Product Description

This book traces the development of modern French habits of cooking, eating, and drinking from their roots in the Ancien Regime. Pinkard examines the interplay of material culture, social developments, medical theory, and Enlightenment thought in the development of French cooking, which culminated in the creation of a distinct culture of food and drink.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #90182 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 334 pages

Amazon.com Review
Book Description
Modern French habits of cooking, eating, and drinking were born in the Ancièn Regime, radically breaking with culinary traditions that originated in antiquity and creating a new aesthetic. This new culinary culture saw food and wine as important links between human beings and nature. Authentic foodstuffs and simple preparations became the hallmarks of the modern style. Pinkard traces the roots and development of this culinary revolution to many different historical trends, including changes in material culture, social transformations, medical theory and practice, and the Enlightenment. Pinkard illuminates the complex cultural meaning of food in her history of the new French cooking from its origins in the 1650s through the emergence of cuisine bourgeoise and the original nouvelle cuisine in the decades before 1789. This book also discusses the evolution of culinary techniques and includes historical recipes adapted for today's kitchens.

Amazon Exclusive: Author Susan Pinkard on the French Culinary Revolution

I wrote A Revolution in Taste: The Rise of French Cuisine because I am fascinated by the intersection of the routines of everyday life with the world of ideas. Eating is a universal human need; but what you eat, how you prepare it, and with whom you share it reveal a lot about who you are, what kind of society you live in, and what you believe about beauty, health, and your place in nature.

Why French food? There are a couple of answers to that question, one of which has to do with history and the other with my life.

From ancient Rome through the Renaissance, cooking all over Europe was pungent, spicy, and sweet or sweet/sour, rather like North African or Middle Eastern food is today. From Naples to London, Seville to Warsaw, cooks used local ingredients as well as imported spices to fuse layers of flavor into complex sauces that were meant to balance the elemental composition of the foods with which they were served. The point, aesthetically as well as in terms of diet, was to civilize ingredients and to render them wholesome by transforming them in the kitchen. Then, quite suddenly, French cooks broke with this ancient tradition. The aim of what was called “the delicate style” was to cook and serve ingredients in a manner that preserved the qualities with which they were endowed by nature: instead of being miraculously transformed by the cook, food was supposed to taste like what it was. In pursuit of this new aesthetic of naturalness and simplicity, cooks developed many techniques and recipes that continue to define French cuisine to this day. Indeed, the impact of the French culinary revolution reverberated far beyond the borders of France. The fact that so many of us moderns wish to eat and drink in a manner that represents the variety of nature reflects our lasting attachment to the idea of authenticity that first emerged in the kitchens of the ancien régime. Why and how had this major shift in sensibility come about? What does the culinary revolution reveal about other aspects of modern life that were also coming into focus in 17th- and 18th-century France? Those were the historical questions I set out to answer in this book.

The other reason why I decided to write about the rise of French cuisine is that I love to eat French food and I cook it almost every day. One of the enduring misconceptions about French cooking (especially in America) is that it is inherently fussy, expensive, and ridiculously rich. Although such a rococo element certainly exists, especially in fancy restaurant cooking, recipes from the cuisine bourgeoise (that is, home cooking as it has evolved in France over the past 250 years) are easy and economical to make and healthy to eat: roasted chicken with a quick deglazing sauce, inexpensive braised meats, poached fish with a little white wine, simply prepared vegetables, plain green salads, puréed soups of leeks, potatoes, and other fresh, cheap ingredients, just to name a few of my favorites. I hope that by focusing attention on the development of this aspect of the culinary tradition, my book will encourage readers to experiment with simple French foods. The historical recipes, in the appendix, are a good place to start.
--Susan Pinkard

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Cook up the Enlightenment: Exclusive Recipe Excerpts from A Revolution in Taste

Click here to see authentic (and delicious!) recipes from eighteenth-century France.

• Green Butter with Leek and Parsley (Marin)

• Potage aux Herbes (Marin)

• Roasted Chicken with Bitter Orange and Garlic Deglazing Sauce (Bonnefons)

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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The French have been inextricably tied with fine cuisine, and Pinkard's accessible and often fascinating examination of the country's culinary evolution gives foodies a rich, savory treat. Beginning with medieval cooking, characterized by strong seasonings that gave food a singular flavor, Pinkard explains how cooking was greatly influenced by early medicine, which insisted that the body's "humours" could be regulated by spices. As more fruits and vegetables made their way onto French tables, preparation methods evolved. By the mid 1600s, cooks began to emphasize tastes and textures, first incorporating the sauces now associated with classic French cooking. By the mid 1700s there was a drive toward lightness and simplicity called nouvelle cuisine, "a style that could be just as expensive, subtle and exacting to execute as its twentieth-century namesake." Though she rarely points out similarities to current trends like "slow food" and organic ingredients, the parallels are clear and relevant. Digressions on eating patterns, typical meals, the evolution of the dinner party and classic recipes (reproduced in an appendix) add interest and depth. Despite occasional ventures into academic minutiae, anyone interested in the evolution of modern cooking and entertaining is sure to find Pinkard's history a wealth of lore and trivia.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
Pinkard reveals that before the storming of the Bastille a revolution took place at dinner tables all over France, when ornate, liberally spiced medieval styles of cooking were displaced by farm-fresh food prepared so that it �not only tasted, but also looked, like what it was.� Le go�t naturel is strikingly relevant to the way we eat today. For instance, the Newtonian physician George Cheyne, who pioneered a new science of dietetics, advocated the reduced consumption of corn-fed poultry and cattle and argued that vegetables be eaten according to the season. Pinkard relishes debunking persistent myths: champagne was not invented by a Benedictine monk named Dom P�rignon but, rather, caught on thanks to the invention and diffusion of the modern wine bottle. Her lively account concludes with a series of meticulously sourced ancien-r�gime recipes demonstrating the finesse with which French food is now synonymous.
Copyright ©2008 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker

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Customer Reviews

Foodie Talk with a History Lesson
I can see why Susan Pinkard was told to leave administration and go back into teaching and writing at her University.

I was afraid when I started reading it might be another textbook, but this was a wonderful read. I am a foodie and I love to learn about the history of food, which is what this book will take you on an adventure through.

In the beginning Pinkard shows (even with charts) how the healers of the early Europeans realized that food really does affect your health. It also affected how the people combined foods for everyday eating. You know... the feed a cold, starve a fever theory. I don't think they would have starved a fever out, they would have changed what you ate to balance your internal body out... very cool, and shown to be very true.

From there she continues on with her history lesson into how wars, plagues, foods from the New World, etc, brought about many more changes in how not only foods were consumed but how they were eaten. An interesting reminder was that tomatoes were seen as a poisonous plant for many years in the European countries and potatoes took centuries to become a main crop.

Most of all I love that she explains what they ate and how they ate it. (no forks for a LONG while, everyone sat in a caste system at the table, even the peasants). Her description of the foods was almost like reading Laura Ingalls Wilder `Farmer Boy' I just needing to get something to eat because it sounded so good... Mind you, there were a few things I cringed at, but I'm sure they would cringe at some of the things eaten nowadays. (eating swan and peacock isn't at the top of my list).

From the Renaissance she continues on into the 1600's where food becomes a luxury and there isn't so much formality in eating. With it comes new ideas in cooking. Instead of heavy foods where they combined every taste together (sweet, sour, salty, etc) the French start to refine their flavors.

I could go on but I can't give it all away.

And last, but never least, in my eyes her appendix has around forty recipes. Have you ever noticed how food just sounds more exciting in French? (Could be why I wanted to read this book and you're reading my review) Sauce a la Crème, sounds so much more appetizing than Cream Sauce.

She has recipes for potage, which is mentioned a bit, showing how important the dish was `back in the day'. Many chicken recipes, and how about beets with a beurre blanc sauce? (I might actually eat beets that way).

Totally packed with the history of French eating, excellent footnotes if you want to find related books to read. I enjoyed it a lot.

An entertaining read for the erudite gourmet
This book contains recipes, but it isn't a cookery book. Its subject is French cuisine, but it isn't aimed at foodies.

Instead, Ms Pinkard has produced a fascinating study, showing how French cookery made a quantum leap from earlier forms, where the emphasis was on multi-layered, highly-spiced sauces, to a cuisine where the inherent flavour of the food was of paramount importance. (We can see this difference today, if we contrast, say, Indian food with what we would consider typical 'Western' fare.) This new approach put more reliance on good raw materials, required significant investments of time, but produced much more varied and interesting results.

Not only did the cuisine undergo changes, but also the environment in which it was served. In Mediaeval times, and in some of the stuffier royal courts, diners sat only on one side of the table, in order of seniority - an arrangement which limited conversation, and allowed the presenter to reserve the best food for the most important guests. By the 1700s, tables were set in the modern fashion, where guests could converse with everyone else at the table, and had free access to the food, which was placed in the middle of the table.

The French revolution in cookery laid the foundation for virtually all aspects of modern European food, including restaurants, catering and cafes, which were a direct result of the new ways of preparing food. Not everyone had the time and resources to cook for themselves.

These days, we are bombarded with junk-science articles about the dangers (or benefits) of eating or drinking some combination of food.(Red wine - is there anything it can't do?) It is amusing to note that food pundits are not a new invention. Each age seems to have spawned a different group, from the Hippocratic physicians through the proponents of 'Newtonian' iatromechanism, to Jean-jacques Rousseau himself. All were eloquent in their dietary advice and prohibitions, and all were talking utter bilge. There are many quotations from these worthies in this book - they make for hilarious reading.

As a bonus, Ms Pinkard dispells a few culinary myths: Dom Perignon invented Champagne? Wrong. I bet you can't guess who did. The Italians brought Haute Cuisine to France? Sorry - just propaganda.

Highly recommended for the food enthusiast in your household. Degree in gastronomy not required.

Bon Appetit!
This is a VERY readable, informative, and interesting book about food and the rise of French cuisine.

I was amazed to find that there is nothing new under the sun; as far back as 460 B.C. Hippocrates was saying that, "Patients who had fallen ill could be cured by foods..."

"Ideas about the role of food and cooking in maintaining health and curing disease that originated in ancient Greece continued to shape culinary practices on the cusp of modernity."

In the fourth century, vegatables became linked with the monastic practice of abstinence from meat. As late as 1650, vegatables were still associated with penance and it wasn't until the 1700;s that vegetables began to claim serious attention. "The sweet potato acquired a reputation as an aphrodisiac and booster of male fertility," while in contrast the common potato was mostly ignored until the eighteenth century.

By the mid 1700's, the idea of "simplicity as the definitive principle of good cooking (as opposed to variety) was a concept born of the Enlightenment." and Rousseau had a lot he wanted to say about that!

These are but a minute portion of fascinating facts told in an engaging way about the revolution of taste through the ages.

There are chapters about wine and the once despised champagne, the duality of artifice and simplicity in the kitchen, and last of all are some easy to follow recipes from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The author has made it easy for today's cook to follow them.

A really enjoyable read for the lover of good food packed with interesting information.