When did traditional French cuisine fall out of popularity?

"Diversity" did it in.

I can't eat it... it hurts my stomach just thinking about it!!

When Julia Child stopped putting out.

I'm a vegetarian, and find many other cuisines (Italian, Thai, Indian, Mexican, etc.) to be less reliant on meat.

And the obsession with technique over freshness and flavor puts me off.

French desserts can be wonderful, though.

It often features on poultry and eggs and lardons and stuff that vegetarians don't like, and fatty sauces became unfashionable in the low-fat 1980s.

Asian food beyond China and Middle Eastern food were completely mainstream by the 1990s. They feature greens and salad and can seem "lighter" and less stodgy; plus they have a different flavor profile.

The popularity of small ethnic restaurants serving take- out may have had something to do with it too. You can get a falafel kebab or pasta carbonara or beef and cashews to go but not so much duck a l'orange or cassoulet.

I've never thought of French cooking as being obsessed with technique over freshness and flavor. I'm going to have to mull that over.

What OP described is not traditional French cuisine - it's haute cuisine. Ordinary French food is simpler. Good bread, cheese, delicious soups simmering on the back of the stove all day, choucroute (sauerkraut) with tasty sausages, beef bouguignon, vegetables in season, salads, etc. Nouvelle cuisine also came in about the 1980s and it was lighter, simpler. Haute cuisine is caloric and heavy - it's food for a very special occasion - maybe once or twice a year. Not daily fare.

The "Nouvelle Cuisine" fad of the early 1980s.

French cooking was big in the 1970s and 1980s along with Pierre Deux. The women of the following generation rejected everything that reminded them of their mothers, including French cooking. The trend towards other cuisine mostly had to do with being as little lie one's mother as possible.

[quote]The women of the following generation rejected everything that reminded them of their mothers, including French cooking.

A friend of mine (born in the 1950s) refused to own any Le Creuset because it reminded her of her mother (born in the 1920s).

French deserve credit for their techniques. It is rich and indulgent for an occasional meal, but overly-fussy.

The modern usage is variously attributed to authors Henri Gault, Christian Millau, and André Gayot,[3][4] who used nouvelle cuisine to describe the cooking of Paul Bocuse,[5] Alain Chapel, Jean and Pierre Troisgros, Michel Guérard, Roger Vergé, and Raymond Oliver, many of whom were once students of Fernand Point.[6] Paul Bocuse claimed that Gault first used the term to describe food prepared by Bocuse and other top chefs for the maiden flight of the Concorde airliner in 1969.[7]

The style Gault and Millau wrote about was a reaction to the French cuisine classique placed into "orthodoxy" by Escoffier. Calling for greater simplicity and elegance in creating dishes, nouvelle cuisine is not cuisine minceur ("thin cooking"), which was created by Michel Guérard as spa food. It has been speculated that the outbreak of World War II was a significant contributor to nouvelle cuisine's creation—the short supply of animal protein during the German occupation made it a natural development.

When le souci de qualité was definitively vanquished (including in France herself) by mere utilitarian bouffe.

My family is from French Canada and my grandmother studied cooking in France in the 1920s. She was a pastry chef, but learned all the sauces and classic dishes. Duck was for holidays. Chicken and beef were the main dishes. Everything had wine in the stocks. To this day, I’ll order Chicken Fricassee, Coq au vin, beef bourguignon and other classic dishes before anything else. Bones were boiled down to create aspics. Salads and vegetables were always fresh. My mom had no patience for her mother in law and learned French cooking from Julia Child’s book and TV show. I tend to think of this style as French country cooking. It was really everyday cooking.

After 9/11

R10 - my grandmother used the enameled cast iron pots. My mom, heaving used the electric skillet. I have two 16” Presto electric skillets I use to make large quantities of fricassées. The $300 Le Crueset sits on my stove, unused, as an expensive decorative piece.

high French as well as high Italian cuisine both fell out of favor because those restaurants were quite pricey. It only endures in big cities where people have sophisticated tastes and money to burn. Its not easy to make either at home - and there aren't that many people who have time to make complicated French or Northern Italian dishes. There is no reason everyday contemporary French couldn't catch on. I think the middle class and the poor have a cultural prejudice and just aren't familiar with French bistro or brasserie fare, for example.

I eat French lunches all the time (Geneva) - they are balanced, nutritious, filling, delicious, not heavy and the price is correct. German cities also know how to do a satisfying lunch.

Because the Italians do it better and quicker.

I love French but who can afford it?

I don't like stews and potages much, so it doesn't appeal to me.

It was the 1980s. Julia Child popularized French cooking in the 1960s, and before that most Americans had no idea that food could taste that good or be that much trouble.

But by the early 1980s chefs like Alice Waters were starting to popularize "Nouvelle Cuisine" and "California Cuisine", with lighter recipes and an emphasis on good local ingredients, and that was actually an outgrowth of the "natural foods" fad of the late sixties and seventies. So yes, the first American food movement that called itself "cuisine" was an outgrowth of hippie culture.

What R18 said. Italian food supplanted it. Quicker, easier, more conducive for busy, working Americans on the go. Make a quick sauce while you boil some pasta. Mix together. Ta-da.

It's just kind of bland when compared to other emerging cuisines in the '80s and '90s. People's taste have changed, I've noticed the older people tend to favor foods that are more bland and not seasoned with spices, herbs, etc.... Younger generations are into bolder flavor profiles and complex use of herbs and spices, like how Thai cuisine uses fresh herbs with root spices for example. French cuisine just doesn't offer the same sort of interesting flavor profiles.

Always reminds me of Robert Carrier's cooking.

Used to love his recipes.

Italian food supplanted it thanks to the restaurant Le Cirque in the late 1970s and 80s. Sirio Maccioni introduced genuine Italian cuisine to the movers and shakers of NYC. Also: instead of wearing French designers, those women were wearing Armani power suits. Things Italian became became very in.

Alice Waters was more Provencal and Italian cooking brought to life in California using local ingredients. Not so much "nouvelle cuisine."

French fries killed French cuisine.

Thai cooking = the flavor profiles of fish sauce and oyster sauce. What's really in those sauces? Besides flavor "profile," I mean.

R28, Thai cuisine flavor profile isn't just fish sauce which I personally don't use when I cook Thai food. But basically the cuisine spices and herbs like shallots, garlic, different types of chillies, lemongrass, galangal, green-yellow-red curries, coconut, peppercorn, Kaffir lime leaves, coriander, turmeric, and basil. So it's not just fish sauce, and as for oyster sauce that's more Chinese not Thai.

Getting absolutely "fresh" and "local" ingredients is not possible for everybody, even in the U.S. Let's face it, a ton of people get their food from supermarkets & don't have time to shop at several different places. There is something to be said about knowing a technique (how to make basic French sauces) and beating common ingredients into submission. (Common ingredients = eggs, flour, onions, carrots, etc.)

No, I don't know how to make French sauces, but I do like a well-made Hollandaise sauce. I'd like to try a well-made Beef Bourguignon (beef stew with red wine in the sauce). I also like all kinds of foods from other cultures as well.

[quote]I'd like to try a well-made Beef Bourguignon

Use Ina's recipe rather than Julia's.

r31, and it's so easy.

One problem. at least in the US, is how difficult it can be to get Ina's 'good' things. You really have to work at sourcing things. So much of the stuff from the supermarket isn't well-flavored. I made the mistake of getting some 'Gouda' without noticing it was from Wisconsin. I ended up throwing it away: it may as well have been lightly colored Velveeta. From Julia Child, I learned about peeling broccoli, the proper way to cook green beans, etc. It's possible to eat good French food that's healthy. It's not all about heavy sauces, but the judicious use of heavy sauces isn't really that unhealthy. I just don't bother with Hollandaise sauce until fresh asparagus is in season. But I do eat plenty of vegetables. I buy Comte cheese at Costco now for when I make quiche. It's a perfectly good replacement for Gruyere. I have one little store a few miles from here where I can buy Amish chicken, and I don't bother to cook chicken until I can buy it there. The chicken from the supermarket has almost no flavor.

I always loved Italian food, and I knew it could be made at home, so I learned, both as a child (Southern) and as an adult (Marcella Hazan's Northern: the kind of food someone declared "out" upthread). There's a lot of crossover between Italian and French, as I learned when I was given one of Julia's cookbooks in college. The first time I made Bechamel sauce, I knew cooking was something I truly wanted to be able to do.

When Mexicans took over working at most of the restaurants.

The people who can afford French cuisine were caught up in the diet craze, so French food was too rich and calorie- laden. The obese sows could not afford french food, so they stuck to MacDonald's. Then came the Iraq debacle and the republican vilification of anything French; hence, " freedom fries."

French cuisine is *always* in good taste:

Butter seems to be in everything.

I worked in Le Puy* for a year. I didn't eat in expensive restaurants but honestly there were fewer vegetables in meals than I got back home in Australia. My supervisor was from Malaysian and we both bemoaned that lack of fresh fruit.

* Yes there were lentils and plenty of them.

Not true, R35. But at least your racism is blatant, as opposed to some of the Marys on this thread trying to talk around what they blame.

there nothing like French cheese, pate and terrine with some toasty bread.

One of the things that I learned from Julia Child was that you first have to master some of the basics, but once you do, you can then 'riff' on things (as they say). She has a fantastic eggplant and walnut dip, that includes ginger and hot sauce. Her Provencal tomato sauce includes orange peel, saffron and fennel seeds (wonderful Mediterranean flavors). She loved Chinese food (she had lived in China and Ceylon) and had a favorite taqueria in Santa Barbara. She may have learned classic French cooking, but some of her later cookbooks are really surprising in their diversity. My city had a well-known 5-Star French restaurant, which has since closed. I used to deliver flowers there (through the back door), and watching the activity in the kitchen was fascinating to me. They took their work very seriously.

When people gave up on any cuisine that was even remotely labor intensive for what is convenient.

Another vegetarian here who has never French food to be very vegetarian-friendly. Thai, Indian, Mexican, Vietnamese, Middle Eastern- the flavors/spices are more exciting and in general they offer lots of vegetarian options.

I was recently in Ghana and really fell in love with Ghanaian cuisine. Red Red is delicious and while not “fancy,” it is flavorful, filling and still healthy. Kelewele was great and in Togo I had fufu with a spicy tomato soup that was to die for. After eating food like this, French food seems so boring and tame, although maybe I just haven’t tasted the right stuff yet. What are some good French vegetarian meals?

Italian has surpassed French and other cuisines to become the most popular in the world. Most can be cooked at home and is considered delicious by the masses. Pasta dishes and pizzas are eaten in every country.

Remember that French cuisine is nothing but bastardized Italian. Catherine de Medici brought utensils and sauces from Italy when she wasn't massacring Protestants or planting knives in the Duke of Montgomery's lance to kill her husband despite the warnings of Nostradamus.

I honestly can’t think of anything quintessentially French except foie gras. Do they eat that at home? What a fall from grace for a former highly regarded cuisine. Fallen behind even Asian cuisines in popularity with Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Indian now more popular.

Aren’t omelettes quintessentially French?

French onion soup, for starters.

R44, thanks for mentioning that Ghanian dish. Had never heard about it before. Sounds like something cool and new to try.

"French vegetarian" food? Oh honey no. There are plenty of meatless dishes, but you can cram your vegetarianism up your cul before the French will develop something so asinine as "French vegetarian".

Here's a snap of the menu in English at Bofinger in Paris, an Alsatian style brasserie.

Its mostly pretty simple fare.

R45 I think this is because Italian food is much simpler and more "crowd pleasing". Pizza, lasagne, etc. Also the emphasis is on carbs rather than meat or vegetables, so it's cheaper to make. Restaurants love Italian food- how much do you think it costs to make a plate of fettucini alfredo, which you can charge $20 for.

When I was a kid no one ate anything hot or spicy. Now every fucking thing, like at the buffet bars at Whole Foods, every cooking show, even in desserts and drinks they're using every hot pepper and spice they can get their hands on and that bar of soap AKA cilantro. When did the entire world get this way? Is it a young thing? I can't believe every older person can handle all this hot spicy food.

I don't think "Italian" is the most popular cuisine in the world just because of the popularity of Pizza.

I see far more Asian restaurants and Mexican restaurants around than Italian.

Because French was always seen as a "frou frou" cuisine that only rich people ate (and due to the fact that there were never very many French restaurants around), it never became a go to food for Americans.

Of course they can r54. The British have used spices and herbs for centuries, the old colonial days of India go back a long time and the spicy dishes were very popular. It was the Portuguese who brought chillis to India, the British had traded with the Portuguese before then and old cookbooks show that spices were hugely popular. Even the English country house breakfast specialty of kedgeree is curried.

Overrated bullshit

I've mentioned this on some other thread. The French were well aware of many Middle Eastern herbs and spices during the Middle Ages, and Renaissance. But they purged them from their cuisine. Old cookbooks from the Middle Ages are full of exotic spices, which are no longer used in classic French cuisine. To me, that's its genius, but for many others, that's its poverty. I think it's worth pondering. I like a variety of cuisines, from the amazing combination of uses in Indian cooking, to the cool purity of class French cooking. There's a place for both. When you have really splendid natural ingredients, French cooking is very satisfying. Beautifully cooked green beans tossed with real butter is such a pleasure. The French really do know how to cook vegetables. I really like vegetables, I honestly don't eat much meat.

R44, A consistently growing number of people while not strictly vegetarian or vegan are looking to incorporate more vegetables, legumes, and pulses into their diet as long as they're tasty but not high in fat like typical French cooking. Cuisine that's not yet mainstream seems to have the answers. Even middle American-oriented Allrecipes increasingly offers exotic formulations.

Early 1980s

I like this thread, there are some excellent thoughts to ponder, like the purging/purity in French cooking, the current trend of using hot chilies/spices, the never-boring correlation between social class and cuisine, women rebelling against their mother’s cooking, hippie culture birthing the first American cuisine movement, on and on and on it goes. I feel a book in here, don’t you? Sure sure, I know some of you posting here have read it all on cooking and taken loads of classes or observed true masters — but doesn’t this feel kind of “new”? I think it does.

I haven’t even listened to that Salt, Acid, Fat or whatever show yet, but what this thread makes me realize is that we are always and forever redefining the “essentials” of cooking, so it is never static, it always evolves, and I find that fascinating. Amish chicken? Comte in place of gruyere? French Canadian grandmothers and bone broth? More more more!

We in the younger generation like food that bursts with flavor in our mouths like Thai and Indian. Food made 90% from meat butter flour and cheese with a few veg tastes like mush which is probably why olds like it because it doesn't hurt their dentures lol.

R61 - lets not forget the desserts. Snow is forecasted for tomorrow. I decide to make a bay leaf pound cake with orange glaze. David Lebovitz’ book My Paris Kitchen has been a favorite for the better part of a year.

I made a carrot salad and bought a nice sour dough to make croque-monsieur. If I get work done early, I might also make onion soup. I think I’m ready for the snow.

R62 - you realize you are describing South Indian cooking? My ex bf was South Indian. His mother would come stay for 2 months. The food was delicious but it was carb and starch loaded. There was the ghee and potatoes. The vegetables were cooked to mush much like my Irish grandmother. That being said, the food was delicious. I miss her aloo masala and chicken biryani.

R63, so is that book kind of a post-modern take on Parisian food? By post-modern, I just mean it embraces the most recent food trends of say the last ten years and knits those newer trends into Modern French? Tell us more.

R4, who said technique and freshness are mutually exclusive? Not sure where you had french food, but without freshness and flavor, technique won't get you very far.

R22, the pasta heavy Italian American food was popularized by the poor peasant class of Italian American immigrants and expoorted to Italy. Pasta is nutritionally devoid (it's just flour with a bit of water and egg - poor people's food). Real Italian food isn't a bunch of thinly sliced dough slathered with sauce. They use a lot of meat and fish along with fresh veggies in their cuisine. Pasta, if served, is served in very small portions and is not the main dish.

Didn't the French devise those heavy sauces to disguise their rotten beef?

R45, who wants to eat all that carby pasta and pizza especially given the low carb, paleo, gluten free crazes? That starchy cuisine became passé in the 90s.

Someone who hates pasta [italic]would[/italic] consider "veggies" a word. "Expoort" this to Italy, you pissy little bitch r67.

[quote]the pasta heavy Italian American food was popularized by the poor peasant class of Italian American immigrants and expoorted to Italy.

You're a simpleton. You know that? A simpleton. And no one likes you, either on DL or in your real life.

Because you're dumb.

Freshness is essential!

To me it is better than anything else.

I was amazed to learn that pizza didn't even make it to Los Angeles until 1939. And Wolfgang Puck was already changing it up 40 years later.

No one said "changing it [bold]up[/bold]" in 1979, though.

R75, did I claim that? I need to use 70s language dickwad? Wolfgang was making pizza with things like salmon, which brought us California Pizza Kitchen.

Too much horse.

r76 Only dickwads say "changing things [bold]up[/bold]' in any decade. So dickwad that up.

[quote]They use a lot of meat and fish along with fresh veggies in their cuisine.

Three-year-olds says “veggies”.

[quote] Getting absolutely "fresh" and "local" ingredients is not possible for everybody, even in the U.S.

Especially in winter

r72 Thanks for linking that remix. That's the work of one of my students, John D Boswell (melodysheep) who also did the symphony of science series.

The restaurant cost model has changed a lot since French was dumped, as well.

Tasting menus are more cost effective, and that has hit traditional cuisine

What is "traditional cuisine," r82? French?

French food is a bunch of small plates served in succession. Really only one plate has a rich sauce. American-french food with a large plate is foolish. This is the problem. In Europe, salads, soups and crudites plates were included in the service (and price) of the main dish.

Large portions in one main dish is an American thing.

I think it mostly has to do with more interaction between cultures, especially with the internet. There are so many fusion restaurants now, and many that are considered classics, like the Korean taco.

There are still plenty of French restaurants, at least in CA. Both high-end and brasseries.

In any case, Americans never caught on to the way that a formal French meal is served at an elegant restaurant, including the idea that dinner would take at least 3 hours. 7 courses with about 25-30 minutes between courses. The economics of that would never work in a typical American restaurant where volume and changeover of customers is the business model. For example, the following:

L'aperitif (small hors d'oeuvre with champagne for example)

Potage (maybe onion soup, other soup, or perhaps some pate, something like that)

Poisson (the fish course)

Entree (meat course) with vegetable served on a separate plate

Salade

Fromage (Cheese)

Dessert

R86 - you are completely correct about the courses. Yes, some Americans did catch on but this sort of elegant dining is often only offered at VERY expensive dining establishments. You are also correct about the business model - the volume isn't there unless the price of the meal is $$$ for the few diners that patron each day. There will always be a market for extravagant, "event" dining - but never a very large one. While dining for dinner at French establishments has always been considered an exorbitant affair, casual French bakeries seem to do a great business as most of us love their soups, pastries, sandwiches, etc. la Madeleine for instance has done a great business all over the southern and central US for good reason.

Honey, you must not get out much.

Their sweets and pastries remain individualistic and something people like to indulge in.

French food is kind of boring - onion soup, toasted cheese and ham sandwiches, roast chicken, carrot salad, potted liver.

Strange nobody here mentioned about Ina Garten and her French food fetish

R90, see r31 and r32.

Traditonal French cuisine is so unfashionable, it can actually be hip again. Washington DC chef Ryan Ratino (at Bresca) uses a 19th century duck press to make "Rohan Duck a la Presse" for 4 lucky diners each evening.

But do they call their sauces gravy? Do they sauce things in the pot or....oh, never mind!!!

Ina grew up in a time when it was all about French food and serious cooks worshipped Julia Child. She also went on her honeymoon to Pars and has an apartment there.

Who cares about Julia Child. French food is overrated.

The French cooking in France is exquisite, but it is the tip of a exquisite pyramid of quality ingredient production. It's almost impossible to recreate it outside France. You certainly couldn't do it in the US or the UK. In France the local restaureur will not be buying his ingredients from the French equivalent of Costco. He will have a specialist guy who sources his meat, a local farmer who grows him exactly the kind of high quality vegetables and herbs he wants, a woman who makes artisanal local cheeses, a vintner who puts him aside a good barrel for the house wine etc etc. I witnessed this at first hand when I lived in the Perigord for a while. Even a brasserie in a hamlet of a few dozen people had this unbelievable attention to quality and network of sources. The more ambitious restaurants are temples to cuisine - no exaggeration. In one little village place I used to go, you had to order your main course in the morning, choice of goose, guinea fowl or duck, and the owner's wife would go into the local market town and buy it. For 40 Euros you got a 5 course meal - home made terrine with truffles from the local wood, tomato and onion salad with local walnut and home-pressed walnut oil, the goose/duck/guinea fowl with green beans confit in garlic butter (Madame's speciality), green salad (fabulous vinaigrette dressing), and local cheese, all the local red wine you could drink, followed by grappa. A meal there was a whole evening's pleasure - impossible not to feel you are experiencing a richer quality of life in such a place.

I do think a large part of the old attraction to French cooking was a case of the emperors new clothes. The French do tend to aggrandize themselves and claim everything French is superior, people believed them for a while and then stopped when they saw the alternatives.

I suspect some of Ina Sharten's French deference is because she's a Jewess who came of age in the '60s. She probably regarded French food as the pinnacle refinement; cooked by WASPy types like First Lady Kennedy and Martha. An emotional attachment is possibly why she's stuck to it while people like Martha had long since abandoned it.

(And there was a dicsussion of her attitude to cilantro in the other thread and that ties into this.)

Though, of course, I'm sure she simply loves the carby and dairy ingredients -- as her figure so clearly belies.

R96, but that's what many chefs are doing here. Watch Nancy Silverton's episode of Chef's Table, and her bread obsession. Nancy is turning out some of the best food in Los Angeles. Her pizza is considered by many to be the top 10 in the world.

R71 is demented.

[quote] I'm sure she simply loves the carby and dairy ingredients -- as her figure so clearly belies.

You want to send this back for a polish?

What, R101?

Ina's figure clearly does not belie her love of "carby ingredients."

r98, eek, I'm suffering second hand embarrassment.

R96, you're so adorable.

I lived in Luxembourg for 6 years, and hopped over to Paris and other French cities countless times. While the overall French approach to food and dining is a tad more sophisticated (the access to good cheese that is illegal in the US because it isn't pasteurized, for example), you're deluding yourself if you think most of the restaurants there aren't using big suppliers. Especially the ones that cater to tourists.

It isn't the France Julia Child discovered in the 40s anymore. You'd have to go out of your way to find the quaint, all locally sourced cuisine you're describing. And then it will be super expensive.

American cost cutting business models have unfortunately worked their way into Europe.

Sad but true.

Ina Garten's body is reflective of her love of oil, butter, dairy, sugar, meat, and refined carbs.

Jeffrey insists she is perfect as she is. More cushion, the better the pushin'.

Can we PLEASE not turn this into yet another Ina Farten thread?

Enough.

In 2010, Japan surpassed France in 3 starred Michelin restaurants.

R109, Correct. Japan is just about the only other country in the world besides the U.S., where you will find non-native, international cuisines that are comparable if not better than originators. It's because many chefs who are trained in their own cuisines open restaurants in Japan. Japan has a food culture that respects tradition not just in its own cuisine so there are also many foreign-trained Japanese chefs. Also the food culture prizes seasonal, locally-sources ingredients, it's practically an obsession there, for those who've lived or travelled extensively in Japan you'll know what I mean. Part of why the food in Japan is so good is because local sourcing of ingredients is emphasized there, at least more so than most places in the world, from mom and pop eateries to upscale restaurants.

Julia Child was dismissive of Italian cuisine saying that there was no technique in it's preparation. WHO CARES ABOUT TECHNIQUE? My only concern is outcome. The fact that she didn't find Italian food a challenge to prepare is neither here nor there. My only concern is outcome. I prefer Italian food over French, anyday. That being said I like Asian cuisines (Chinese, Thai, Japanese) over European ones.

Unless things have changed in the last 10 years, they were still teaching French technique at the CIA and mastering the mother sauces.

[quote]Part of why the food in Japan is so good is because local sourcing of ingredients is emphasized there, at least more so than most places in the world, from mom and pop eateries to upscale restaurants.

It’s not necessarily local. My cousin operates a fisherie in South Australia and Japanese buyers chose the best fish to be flown to the fish market in Tokyo 3 times a week. Australians get the leftovers. Likewise with Australian cattle and heritage breed pork.

There was a restaurant in Las Vegas specializing in seafood, that had the best flown in daily. It didn't last after the economic downturn, but if a chef or restaurant owner is willing to spend the money (along with the customers) it can be done.

A couple years ago I bought Dorie Greenspan's "Around My French Table". Ina Garten wrote an intro for it and said and I paraphrase "She would cook her way through the book."

I have to concur - I'm in the section on choufe a pate and I've made gougeres and realized she also included cheese/herb stuffed, and the same dough can be used to make eclairs etc. It's awesome. Simple too. Milk, water, eggs and cheese. Gougeres are delicious too and only 2 to 3 grams carb per biscuit.

Plus I know the mother sauces like hollandaise, etc. Plus you have to understand the medical term the French Paradox. They eat a lot of high fat foods yet suffer lower rates of heart disease and diabetes. They suspect it's the consumption of wine with meals. Not a bad way to eat if you ask me. But French food is changing, since they began allowing immigrants from Algiers etc. So now there's a North African twist on classic French food.

R115, nice post. It's the same in Italy, although my relatives were all thin they ate several small meals a day. None were eating heaping plates of food like you see here.

[quote] Ina's figure clearly does not belie her love of "carby ingredients."

Is that you, Ina?

This thread makes me want to watch Columbo: Murder Under Glass

After reading Kitchen Confidential in the late 90s, I became interested in restaurant economics. Lately, I've stopped eating out -- since the big meltdown ten years ago, most places don't circulate their food and a lot of it is bad before it gets served.

I still love it.

Can we just reach an agreement that “belie” means to prove something false and the phrase should have been “testified to”?

I will be watching Babette's Feast in ten days thanks to this thread

R115, I think it must be that they don’t eat “much”. Sure there is rich food at one meal but if you just have coffee for breakfast and a lunch plate then the foible gras and canard at dinner don’t really cause obesity.

R115, the French Paradox has been debunked thoroughly in various scientific studies including meta-analyses. Many articles have since reexamined the myth, and I had read one academic study that attributed part of the myth to the way the French categorizes death from CVD disease (different from other Euro nations or the U.S.). Here's just one brief article that sums up a lot of the myth, I won't bore you by linking lengthy academic studies. I'm not a vegan or vegetarian but I do think plant-based is the way to go if we're talking about health. Traditional French cuisine with the butter and dairy, meats doesn't offer that, plus it's just not appealing to younger generation who are after spicier more robust-tasting food coupled with health aspects.

R115 The wine/cholesterol connection to the so-called French paradox was debunked. The paradox, itself, is considered by many to be a statistical distortion, regardless of what Morley Safer said in 1991.

R115 / aka Lucifer, what book would you recommend to master the Mother sauces???? I know some but not all....TIA.

I love french food in France. I love US food in the USA. I love British food in the UK.

As soon as you try recreating dishes outside of their countries it becomes a little weird, sourcing ingredients.

R54 you have a genetic mutation that makes cilantro taste like soap. Yes, really.

To the rest of us cilantro is refreshing and delicious.

Ah - but the French people are so thin. I think it's about portion control. But they eat dinner so late!

r126 I'm not Lucifer but pick up a Larousse Gastronomique. They have a section in each of their books dedicated to sauces, stocks, etc.

They’re not all thin r129. My cousin married a French guy, everyone in his family ranged from portly to outright fat. They ate meat at every meal, drank red wine and her father in law died of a heart attack at 54. The FiL looked like he was smuggling a basketball under his sweater.

Both volumes of Mastering The Art of French cooking are some of my favorite cookbooks. The rest of my cookbooks were Taste of Home along with recipes torn from issues of Reminisce (I'm only 30).

R44 Classical main dishes often have meat or fish but regular side dishes can be vegetarian (vegan is more complicated) There's Ratatouille, Gratin Dauphinois (gratinéed potatoes with bechamel sauce), tian (baked vegetables), in some recipes you just have to remove one ingredient and it becomes vegetarian like Pissaladière (Onion pie) or Salade Niçoise (Salad with a bunch of tomatoes, salad, olives, vinaigrette) Aïoli ( garlic mayo with vegetables). Southern French dishes are closer to the Mediterrean diet and easier to make vegetarian (Cheaper too, you should look into it). In the north and the mountains they tend to eat more heavy, filling meals with a lot of animal protein. And for whoever talk about the influence of immigration on French Cuisine, are you not aware that France had colonies and so dishes from overseas were already known and served in France ?

*talked

I'm glad that in the late 1990s, Spain became the cool one of the Latin countries and hasn't relinquished her crown. There's a lot of ham and bread in Spanish food, but the pimentos and flavours mean it is more savory. In France there seems to be a focus on bird, where as in Spain it is on pig and seafood.

And Spanish street food and bar snacks are yummier and is what a lot of people prefer eating rather than a "meal". I think there is less of a grandness on one hand, and less of the self-conscious peasanty heartiness of regional food on the other, when comparing Spanish cuisine to French.

Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles cook book is supposed to be a good cook book (French).

R133 that’s all very protein-free, not really a vegetarian diet anyone could subsist on, When requesting a vegetarian menu in France I’ve been asked if I’m ill, if I’m trying to be difficult, if I’m mad... they don’t do vegetarian food in general. Yes, ratatouille is fine but you can’t eat it every day.

I’m vegetarian because I have MS, I don’t see why it’s up to a French waiter to decide if my reasons are worthy of being able to get dinner.

I've only had cassoulet once, but loved it. I would make it myself if I weren't so lazy to gather all of the necessary ingredients.

R137 From what I know, French vegetarian do have to rely on foreign foods and dishes to get all they need. French cuisine/dishes aren't quite there yet. As for the server, sorry he was a jerk to you, as vegetarian and vegan diets get more popular it gets a little better.

People in the French provinces are as fat as Americans now, as are working class Parisians who subsist on fast food. Only the BCBG people of Paris are still "not fat."

Also, almost every skinny French person I encountered while living in Europe was a smoker.

So they can get off their high horses.

"French Women Don't Get Fat . . . But They Do Get Lung Cancer."

It's still better than English food.

French bread, cheese, wine, and pastries are top notch — I rarely crave French main courses. I find myself craving foods that are more easily accessible to eat out or pick up: Mexican, Thai, Vietnamese. I can make anything Italian, so I rarely eat out for that.

R143 You see I don't by this, one cuisine is better than another balony. They're just different.

A beautifully cooked Boeuf Bourguignon, is just as tasty as a well cooked Lancashire Hot Pot, or Goulash or Bigos, or Booyah, or Irish Stew or.....

Exactly r145. Everywhere has its own native food that is appetising and delicious. I have never seen such a variety of fresh produce in normal everyday supermarkets as I have in Britain. The British and Irish cheeses are incredible too.

"Ah - but the French people are so thin. I think it's about portion control. "

I read a memoir by an American woman who married a Parisian, and who spent a lot of time analyzing how French women around her ate and how they stayed so slim while eating rich food and dessert.

Basically, it's portion control. Small portions of rich things, small portions of dessert, very small breakfasts, and NEVER eating between meals.

Cassoulet - delicious. I made it once - because it takes 3 days - but, YUM. Ordered it once in a restaurant - HORRIBLE. Crunchy beans, none of the flavors it should have had. I was bitter. French do cook lentils and use other sources of plant protein - as well as cheeses of course - but I grant that in traditional French cooking, these things would be flavored with some animal fat - particularly bacon or something similar. Eggs are also a staple of French cooking - eggs and cheese would be ok for vegetarians but not for vegans. A vegan in France would have to find an ethnic (non-French) restaurant to eat at - like a Chinese restaurant that had Buddhist non-meat options, using tofu and mushrooms instead of meat.

I made lentils today with bacon and soffrito. If I call it mirepoix, I can call it French. Le Woo Hoo.

Thanks r139. Sadly it was more than one occasion. Every place I’ve been in France is the same. I think it’s not just the meat-heavy cuisine but the attitude of condescension that is very common among wait staff. They don’t seem to like being asked anything.

I'm open to all sorts of cuisines. When I see the Full British Breakfast, their sausages look so appetizing. If I want something similar, though, I need to go to a butcher shop where they make their own, or order it on-line. The US has plenty of great native dishes, too. In my case, it's just that my first cookbook was Julia Child's 'The French Chef Cookbook', so that's where I began, and it's always stayed with me. If you want an introduction to a specific American cuisine, pick up Edna Lewis' 'The Taste of Country Cooking'. BTW, in one of my Julia Child cookbooks, she refers to Marcella Hazan as her 'mentor in all things Italian', so she didn't really shun Italian food.

I mentioned upthread that I don't eat much meat. Especially during the summer, I'm almost exclusively vegetarian. I hate turning on the stove in the summer, but it's worth it for a steaming serving of ratatouille. And the ratatouille is good cold the next day, too. Julia Child taught me to peel and seed tomatoes: I hated them before I learned that trick. Now I have simple sliced tomato salad all summer long. I like to have Salad Nicoise about once a week during the summer. I vary the ingredients a bit, with whatever I have on hand. Pickled mushrooms are a nice addition, for example. I love watching Julia assemble a Salad Nicoise (her favorite lunch, according to Sarah Moulton). I grew up with vegetables just boiled and served with margarine, so learning how to cook them carefully really taught me to love them.

R151, have you ever heard of an outdoor grill?

[quote]my first cookbook was Julia Child's 'The French Chef Cookbook', so that's where I began, and it's always stayed with me.

My first cookbook, too. My mother bought me a copy when I had a roommate whose family owned a fish wholesale company. My favorite things were sole meuniere and coquilles St. Jacques (which I made by mistake once with red wine). And quiche. And onion soup. All from "French Chef."

The first time I made bechamel, I was hooked on cooking for life. It was like magic.

Have a relative who knows a lot about the restaurant business and from what I recall of a fairly drunken conversation we had one time, it has something to do with advanced refrigeration and transport methods that developed over the past I guess 20+ years that brought the cuisine of the world to our tables on demand. It upended everything - not just the status position of French cuisine (wasn't that already being challenged by nouveau cuisine anyway? but a 1980s trend of so many upscale restaurants having haute Italian cuisine.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

R152, Yes, but I doubt I would enjoy using one, since I live in the city with nosy, intrusive neighbors. If my yard were bigger and I had a bit of privacy, I might use one.

R153, I was just a teenage gayling, but I learned how to cook well, not just to cook. My Mom wanted her kids to know how to feed themselves, but I only learned the simplest things from her. Julia taught me that attention to detail transformed the most common ingredients.

Maybe part of reasons for French cuisine falling out is its snooty attitude. I'm plant-based though I'll eat seafood and eggs sometimes, very rarely dairy. When I was in France I got the biggest attitude for inquiring about non-meat or vegetarian dishes. Compared to other places I'd traveled around the world, France was the least accommodating in fact downright rude about it.

The French aren't mean -- they are grumpy. Their reaction to vegetarianism is just part of that.

French vegetarian here. Like you've said, traditionally our dishes rely pretty heavily on meat. I often have some trouble finding something to eat when I go out with people, but it's been getting better the last couple of years. I'm starting to see more vegetarian options in restaurants, and more interesting meat substitutes in grocery stores. Some vegan restaurants here and there. Still a long way to go, but much better!

More bullshit.

Traditional French cuisine, as opposed to cliches of restaurant fare, never will fall out of popularity. It is not bothered with heavy sauces or complex preparations. Escoffier greatly simplified techniques and for the century after him French cookery has continued to focus on principles of freshness, authenticity, flavors true to the ingredients, and a sense of connection to home, farm and the sea. Old chefs from Louis Diat to Simca Beck to Paul Bocuse have insisted on these priorities. Acting like one knows nothing of the variety of fare from Brittany to Alsace-Lorraine to Provence just shows willful ignorance. Even the claims that cookery was heavy with meat misses the fact that portions of meat tended to be small compared to the accompaniments.

All of these phony asses who lack real or genuine experience (look at R157 and weep) set up a false construct and then attack it.

Don't blame the French because of what you experienced in Terre Haute at a "French" restaurant or the fact that you don't know how to select a restaurant in Boulogne or order from a menu in the Ninth Arrondissement to avoid dishes you don't want. Plus if you're a nattering tourist in a group you're at the most stereotypical slop houses from the start.

It all sounds more like racism and xenophobia than anything related to knowledgable criticism. The kinds of people who think they're clean and special because they want to support imaginary vegan cuisines of acceptable diásporas. Plus one pictures overweight "vegans" who insist on collecting carnivorous pets.

R160 Good try by attacking with presumptions. That's nice you are so knowledgeable about French cuisine and you know all about its background, how to order etc... Good for you. But don't easily dismiss others' genuine experiences and then blame xenophobia, because well, we know the French aren't at all xenophobic are they? By the way we weren't in a tourist group when we spent our time in France, I was with my boyfriend whose sister was married to a Frenchman so yes we did know how to "order from a menu in the Ninth Arrondissement to avoid dishes you don't want". As for clean living vegans and the like, never cared for it, I'm mainly plant-based because my family has a history of heart disease and stroke, in fact my brother died of a stroke last year at only age 45 and his diet was partly to blame.

In France even the average cook only has to go to the local markets to get the finest of ingredients and not for big bucks either. In France the dairy is grass fed. So are cattle, chickens, pigs, everything is the way nature intends. Monsanto has not gotten their evil claws into France. The produce is all grown in quality soil and not covered with poison. Wheat does not tear up people's stomachs the way American wheat does. All the nutrients are in left in the food. Food allergies and things like gluten intolerance are just about unheard of .

You can cook the exact recipes that the finest French chefs use and do it with the same skill as those chefs and the food will still be shit that will make you fat and unhealthy if you use all American ingredients.

r51, He tried:

Because it is too much work, like dressing properly.

The accessability of travel has also had an effect.

In the 60s and 70s travel was a luxury and so foreign cultures and their cuisines were much more exotic. Now that you can get on a plane cheaply, other cuisines are much more accessable now.

Technology too has played a part. Turn on the tv in the UK on a Saturday morning and you'll see cookery shows featuring recipes from Sweden, Croatia, Spain, Estonia, Greece, Finland, Albania, Latvia..... Google ingredients, and before you know it, you'll have a recipe on Youtube playing before you know it.

We didn't have those things back in the day, so french, italian and chinese cuisine were the most exotic we got. Now I can whip up a Mauritanian Thieboudienne as easy as a Coq au vin!

Travel was certainly not a luxury by the 70s. My high school did a class trip in 1972 to Europe.

I wish I was young enough and had enough money and healthy enough to move to France. I'd leave this Trump loving shithole that the country I once loved so much, America, in the blink of an eye. I don't think we can ever get back the America that was good for so many from FDR - before Reagan. Although never did I believe it could become what it's become in the last 2 years. Out and out traitors and most everyone looks the other way and there are not millions taking to the streets every week.

France is full of Les Deplorables, R167. And it's almost as broke down as the US. (Just the trains are better).

But at least the food is healthy. Here we have all the bad like the Deplorables and the food is killing us. Even our best organic food can't compare to the way French food is grown and raised.

OMG I'd move to the French Riviera in a shot.

So many english speaking people down there, great weather, great food. Fabulous place.

[quote]In France even the average cook only has to go to the local markets to get the finest of ingredients

LOL, most people in France don’t cook from scratch, they go to their local Picard and buy frozen food.

I love how mean you guys are to one another when it comes to the finer points of French food. It's almost like you're....well.....French.

We have farmer's markets and gardens here in CA. I grow lettuce and various kinds of tomatoes so salad year round. How much finer can you get than pulling something out of the ground and eating it 15 minutes later?

My mother was French so I grew up with a more French diet than my friends here in Britain. Actual everyday French food is pretty healthy - those sauces and all the cream associated with French cuisine is more to do with the kind of food you'd find in restaurants. They're great for a treat or a celebration like Easter, Christmas or a birthday but they're not eaten all the time.

I think the 80's health obsession and move toward alternative cuisines such as Japanese kind of killed off the local French bistro which seemed to be on almost every corner here in London in the 70's. I do agree that that high effort French cuisine is seen as uncool and stuffy but I couldn't live without some of those French classics. I really resent going to a restaurant and paying for pasta but will happily pay for a well-made French casserole.

One of the most famous Italian restaurants in LA, Dan Tana's serves fucking Barilla pasta. You can buy it for $1.50 a box. I go because my friends like it, but I never order pasta.

R167, you're adorable.

I lived in Luxembourg for 6 years, and French people can be every bit as hateful and xenophobic as Deplorable Americans. They HATE that American and British culture and language has supplanted their own. They treat Muslims the way Americans treat Mexicans. Even if you go to the trouble of learning French (as I did), they will just spit English back at you if you have any hint of an accent.

There is a reason they have the reputation they do.

Meant to add:

If you were to move there, you would never be embraced or accepted. They would always view you with disdain as an outsider.

Best of luck, though.

R176 you do realize that le duché du Luxembourg is not France, right? They can't stand French people either, so you're not alone not to be integrated.

Lëtzebuerg is beautiful.

I've had some beautiful meals amongst the vineyards of the Moselle. I 💜Luxembourg

[quote] I really resent going to a restaurant and paying for pasta

I feel the same way. I grew up eating that stuff, so I know how inexpensive it should be.

R175 Dan Tana's is a terrible restaurant with terrible food.

Someone upthread mentioned people in France eating frozen food. I doubt it's frozen french food because those sauces don't freeze well. They also don't reheat well. I think those two factors add to the lack of popularity of French food in the US.

Everyone in Canada is living on frozen pizza.

[quote]Everyone in Canada is living on frozen pizza.

And frozen bread, and frozen peas, and frozen eggs and frozen milk and frozen chicken.

It's really fucking cold here.

R181, Dan Tana's is a great restaurant with a lot of terrible food.

R181 and R184, how does Dan Tana's relate to the possibility of French cuisine falling out of favor, again?

French cuisine fell out of favor because 1) it serves fish on the plate with the head still attached, and 2) the fish isn't Alaskan Pollock.

R175, no snark, why do you say they serve Barilla? I cannot think of a greater insult.

R181 they have entire stores that are nothing but frozen food in France. Next time you're in Paris, check out the local Picard's....nothing but French produce. They even have banks of microwaves at the front where you can heat it up!

Why no, R178. I lived there six years and never realized it was an entirely separate country. Thank you so much for enlightening me.

Dumbass.

YOU do realize that Luxembourg is a tiny country, and that a 20 minute train ride--depending on the direction--will land you in France, Germany, or Belgium. Right? And that Paris is a 2 hour and 20 minute train ride away. And that most people who live there travel into the neighboring countries frequently. And that the main city is FULL of native French people who commute in, right?

I'm amazed I had to explain any of that. I dealt with scads of French people day in day out for years. And while many of them are nice and pleasant, my original opinion stands. They can he just as cold and xenophobic to outsiders as typical deplorable Americans. I lived it. And my experience was that Germans and Portuguese residents were typically much friendlier than the French (yes, there is a large Portuguese community there too).

I live in the unfashionable parts of California, and there are no French restaurants in the town where I live (except a cheap crepe joint which doesn't count). There are no proper French restaurants in the county where I live.

Yes, there are a reasonable number of expensive restaurants, but they offer variations on Italian or California cuisine, not French. "Farm to Fork" is the big thing for serious foodies, not anything found in Escoffier.

R188

Looks divine

R188 This article suggest Trader Joe's is sort of close to it.

We have Cote Brasseries all over the UK.

Don't you have them over there?

It fell out of favor once the low carb obsession came about in the late 90s and early 00s.

Japanese cuisine then became the rage in the 2000s.

How can French bread succeed in a world of gluten free prisspots?

It seems French food and culture were very popular in the 1950's and into the early '60's, here in the USA.

I dont get food snobbery.

Coq au vin is delicious. A hamburger is delicious. A Sunday roast is delicious. Paella is delicious. Sushi is delicious.

It's only whether a particular cuisine is en vogue.

What is French cuisine? What is fashion? What is art? What is a soul?

I love how French food tragics gush about a Croque Monsieur. For fuck’s sake.

R188 Speaking of French groceries, one notable difference their stores have compared to our is the widespread prevalence of asceptically packaged milk. In the US, this is practically unheard of. Asceptically packaged almond milk, yes , but rarely dairy.

I regret to inform the dreamers that France's middle class and working class isn't a dreamscape of traditional French quality. There are enormous supermarkets and 1/2 the food is industrial food produced across Europe for the lowest price, and then fortunately the other 1/2 food is French products with a higher price tag. It's the same in most countries, nowadays. You get what you pay for. You can go into an French supermarket and come out with all the traditional cheeses and good meat or you can buy palm oil laden packaged goods and bland tasteless cheap crap, just like in the USA.

Italian food was very popular in the '60s. Now, it's considered "heavy." Other than pizza (and American pizza is better than the pizza in Italy), Italian food is not nearly as popular as it used to be.

In the '80s, fusion (blending cultures) and California cuisine became popular. This type of food is typified by Wolfgang Puck and The Silver Palate cookbooks. They made French cooking seem dated.

I do love French food, but I like it now combined with Vietnamese.

I still love French food. But I'm picky about it.

Eat very little Italian food. Love Mexican food. Trying to eat healthy though. I eat so much chicken I'm surprised I don't cluck.

I've recently been big on frozen fish. I figure I need to enjoy it now because they say the oceans will be dead in a few years.