that a country who exports wine easily includes food both in theory (recipes) and in substance (ingredients). Of course one can say that the Brits imported port from Portugal. And why didn't the Portugese export their cuisine as well. Not up to snuff? Same with the Spaniards. I'm sure that Rioja made it's way into Britain. Where is the great impact made by Spanish food?

[Wilfrid]

I think that's one of your theories I didn't reject out of hand, although as you point out there were a number of countries producing and exporting wine.

I am away for the next couple of weeks at least, so around the end of September works fine. Five thousand books should fill our time nicely.

[Adam Balic]

Wilf - It will have to wait until the last week of the month as I will be in Europe till then.

I think you guys are making short shrift of my wine theory on a commercial level. It makes sense that a country who exports wine easily includes food both in theory (recipes) and in substance (ingredients). Of course one can say that the Brits imported port from Portugal. And why didn't the Portugese export their cuisine as well. Not up to snuff? Same with the Spaniards. I'm sure that Rioja made it's way into Britain. Where is the great impact made by Spanish food?

Hmm - interesting idea Steve. Could it be that French culture in general had a large impact on the English aristocrat class? French would seem to be a court language in England, not Spanish and not Potuguese. There is no Port in Portugal, it's only port when it leaves Oporto?

[Wilfrid]

I could be wrong, but I don't think French did become a court language in England, although I suspect it was an important acquisition among members of society, just as it was in Germany and Russia.

Queen Victoria, however, did read and discuss menus in French.

[Adam Balic]

I could be wrong, but I don't think French did become a court language in England, although I suspect it was an important acquisition among members of society, just as it was in Germany and Russia.

Queen Victoria, however, did read and discuss menus in French.

Yes, this of course what I meant . Would you agree though that French culture made a large impact of it's immediate neighbors?

Queen Victoria was half German and she married a German, but she read menus in French? Go figure. Actually, was German (Saxony/Prussian?) food ever in vogue in England? I can't remember ever reading this.

(huh, Plotnicki admits that there is no actual proof that peasant cuisine contributed to high class cooking. On the ropes, I tells yah.)

[Wilfrid]

You'd think some German influences might have come across with Albert. Maybe they just never took. German restaurants have a consistent record of failure in London (I'm talking in my time now). One day soon, I'll start a thread about German food, because I actually think it gets a bad deal.

[jaybee]

Since the British royals are really German, maybe British and German cuisine combined for the wurst of it all.

[Wilfrid]

Tad dah!

These days, they're half German, half Greek. Off with their heads!

[Adam Balic]

I was talking to a British food celeb. yesterday about "British Food" and what she thought of this renewed interest. Amounghst other things, she mentioned that when people are speak about "British Food", what they are mostly talking about is Victorian English food. Which she didn't regard as the best of British food. She regarded that best of British as being before Varrene & Co. improved French cuisine. Interestingly, she mentioned that if you compare English and French recipes before the period of Catherine de Medici, the English food was of a higher standard.

After Catherine introduced Italian cooking to the French, things really took off for the Frenchies. What a pity she wasn't married off to one of the English kings, then it would be English food ruling the waves.

edit: I did not vote for the damn Queen .

[Adam Balic]

Will have to review some of my views on peasant cooking in light of a surprise visit from my father.

My father unexpectedly turned up in Edinburgh after visiting the fatherland (Dalmatia), amounghst all his happy snaps he had a few photos of my grandmothers home (my grandmother is the best home cook I know of), it is basically a one room, semi-subterranean) stone building. What was interesting was how they cooked meals (until ~1950's).

A central fire (smoke leaves via hole in the roof), most meals cooked in a cauldron, some things (fish) grilled on a iron plank. Bread was baked by placing the dough on the plank and placing the inverted cauldron over this, and heaping ashes around this.

Pretty basic stuff, but a great cuisine - damn it. Still my grandmother tells me that cooking is even better now that she has a eight burner stove with three independent ovens.

[Wilfrid]

Oh, I bet her food has lost some of its nuances, though.

[snowangel]

A central fire (smoke leaves via hole in the roof), most meals cooked in a cauldron, some things (fish) grilled on a iron plank. Bread was baked by placing the dough on the plank and placing the inverted cauldron over this, and heaping ashes around this.

Pretty basic stuff, but a great cuisine - damn it. Still my grandmother tells me that cooking is even better now that she has a eight  burner stove with three independent ovens.

I can't blame her. Any idea of just how heavy iron cauldrons and planks are? Not to mention cutting, splitting and hauling wood?

Sort of like my grandmother said about hand-sewn quilts. Think they would have done them that way back then if they had decent, heavy-duty sewing machines?

These women embraced modern conveniences.

[Adam Balic]

Oh, I bet her food has lost some of its nuances, though. 

Sure, the gentle kiss of orange-wood smoke that lent its savour to each meal is a thing of the past. As is ricketts.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Okay, I will admit that pre La Varenne, British cuisine was every bit as good, or even better then French cuisine. But then you have to admit it's been in the crapper for nearly 500 years. And I am writing this from the Kinko's in Mayfair and it gives me great joy.

[Adam Balic]

Who are you and what have you done with Steve?

Steve - I'm glad of your great joy. I have been thinking about this British food-crapper thing. I reckon that it really declined in the late 19th C. Which is strange because this is the period that much of the "New British Classic" type cuisine is coming from.

Edit: Is this Mayfair on the way to Damascus and will we have to call you Peve now?

[Gavin Jones]

I notice Colin Spencer (British Food: A thousand years of pie) suggests the only significant innovation La Varenne provided to the UK was flour-thickened sauces. This was because the French sauces had to sit around for hours at the French court - the British habit was to use butter based saucing.

Everything else was pretty much a re-exporting to Britain of what was freely available pre-reformation.

Sorry for the use of secondary sources.

[Adam Balic]

Sorry for the use of secondary sources.