Archives

Eating Black Beauty,* Or, Horsemeat, a Taboo That Became a French Stereotype

March 1, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Taboo: A custom prohibiting or restricting a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place, or thing. One of the most emotional experiences of my childhood came when I read Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, a story of a mistreated English horse. I remember sobbing for hours in the way that children can when they experience something so hurtful that only tears will do. Later, I saw a movie based on the book and the same thing happened, the […]

Categories: Asia, Cooking, Europe, Food writing, France, French Cooking • Tags: Culinary History, Emile Decroix, Food History, France, French Cooking, Henriette Davidis, Horsemeat

Triumphal Arch Sugar Sculpture (Copyright Ivan Day)

Ivan Day: Master Food Historian

February 25, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Those of you with a tremendous love of food history will be happy to know that Ivan Day blogs with all the beauty and erudite authority of his spectacular recreations of historical British food. (Yes, British food!) Take a look both his blog - Food History Jottings - and his regular Web site – Historic Food. You’ll love both.

Categories: Chefs, Cooking, English Cooking, French Cooking, Lit & Food • Tags: British Food, Cooking, Culinary History, Food History, French Food, Ivan Day

Rationing and the Black Market in Nazi-Occupied France: Some Thoughts

February 22, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“Life is hard (On vit mal). Everyone grows thinner. A kilo of butter costs one thousand francs. A kilo of peas forty-five francs. A kilo of potatoes forty francs. Still we must find them.” – Jean Guéhenno, August 1944 Speaking as the beneficiary of an immense system of food production in the twenty-first century, as the citizen of an increasingly obese nation where over two-thirds of my fellow citizens are considered overweight, I can only imagine food shortages in one […]

Categories: France, French Cooking • Tags: Black market, Cookbooks, Culinary History, Food History, France, French cuisine, Jean Guéhenno, Rationing, World Wars

France and the Food of War : I

February 16, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Food offers us so much – nourishment, familial connections, status, comfort, security, and – above all – survival. Truth be told, food allows us to wake up each day and face the world again. With our bellies churning with adequate fodder, we trudge or dance along the path of life, free to create art or waste time complaining about the annoying antics of other humans, be they politicians or our next-door neighbors. For when we know where our next meal […]

Categories: France, French Cooking • Tags: Caloric intake, Culinary History, Food History, France, Rationing, War, World War II

Fatema Hal: The Interchange of Culinary Ideas Between Morocco and France

February 13, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

On Tuesday, Fatema’s talk (in French) is on “Maroc-France: La cuisine en partage” (“Sharing Food and Cuisine: Between Morocco and France”). Fatema will also do a demonstration on almond briwats on Wednesday March 14, at 3 at GU (Location is ICC 425), and she will give a talk at the French Embassy/Maison Française on Thursday March 15 at 7 p.m.: “Le Maroc sur la route des épices” (Morocco and the spice road). This talk will be translated in English.

Categories: Food News, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco • Tags: Culinary History, Fatéma Hal, Food History, France, French cuisine, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco

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

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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

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Captain Warren’s Cooking Pot

February 6, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A type of pot used during the colonial era, as well as in Victorian England in general, Captain Warren’s Cooking Pot served many purposes. Mrs. Beeton wrote of it, giving dimensions and prices, in her Book of Household Management. The pot closely resembles the couscousière, a pot used in North Africa for making couscous and familiar to the French there, and an Asian bamboo steamer, another utensil familiar to the French. Probably by means of this invention less food is wasted […]

Categories: Cooking, England, English Cooking, Food Science, France, French Cooking, Lamb • Tags: Captain Warren's Cooking Pot, Colonial era, Cooking, Cooking equipment, Cookware, Culinary History, England, Food History

Dreaming of France on a Foggy February Morning

February 5, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

This morning I woke up to fog so thick that I wondered if perhaps I’d morphed into a another place altogether, like London. The branches of the large oak clinging to the hillside resembled nothing less than a print of a retina found in an old medical book. I started thinking of France as I made my coffee, even though last night it snowed in Paris of all things, as the author “Becoming Madame” so clearly shows, and I knew […]

Categories: Art, France, Photography • Tags: Culinary History, Food History, France, Paris, Snow

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Crème de la Crème: Crème fraîche, a Fable and Some Facts

January 31, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

One thing must be cleared up at the start. Crème fraîche does not count sour cream as an equal. Yes, both come from fermented cream. But sour cream may contain a minimum of 18% butterfat, while true crème fraîche must weigh in at anywhere between 30% and 40% butterfat. Fermented food products began in the historically murky days before people thought to record their every bite. I like to think of these foods as fortuitous accidents, the kinds that happen […]

Categories: Chefs, Cooking, France, French Cooking • Tags: Antonin Carême, Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée, Charles Ranhofer, Crème fraîche, Cream, Culinary History, Food History, French cuisine, La Varenne, Le Cuisinier François, Sauce A La Princesse, The Epicurean

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The Ancient Sin of Gluttony: What’s Really Behind the Shunning of Paula Deen

January 26, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

We need strategies that do not drag us back to the dispositional focus of the Inquisition’s witch-hunts, that propelled the notion of the “Satan Within,” when much good and evil is the product of situational and systemic forces acting on the same ordinary, often good people. ~~ Philip Zimbardo It’s been with a great deal of amazement that I’ve watched the reaction to the American food-media celebrity Paula Deen’s announcement of her Type 2 diabetes diagnosis three years ago and […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cooking, Critic's Corner, Editorials, Food News, Food writing, France, French Cooking, United States • Tags: Culinary History, Food History, Gluttony, Paula Dean, Southern cooking

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Preserved Lemons: The New French Staple?

January 23, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Meats preserved in wine become dry and nourishing: they dry out because of the wine; they are nourishing because of the flesh. Preserve din vinegar, they ferment less, because of the vinegar, and are quite nourishing. Meats preserved in salt are less nourishing, as salt deprives them of moisture, but they become lean, dry out, and are sufficiently laxative. Hippocrates, On Regimen in Acute Diseases A few days ago, contemplating some minutiae or other on French culinary history, I came across […]

Categories: Cooking, Food Science, France, French Cooking, Lemons, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Nutrition, Science of cooking • Tags: Culinary History, Food History, French Cooking, Kitty Morse, Lactic acid fermentation, Larousse Gastronomique, Lemons, Meyer lemons, Moroccan Cooking, Preserved Lemons

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Arabs in France: An Early Account by an Egyptian Imam

January 20, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Rare is the native English speaker who reads and writes Arabic, classical or otherwise. And thus a vast body of literary work lies inaccessible to those who desire to increase their understanding and appreciation of the Arabic-speaking world. Because there is this hole in the material available to scholars and others, the scholarship of much of Europe’s past likely could be construed as being incomplete or even erroneous. That’s why it’s necessary to herald the appearance of works like An […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Egypt, France, French Cooking, Middle East • Tags: al-Tahtawi, Culinary History, Egypt, Food History, France, Imam in Paris, Orientalism, Ottoman Empire, Paris

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The Expert (French) Cook in Enlightenment France: A Review

January 14, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

If you scrutinize sixteenth-century Dutch artist Pieter Aertsen’s painting, “The Cook in Front of the Stove,” you will see a rather stereotypical image of servant cooks, one that persisted in popular memory in Europe until well into the nineteenth century. Sean Takats, assistant professor of history at George Mason University and codirector of Zotero, attempts to get beyond that image in his thought-provoking new book, The Expert Cook in Enlightenment France. Beginning with the premise that much what passes for fact […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Chefs, Cooking, Food writing, France, French Cooking, Methods, Paintings • Tags: Chefs, Cooks, Culinary History, Food History, France, French cuisine, Pieter Aertsen, Sean Takats

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Apples in French Indochina: Chapa (Sa Pa) – The Phantom Hill Station in Vietnam

January 11, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In looking at pictures of the former French colonial hill station of Sa Pa/Sapa (formerly called Chapa by French colonizers), Shangri-La comes to mind. But James Hilton’s 1933 novel of that name likely took place in the Nepalian Himalayas, not in the highlands of northern Vietnam. A little taste of paradise, that’s what Sa Pa might have represented to French colonizers longing for the cool breezes of Normandy or the crisp fall days in Burgundy. Sa Pa also meant, though, […]

Categories: Apples, Asia, France, French Cooking, Local foods, Vietnam • Tags: Apples, Cat Apples, Culinary History, David Burton, Erica Peters, Food History, French Armed Forces, French colonial empire, Hmong people, Luke Nguyen, Sa Pa, Vietnam

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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

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Apples in France: What’s the (Hi)Story? (Part I)

January 3, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

You might say that apples and I have a special relationship – apple sauce and apple cakes and apple pies. I grew up climbing a majestic apple tree in my yard and adored the smell of the fluffy pink blossoms when spring finally swooped down on eastern Washington state and all the snow melted. One day when I was a young child, my father and his boss at the nearby university grafted a couple of branches from different apple trees […]

Categories: Apples, France, French Cooking • Tags: Apple History, Culinary History, Food History, France, French Cooking, French cuisine, Lamotte-Beuvron, Tarte Aux Pommes à la Solognote, Tarte Tatin

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SUGARPLUM VISIONS: Christmas Cookies

December 20, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

…visions of sugarplums danced in their heads. ~~Clement C. Moore~~ ” ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” Happy Holidays to all readers and visitors to Gherkins & Tomatoes / Cornichons et Tomates! I will “see” you again on January 2. ‘Tis soon the season to be jolly. And to bake cookies, the sugarplums of today. I’m about to head out to the kitchen to do just that right now. For many Americans, especially those of Northern European descent, Christmas without special […]

Categories: Bibliographies, Christmas, Cookies • Tags: Bibliographies, Christmas, Cookies, Cooking, Culinary History, Food, Food History, Gingerbread man, Recipes

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Bringing Home the Bacon … and the Onions and the Cheese: Tarte Flambée, Flammekueche, or Alsatian Pizza Bread

December 18, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

One cold, rainy day in October, I sat in front of a fireplace in a small weinstub, or bistro, in Strasbourg, France, listening to my growling stomach. I couldn’t face another round of choucroute, that heavy Alsatian ode of love to the pig and the cabbage. On the greasy menu, fingerprints from previous guests clearly visible on the laminated plastic, one dish stood out: Flammekueche, also known as “Tarte Flambée.” I ordered it. And a bottle of Alsatian Riesling, never […]

Categories: Food writing, French Cooking, Recipes • Tags: Alsace, Bacon, Bread, Cuisine Francaise, Culinary History, Flammekueche, Food, Food History, France, French Cooking, Tarte Flambee

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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

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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

December 12: The Virgin of Guadalupe

December 10, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Patron Saint of Mexico and the Americas Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes once said that “…one may no longer consider himself a Christian, but you cannot truly be considered a Mexican unless you believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe.” Apocryphal or not, the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe makes fascinating reading. And the food’s pretty good, too, like most feast-day food tends to be. But first a little history. An Aztec convert, Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin*, first saw the Virgin […]

Categories: France, French Cooking, Mexico • Tags: Atole, Cooking, Culinary History, Food, Food History, France, French Cooking, Mexico, Recipes, Saints' Days, Virgen de Guadalupe, Virgin of Guadalupe

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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

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Just Exactly What is Worthwhile About Food Writing?

August 10, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Hot as an oven outside, sweltering with 87% humidity; if it were any hotter, I might consider baking a loaf of crusty bread inside the hood of my black Toyota pickup truck. Instead, I lie in my black leather recliner, sipping icy water, contemplating the nasty, brutish, increasingly egotistical business of food media, especially food writing.* Thinking about food writing in all its permutations, I came up with a lot of old questions, still trying to make sense of this […]

Categories: Cooking, Editorials, Food writing, Methods • Tags: Culinary History, Food History

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What’s New in Culinary Books

July 22, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Pigs and hams, barbecue and ice cream — all are foods associated with joy and love and celebration. In the United States, anyway. And writers take these foods and weave words around and around like so many carefully knitted stitches, creating new books, making this year an exciting time for food and history lovers. The increasing onslaught of books on preserving and preparing traditional foods promises to create a generation of cooks far more savvy than those of the previous […]

Categories: Bibliographies, Cookbooks, Food News, Food writing, Methods • Tags: Food History, New Publications

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Oxford Food Symposium 2009

November 7, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The Oxford Food Symposium 2009, from an article by Corby Kummer of The Atlantic. The 2010 Symposium will take place in July 9 – 11, at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, England; the conference topic is very timely — “Cured, Fermented, and Smoked Foods.” January 15, 2010 marks the deadline for proposals for talks. Guess what I want for my birthday? (Hint: It involves silver wings and Guinness.)

Categories: Cooking, England, English Cooking, Europe, Food News, Methods • Tags: Food History, Oxford Food Symposium, Prospect Books

Food in Medieval England: Diet and Nutrition

September 19, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Food in Medieval England: Diet and Nutrition (Medieval History and Archaeology), by C. M. Woolgar, Dale Serjeantson, and Tony Waldron (paperback, 2009) In the unending quest to find models for culinary historiography, here’s another fairly up-to-date addition to the growing list: This book draws on the latest research across different disciplines to present the most up-to-date picture of English diet from the early Saxon period up to c.1540. It draws on a wide range of sources, from the historical records […]

Categories: Agriculture, Archaeology, England, English Cooking, Local foods, Middle Ages • Tags: Archaeology, C. M. Woolgar, Dale Serjeantson, England, English cookery, Food History, Food in Medieval England: Diet and Nutrition, Middle Ages, Tony Waldron

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Ham and Eggs

March 23, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Omne vivum ex ovo. “All life comes from an egg.” –Latin Proverb– Eggs and Easter go together like…ham and eggs? Well, it hasn’t always been that way. Christians first celebrated Easter in the second century A.D. and the Council of Nicaea, convened in 325 A.D. by the Emperor Constantine, set the official date for Easter. According to the English historian, the Venerable Bede (circa 672-735 A.D.), the name “Easter” originated with the name of the ancient Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, […]

Categories: Easter, Eggs, Recipes • Tags: Cooking, Easter, Eggs, Food, Food History, Recipes

Fabulous Food Blogs, Round 2

February 7, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Just in time for a leisurely weekend, a watered-down version of the food blogs Academy Awards. Truthfully, this sort of thing reminds me (uncomfortably, in a way) of chain letters and ponzi schemes, but the fact of the matter is that informal and impromptu blogging awards spur bloggers on, especially when blog stats come in low week after week. And so many blogs deserve recognition. On January 25, 2009,the blog Foodvox graced “Gherkins & Tomatoes” with an interesting (and somewhat […]

Categories: Food News, Food writing • Tags: Cooking, Food Blogs, Food History

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Nachos: Etymology of a Food Word

February 2, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) provides many food writers with the tools to plot out the history of certain foods. But just how do those intrepid word researchers find their information? What’s their go-to source? Adriana P. Orr served as a researcher for OED for 25 years. At one point later in her career, she received the assignment of determining the etymology of the word “nacho” as applied to tortilla chips covered with cheese or other topping, then coming into […]

Categories: American Cooking, Mexico, Tortillas • Tags: Food, Food History, Nachos, Word History

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It’s Superfruit! It’s an American Thang! It’s The Blueberry!

August 26, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Call it what you may — whortleberry, bilberry, huckleberry, starberry, hurtleberry, buckleberry, or blaeberry. A card-carrying member of the Vaccinium family, with all its cousins. Whatever the Native Americans or the early American settlers called blueberries, today the health media calls them Superfruit. Full of vitamin C and vitamin K, scientists are just now confirming what wise women and shamans have known for centuries: Blueberries really do pack a powerful wallop against certain medical conditions. Some traditional medicinal uses for […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Recipes • Tags: Antique cookbooks, Blueberries, Cooking, Food, Food History, Pemmican

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