Category Archives: Cookbooks

Mushroom: A Global History – New book coming out

April 28, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I am thrilled to announce that my new book about the culinary history of mushrooms is due out in September 2013. A sneak preview: Known as the meat of the vegetable world, mushrooms have their ardent supporters as well as their fierce detractors. Hobbits go crazy over them, while Diderot thought they should be “sent back to the dung heap where they are born.” In Mushroom, Cynthia D. Bertelsen examines the colorful history of these divisive edible fungi. As she reveals, […]

Categories: Agriculture, Books, Cookbooks, Cooking, France, Local foods, Mushrooms, Photography, Reference • Tags: Mushrooms, Reaktion Books

Foods for a Funeral and a Farewell

March 8, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

What to make of the lavish feasts that come after a funeral? When I attended my first funeral, at age 27, I cried a lot, even though I didn’t know the deceased, my sister-in-law’s father. My grandparents all died before I turned 20 and lived 1250 miles away. Living as my family did on a poor college professor’s salary, attending funerals wasn’t going to happen. Add to that my mother’s extreme reluctance to even speak of her own mortality and […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cakes, Cookbooks, Cookies, Cooking, Desserts, Norway, Photography, Pies--Sweet, Reference, Southern Food • Tags: American Cooking, Death, Dying, Funerals, Norway, Southern Food, Wisconsin. Southern cooking

Sweet Potato Slips (Photo credit: C. Bertelsen)

The Story Behind a Kitchen-Counter Sweet-Potato Patch

February 6, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

There’s something about sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) that I cannot seem to shake. Maybe there’s some sort of cellular memory thing going on, like perhaps my ancestors sat around somewhere, gratefully chewing on roasted sweet potatoes, surviving a dry spell in food production. A good reason to foster a sweet potato patch. We Americans now harvest far fewer sweet potatoes than 50 years ago – 190,000 acres in 1960 as opposed to 116,000 in 2010 according to statistics from the […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, American Cooking, Cookbooks, Cooking, England, Gardens, Local foods, Photography, Southern Food, Sweet Potatoes • Tags: Elinor Fettiplace, George Washington Carver, Hilary Spurling, John Gerard, John Parkinson, Sweet potato, Thomas Dawson

* New Bibliography Available, on Southern Food & Cooking & Stuff

January 22, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Anyone who reads my blog regularly knows that I love books passionately, especially cookbooks and any books about food. Because of my current emphasis on foods and cooking and foodways of the American South – tied as all that is to social change and the influx of new population groups – I have created a small (to me) bibliography of books about the South and its ever-changing food. You will find the bibliography by clicking HERE, or by clicking on […]

Categories: Bibliographies, Books, Cookbooks, Libraries, Photography, Reference • Tags: Bibliography, Cooking, Cuisine of the Southern United States, Southern United States

Tomato and tomato gravy dark contrasts 2

* The Legacy of a Typo: A Meditation on Tomato Gravy

January 21, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Stirring the flour into bacon drippings, creating a blond roux, and sautéing finely chopped yellow onions in the mixture turned out to be quite an adventure. No, I didn’t burn myself – for once – on the lethal combination of hot fat and flour. No, in the seemingly simple and slow act of making tomato gravy, to serve over biscuits or fried chicken, I started thinking about the role of gravy in Southern cooking, and by extension, in American cooking […]

Categories: Cookbooks, England, Gardens, Local foods, Photography, Southern Food, Tomatoes • Tags: Colin Spencer, Cuisine of the Southern United States, Kate Burridge, Mary Randolph, Southern cooking, The Virginia House-wife, Thomas Jefferson, Tomatoes

* A Cuisine Created by Slave Women: A Review of Kitty Morse’s Mint Tea and Minarets, and a Brief Word about Dadas**

January 8, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Dealing with the death of beloved parents takes a great toll on people, leading them on journeys of self-discovery often not possible while parents still live and breathe and exert influence on their adult child’s life. Rarely does settling up an inheritance take sixteen years of patience and hair-pulling, constantly reminding the bereaved of their loss. But that is exactly what cookbook author Kitty Morse endured as she stayed true to her English father Clive Chandler’s last wishes, to preserve […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, Morocco, Photography, Southern Food • Tags: Azemmour, Kitty Morse, Leonora Peets, Marrakech, Mint Tea and Minarets, Moroccan cuisine, Morocco, Southern cooking

* Biscuits and Buttermilk: A New Year and New Directions

January 2, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

After a long fallow period, spent baking (and eating) many Christmas cookies, I have decided to bloom/cook where I am planted, so to speak. Lately I’ve become more intrigued by the cuisine that surrounds me, here in the American South. After all, I’ve basically been a Southerner for over 30 years. Although many cookbook authors write about the South, I feel that something’s missing in most discussions, chiefly an in-depth examination of the English and French impact on the cuisine. […]

Categories: Agriculture, American Cooking, Cookbooks, Cooking, Food writing, Gardens, Photography, Pork, Southern Food • Tags: Cuisine of the Southern United States, Culinary History, Glen Alton, Roanoke Times, Southern cooking, Southern Food, Virginia

Using Cookbooks in Historical Archaeological Research: New Mexico as a Case Study

December 17, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Using cookbooks as a tool in historical archaeological research might sound a tad bit absurd, but by examining certain characteristics of these books, it becomes possible to see dirt-covered artifacts in a slightly different light. As a tribute to my childhood friend, Meli-Duran Kirkpatrick, and at the request of her husband, archaeologist Dr. David Kirkpatrick, I wrote an article DAILY LIFE THROUGH COOKING AND COOKBOOKS: A BRIEF GUIDE TO USING COOKBOOKS AS A TOOL IN HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY about the feasibility […]

Categories: American Cooking, Archaeology, Cookbooks, Cooking, Food writing, Spain, Spanish Cooking • Tags: Archaeology, Cookbooks, Culinary History, New Mexico, Research methodology, Spanish Cooking

A German ornament depicting a baker. (Photo credit: C. Bertelsen)

How to Tempt the Scrooges, or, Christmas, the Cooking Season

December 5, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I love Christmas. Yes, I really do. For I see Christmas as a time that allows us – in these rather sterile, rigid United States, anyway – to cut loose and string up gaudy gee-gaws all over the house. To transcend the daily. To feel the seasonal and mythic cycles of past times. To celebrate the sheer miracle of being alive. That, to me, is what festivals mean, be they football games or saints’ days or other special days. All […]

Categories: American Cooking, Christmas, Cookbooks, Cooking, Food writing, Holidays, Photography, Reference • Tags: A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Christmas, Cookbooks, Frugal Gourmet Celebrates Christmas, Great Scandinavian Baking Book, Rose Levy Beranbaum

Dear Julia, Happy Birthday! #100, or, Why I Loved You

August 15, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Dear Julia, Happy 100th birthday! Today lots of famous food writers will write or post reams of flattering words about you. I know, I’ve already seen them, the New York Times leading the charge with three features about you, one by your friend Jacques Pépin. Like Jacques, many others will point out, once again, that you almost singlehandedly transformed the sorry excuse for food in the 1960s United States into the bounty and abundance that we see today in nearly […]

Categories: Chefs, Cookbooks, Cooking, France, French Cooking • Tags: Birthday, France, French cuisine, Jacques Pépin, Julia Child, Julie Powell, Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Julia Child’s “The French Chef, ” by Dana Polan

July 17, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“a history of early American television telescoped through the persona and history of Julia Child. . . . fascinating . . .” When you walk the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, you can’t miss the lingering traces of heroes and history. From the names of the men who brought you the Boston Tea Party to the dead in the Old Burying Ground near Harvard Square, the past perfumes the air. Nearly everywhere you’ll see pictures of a more modern hero, too. […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, Food News, France, French Cooking, Uncategorized • Tags: Book Reviews, Dana Polan, Dione Lucas, Florence Hanford, Food Television, France, French Chef, French Cooking, Julia Child, Nigella Lawson, Paul Child

Macarons – Food of Dreams and Fairy Tales

July 11, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Macarons. Truly an example of “Don’t try this at home.” But how I longed to recreate the taste and the crunch of the macarons I greedily ate as often as I could, when I passed that fairy-tale bakery on the Rue de Rivoli, close to the Hotel de Ville metro stop: Maison Georges Larnicol. Although they’re kissing cousins of a sorts, modern French macarons don’t much resemble American macaroons. The extra “O” has nothing to do with it. Macarons likely […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cookies, Cooking, Desserts, French Cooking, Uncategorized • Tags: Bérengère Abraham, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking, Macarons

French Bistro: Seasonal Recipes

July 5, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“A visual feast as well as a gastronomic one . . . Organized by ten essentials that any successful bistro must have, French Bistro almost reads like a graphic novel, thanks to the prolific and colorful photographs.” When you walk into a Paris bistro straight off the street on a cool fall day, the odd leaf rustling at your feet as you cross the threshold, you expect something almost magical to happen, don’t you? And, according to the authors of yet another […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Chefs, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking • Tags: Bertrand Auboyneau, bistronomy movement, Bistros, François Simon, France, French cuisine, Paris, Parisian bistros, Paul Bert, Restaurants

At My French Table

July 2, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

If as a child you loved fairy tales and dreamt of being Cinderella, or if you longed to be the handsome prince with a turreted castle, you’re going to adore Jane Webster’s gloriously illustrated At My French Table: Food, Family and Joie de Vivre in a Corner of Normandy. The book imparts the warm feeling you get snuggling up in bed with a magical story and a steaming cup of sweet cocoa. Along with Anne Willan’s From My Chateau Kitchen (Clarkson Potter, 2000), Susan […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, France, French Cooking • Tags: Amanda Hesser, Australia, Cookbooks, France, French cuisine, Jane Webster

Cooking Classic French Food, the Easy Way

June 27, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

If French cuisine, or at least the cooking of it, intimidates you, you’re not alone. A perception of too many fussy techniques and hard-to-obtain ingredients stops people who might otherwise wield a wooden spoon with Julia Child’s enthusiasm. The great popularity of Italian food testifies to people’s desire to take simple ingredients and transform them into delicious food. Unfortunately, most cooks don’t see French cooking in that light. In French Classics Made Easy, Richard Grausman shatters those preconceived notions about French […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Books, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking • Tags: Elisabeth Brassart, French Classics Made Easy, Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Nora Ephron, Richard Grausman

Cookbooks Tell Many Tales

June 25, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The doorbell rang with that eerie little tinkle, the one you hear when you’re watching a movie and a phone rings somewhere off camera, unseen and slightly unnerving. I jumped up and ran to the door and yanked it open. Tires churning, the UPS truck took off, throwing gravel at a speed that would be criminal, provided a policeman lurked in the bushes, as they are wont to do around here. I glanced down at my feet. The box lying […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Europe, Food writing, France, French Cooking • Tags: Alexander Hamilton Sands, Archie Graham-Palmer, Auguste Escoffier, Charles Herman Senn, Gloucester Road School of Cookery, M. A. Fairclough, The Ideal Cookery Book

Parsleyed Ham and Kitchen Breezes: The Letters of M. F. K. Fisher and Julia Child

June 22, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Today is the 20th anniversary of M.F.K. Fisher’s death, so in tribute and at the request of her friend Leo Racicot, I am reposting this, something I wrote last year after attending Barbara Wheaton’s “Reading Historic Cookbooks” seminar at Harvard. Sometimes words, both spoken and written, take on terrible power. Use the wrong word and, at the sound, someone’s heart may crash to the bottom of their chest. Whisper another word and the soul flies straight up to heaven, if […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food writing, France, French Cooking, Libraries, Lit & Food, Methods, Pork • Tags: Barbara Ketcham Wheaton, Cooking of Provincial France, Jambon Persillé, Julia Child, La Pitchoune, M. F. K. Fisher, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Michael Field, Schlesinger Library, Simone Beck

The Dame* with a Pot and a Pen

June 18, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

She’s a little bit like liver, you see. You either hate her or love her. Elizabeth David, according to this blog post from The Dabbler in the U.K., deserves a lot more kudos than she’s getting: I confess to having fallen just a little in love with David since I first discovered her books a few years ago. She was wilful, adventurous, determined and uncompromising. But for more than anything, I love her for significantly improving the quality of my […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Food writing, France, French Cooking • Tags: Cooking of Provincial France, Elizabeth David, French Provincial Cooking, Haiti, M. F. K. Fisher, Order of the British Empire, The Dabbler

Recipes from the White Hart Inn: An 18th-Century Cookbook for Today’s Cook

May 18, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The writing of cookbooks often becomes fraught with injured egos and accusations bordering on the libelous. William Verral’s Recipes from the White Hart Inn provides a splendid example of that truism. During the heyday of Whig political power in eighteenth-century England, the Duke of Newcastle enjoyed the services of a chef named M. Pierre de St.-Clouet until that gentleman decided to cut and run to the service of another, William Keppel (Earl of Albemarle), the Duke’s friend and then the British ambassador […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Chefs, Cookbooks, Critic's Corner, England, English Cooking, Europe, France, French Cooking • Tags: A Complete System of Cookery, Clouet, Duke of Newcastle, Earl of Albemarle, Recipes from the White Hart Inn, Thomas Gray, Thomas Pelham-Holles, Whig Party, White Hart, William Keppel, William Verral

Who were the Cooks? What We Know (More or Less) about Kitchen Servants (1)

March 6, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

While studying The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook (Steel and Gardiner, 1888), I found the instructions concerning servants a fascinating insight into the mindset of the authors and – by extension – their time period. And the current intense interest in the British TV series “Downton Abbey” allows us to answer some of the questions of how servants, their roles, and their presence, made possible many things in history that we take for granted. Cooking, for one thing. And not […]

Categories: African Cooking, American Cooking, Cookbooks, Cooking, English Cooking, French Cooking, Reference • Tags: Downton Abbey, Hannah Glasse, House & Garden, Household manuals, Julian Fellowes, Servants, Slaves, Southern cooking

Complete-Indian-Housekeeper and Cook cover

Heat and Dust and Cooks: The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook

February 10, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“The tale of the British in India holds keys to the universal story of colonization. A no-nonsense book, The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook provides a very engrossing narrative and amplifies the story of how a small island off the coast of Europe managed to run an empire of millions of souls. It can be said that it all began in the kitchen. . . .” European women who lived in 19th and 20th century foreign outposts sought authoritative voices to guide […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, English Cooking, India, Reference • Tags: Culinary History, Flora Annie Steel, Food History, Grace Gardiner

1

The Roger Smith Cookbook Conference

February 8, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Just a reminder that you will be able to see some 10 of the 28 sessions live and for free on Friday and Saturday, February 10 and 11, 2012. See schedule of free sessions below. To brighten up a dreary February in 2011, a group of food scholars and cookbook writers started a cookbook conference. It was so successful that they’re doing it again this year, bigger and better. Unfortunately, this year’s Cookbook Conference is completely sold out, and there’s a […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food News, Food writing, India, Methods • Tags: Cookbooks, Culinary History, Food History, Roger Smith Cookbook Conference

5

The Apples of France: What’s the (Hi)Story?: Speculations about the Origins of Apples in France (Part II)

January 6, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The frosty morning mists of early autumn roll through the hills, swirling like a white cotton-candy carpet at the base of the gnarly old trees. Branches creak and sway with the weight of the fist-sized apples, some blushing like tiny faces, or red-cheeked as it were from the chill of the windy gusts. So much a part of European culture and cuisine, apples seem to be a native food, an ingredient in so many traditional dishes. But the apples we […]

Categories: Apples, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking, Methods, Photography • Tags: Apicius, Apples, Culinary History, Food History, France, French Cooking, French culinary history, Kazakhstan, La Varenne, Le Menagier de Pari, Marianne Mulon, Tractatus de modo preparandi et condiendi omnia cibaria, Vivendier

4

A Few Marrons Glacés for the Season … A Gift for You

December 16, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Photo credit: Robyn Lee A while ago, I promised you a short list of facsimile/translated French cookbooks. The following list represents a number of old French-language cookbooks translated into English that you’ll find freely available on the Internet, something quite helpful when you’ve dropped your last holiday dollar on the fixings for Beef Wellington and a gilty box of exquisite marrons glacés. But I don’t need that box of candied sweetmeats; the words of people long dead taste better than […]

Categories: Christmas, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking, Paintings, Photography, Reference • Tags: Chestnuts, Culinary History, Facsimile Cookbooks, Food History, Le Ménagier de Paris, Medieval cookbooks

1

A Long Tradition: French Chefs in Britain, or, Daniel Galmiche’s French Brasserie Cookbook: The Heart of French Home Cooking

December 12, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Britain, much to the chagrin of her more patriotic sorts, has long enjoyed the the food of France. In The British Housewife (Prospect Books, 2003), Gilly Lehmann explains this by pointing out that French haute cuisine dominated upper-class British kitchens in the early eighteenth century. She points to Massialot (Cuisimier Roïal et bourgeois, 1691; translated as The Court and Country Cook, 1702) as one of the more obvious sources of this trend, but she also makes it clear that Robert […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Chefs, Cookbooks, Cooking, France, French Cooking • Tags: Culinary History, Daniel Galmiche, Food History, French Brasserie Cookbook, French cuisine

Give the Gift of Cooking French Food at Home: Some Cookbooks That Make a Seemingly Impossible Task Possible

December 8, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I have to tell you that the cookbook lists that come out every year around Christmas time drive me crazy. Like you’re really going to savor, say, 101 Recipes Using ___________? (Fill in the blank.) Or you’re going to run out and buy another Italian cookbook when you already own somewhere in the neighborhood of 225? (I do. Really.) And since I am an unabashed Francophile, I cringe over the lack of French cookbooks on these lists. So I decided […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Christmas, Cookbooks, Cooking, France, French Cooking • Tags: Coco Jobard, Cuisine grand-mère, Culinary History, Food History, French cuisine, Georges Blanc, Giada de Laurentiis, Julia Child, Laura Calder, Lydie Marshall, Marie-Pierre Moine, Mario Batali, Stéphane Reynaud, Wini Maranville

2

Who was Ginette Mathiot? And Why Should You Care?

November 15, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Ginette Mathiot wrote books that bring up long-lost taste memories in France, much as Marcel Proust’s oft-quoted prattle about about madeleines. Only her work proves infinitely more readable and enjoyable. She also basically sticks it to Julia and makes French cooking seem less like a prolonged session at the dentist’s. One of her books, Je Sais Faire la Patisserie, appeared in an English translation on bookshelves on November 5, 2011. It’s a book that just might crack open the mysteries […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Butter, Cookbooks, Cookies, France, French Cooking • Tags: Book Reviews, Chocolate & Zucchini, Clotilde Dusoulier, Cookbooks, Cookies, Dorie Greenspan, France, French cuisine, Ginette Mathiot, Je Sais Cuisiner, Je Sais Faire la Patisserie

1

Modernist Cuisine: French-Influenced, Of Course (Hint: “Cuisine”)

September 17, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Culinary History Has To Be Analyzed Like Art History ~~ Nathan Myhrvold “Modernist Cuisine is a six-volume, 2,438-page set that is destined to reinvent cooking. The lavishly illustrated books use thousands of original images to make the science and technology clear and engaging.” That tantailizing passage refers to the first edition of a book that costs as much as a new washer-dryer set or a computer or a scintillating diamond ring. Old news, yes, since the book took its first steps in early March […]

Categories: Books, Chefs, Cookbooks, Cooking, French Cooking, Photography, Reference • Tags: Carol M. Newman Library, Modernist Cuisine, Nathan Myhrvold, Peacock-Harper Culinary History Collection, Sous-vide, Virginia Tech

And to Think it all Started with a French Cookbook: Forty Years of Chez Panisse

August 23, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Alice Waters often said that Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking started the whole thing, meaning Chez Panisse the restaurant. And of course, the ensuing local foods movement. The following excerpt comes from a review I wrote, published today on the Web site of The New York Journal of Books: The many talented cooks and chefs she hired over the years—Jeremiah Tower, Paul Bertolli, Lindsey Shere, Joyce Goldstein, and Judy Rogers— went on to influence other restaurants and customers across the United […]

Categories: American Cooking, Chefs, Cookbooks, Cooking, Critic's Corner, Food writing, France, French Cooking, Restaurants • Tags: Alice Waters, Chez Panisse, Edible Schoolyard, Jeremiah Tower, Local Foods Movement, Restaurants

2

What was French about Mexican Cuisine?

July 11, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

When you bite into a chicken taco or scoop up guacamole, you probably won’t be thinking about France. Yet, France left indelible fingerprints on the cuisine of Mexico. Jeffrey Pilcher, in Que vivan los tamales!: Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (Dialogos) (1998), attempted to examine the question, but much remains to be done. In 1831, Mariano Galván Rivera published El Cocinero Mexicano (The Mexican Cook/Chef). Written by an anonymous author, Mexico’s first printed cookbook appeared to be heavily influenced by French […]

Categories: Cookbooks, French Cooking • Tags: El Cocinero Mexicano, France, French cuisine, Mariano Galván Rivera, Porfiriato, Porfirio Díaz, Slyvain Dumont

7

Couscous in France: It’s a Long Story

June 28, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

To look at all the Maghrebi/North African restaurants in Paris, you might be tempted to think the food they serve appeared only recently in France. It’s not hard to visualize this scenario when you consider the exodus of pieds noirs and Harkis (local men who served as soldiers for France) that occurred as Algeria fought for independence from France, culminating in 1962 with the Evian Accords. Think about the numbers – guesstimates, yes: over 900,000 pieds noirs and 91,000 Harkis […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Arab cooking, Cookbooks, Couscous, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco • Tags: Charles de Clairambault, Clifford Wright, Couscous, Françoise Bernard, France, Francois Rabelais, Garnantua, Ginette Mathiot, Harkis, Je Sais Cuisiner, Jean-Jacques Bouchard, La Bonne Cuisine de Madame Saint-Ange, Mohamed Oubahli, Morocco, Pieds noirs

6

Léon Isnard: Bringing the Cuisines of Africa to France

June 24, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“It seems that the word couscous is a Gallic version of “rac keskes,” which means “crushed small.” ~ Leon Isnard Whether you think about it consciously or not, the nineteenth-century European drive for overseas colonies still molds our world. Ever since the Portuguese sailed for Prince Henry the Navigator out of Sagres, an ocean-facing place now boasting a top-flight pousada, the world was destined never to be the same again. France grabbed just as hard for her share of the […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Algeria, Bibliographies, Chefs, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking, Morocco, Tunisia • Tags: Algeria, France, Henry the Navigator, Léon Isnard, Le Grand Hôtel Bourelly, Maghreb, Oran

7

Fatéma Hal, Queen of Moroccan Cuisine in France

June 3, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Fatéma Hal, a Moroccan chef with a penchant for busting female stereotypes, cooks traditional Moroccan food at her Parisian restaurant, La Mansouria (11, rue Faidherbe, 11th Arrondissement, Paris), opened in 1984. The restaurant began with only women working there, including Fatéma’s mother, the cooking in “the hands of women.” Unusual for France, non? One of many “ambassadors” of non-French cuisine from France’s former colonies, Fatéma Hal is a moving force in the dissemination of Moroccan cooking in France today. Not […]

Categories: Africa, Chefs, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco • Tags: Fatéma Hal, France, La Mansouria, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Paris

The Cookbooks on Their Shelves: The First English-Language French Cookbooks in the United States, or, Who was Sulpice Barué?

May 17, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Much has been made of Thomas Jefferson’s influence on the “Frenchification” of cuisine in the young United States and in American diplomatic circles. Just take a look at “The French Touch,” a chapter in Even Jones’s American Food: The Gastronomic Story (1990) or Karen Hess’s “Thomas Jefferson’s Table: Evidence and Influences,” in Dining at Monticello (2005). But, as we have seen, other factors — including the hiring of French chefs by the British upper-class and the arrival of the French […]

Categories: Chefs, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking, Reference • Tags: Cuisine Francaise, Eliza Leslie, France, French Cooking, French Domestic Cookery, La Petite Cuisiniere Habile, Louis Eustache Ude, Madame Louise-Auguste B.-Utrecht-Friedel, Sulpice Barué, The French Cook, Vincent La Chapelle

Auguste Escoffier: Le Guide Culinaire, Revised

May 16, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

New, revised version of Escoffier’s premier work, unabridged fourth edition from 1921. In English, glory be. Translated from the 1921 Fourth Edition, this revision includes all-new Forewords by Heston Blumenthal, chef-owner of the Michelin three-star-rated Fat Duck restaurant, and Chef Tim Ryan, President of The Culinary Institute of America, along with Escoffier’s original Forewords, a memoir of the great chef by his grandson Pierre, and more than 5,000 narrative recipes for all the staples of French cuisine. Now that’s enough […]

Categories: Books, Chefs, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking, Reference • Tags: Auguste Escoffier, Chefs, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking

Will Verral’s Masterpiece of 1759: A Complete System of Cookery

May 11, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The English could never catch a break in the kitchen. Why, as early as 1759, in A Complete System of Cookery, an innkeeper/author named Will Verral sniffed at the ragtag equipment that passed for a batterie de cuisine in even upper-class English households. Stir in the English and French antagonisms brought about by long enmity, and you have indeed a fine kettle of fish. Here’s what our Will said to the cook in one such establishment, he being hired to cater […]

Categories: Chefs, Cookbooks, England, English Cooking, Fish, France, French Cooking • Tags: A Complete System of Cookery, Cuisine Francaise, French Cooking, Pierre de St.-Clouet, Thomas Pelham-Holles, William Verral

2

Why Bother with Culinary History?

May 9, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A friend recently asked me, “Why is culinary history important?” Actually, her words came out of her mouth a little more harsh sounding than that: ”Why are you wasting so much of your time on that stuff? Why don’t you just write up some recipes, like how to make that great bread you always make?” Momentarily speechless, I realized she asked me the question that I periodically ask myself. What difference does it make if we know about French chefs […]

Categories: Chefs, Cookbooks, Cooking, England, France, Lit & Food, Methods • Tags: Cookbooks, Culinary History, England, English Cooking, France, French Cooking, French cuisine, Rick Bayless, Tom Jaine, Virginia Woolf

10

French Chefs Abroad: Clouet to Newcastle, Part I

May 2, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Once upon a time, every duke and lord in the kingdom coveted his neighbor’s French cook (or chef). And no duke showed his ire and disappointment more than did the Duke of Newcastle [Thomas Pelham-Holles, British Secretary of State for 30 years and later Prime Minister] when chef Pierre de St.-Clouet left the duke’s entourage. By way of introduction to this most fascinating of tabloid-worthy stories, Elizabeth Robins Pennell*, an oft-quoted culinary bibliographer, wrote a small blurb about these gentlemen […]

Categories: Chefs, Cookbooks, England, English Cooking, France, French Cooking • Tags: A Complete System of Cookery, Duke of Newcastle, Elizabeth Robins Pennell, My Cookery Books, Pierre Clouet, Thomas Pelham-Holles, William Verral

3

Will It Be French?

October 21, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

For most Americans (and Britons), French food means memories of the insipid Steak au Poivre or bland French Onion Soup served in a pretentious “fancy” restaurant. That’s enough to condemn French cuisine to staying put between the covers of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961 and 1970). The perplexing and continuous popularity of Italian cuisine shoved French cooking off to the side. After all, it’s the rare person who finds time these days to cook stock from […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Pork, Potatoes • Tags: Cuisine grand-mère, French cuisine, Julia Child, Marie-Pierre Moine, The Wall Street Journal

6

Post navigation

← Older posts

Follow “Gherkins & Tomatoes”