“French cuisine has come to dominate the world not just because of the quality of its food.
That's also because of the stories the French tell about French food.
Moreover, the French are excellent storytellers!”

How France Became a Culinary Nation
A history of eating food, talking about food, and mythologizing food.

French cuisine is known as the origin and essence of gastronomy.
However, there are differing opinions as to whether the taste actually lives up to its reputation.
How did French cuisine earn the title of world-class? This book delves back in time, meticulously examining the foods eaten, drunk, and discussed by people who have lived in France from ancient times to the present day, to answer that question.
The spectrum covered in this book is diverse, from the barbaric Franks who ate raw pork, to the impact of Christianity on diet, to the countless institutions and regulations surrounding bread, to the emergence of cookbooks and the model of court cuisine, to the popularity of bourgeois cuisine after the Revolution, to the question of terroir in the colonies, to the culinary culture of France and its overseas territories today.
Beyond historical records, it also illuminates the ways in which food is represented in fictional genres such as literature and film. The diverse depictions of contemporary dietary customs in novels like Madame Bovary and In Search of Lost Time, and the film The Cook of the Elysée, allow us to explore layers that have been overlooked in previous research.

Author Marianne Teven, professor of French literature and director of the Institute for the History of Food and Culture at Bard College in Massachusetts, has published numerous works on food, exploring the relationship between French food and national identity and the symbolism of French cuisine.
After exploring extensive historical data, the author chose 'savoir-faire' as a keyword representing French food culture.
The original title of this book, savoir-faire, is a French word meaning skill or talent, but in relation to food culture, it refers to the know-how to grow, cook, and appreciate excellent food, and to promote it as French.
This single word embodies the belief that one can enjoy the best gastronomy by cooking high-quality food from the terroir created by nature with exceptional skill, and the confidence that one has made food uniquely French by relying on myths and symbols that elevate food beyond reality and into the realm of the imagination.

The tradition of eating well seems to have been inherent in the French lifestyle.
France, a blessed land of bountiful crops, once a magnificent empire extending beyond its borders, and celebrated in the writings of countless writers and chefs, seemed poised from the beginning to become the birthplace of gastronomy.
But French cuisine's dominance in the world isn't just due to the quality of its food.
That's also because of the stories the French tell about French food.
Moreover, the French are excellent storytellers.
Cookbooks, recipe books, and illustrations, not to mention myths, deliberately constructed stories, even those that are virtually fictional, and even the very terminology we use to talk about food and cooking, all play a part in understanding and spreading French cuisine around the world.
This book argues that French cuisine has become one of the most recognized cuisines on earth because we all know and remember its stories.

---From the "Opening Remarks"

As meat consumption was restricted by the influence of the Church, bread became central to the French diet, and in a sense the Middle Ages became the age of bread.
Unlike neighboring regions that relied on other grains, wheat cultivation dominated France from this period on.
The fact that wheat cultivation was dominant in France from an early period may explain the 'bread culture' that exists there today and that distinguishes France from its European neighbors.
(…) Since wheat had to be ground into flour to make bread, the mill became another site where the power of monasteries and feudal lords was at work.

---From "Chapter 2: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Age of Bread"

Royal decrees on “just bread” (Charles V) in “sufficient, reasonable and just” quantities (Philip the Handsome), or on the “just price” of fish traded in the 14th-century Real (Palace of Paris) speak to the special relationship the French people had with food that began to take shape in the Middle Ages.
In legal documents and official decrees, prices and quantities were treated with consideration for fairness and accessibility.
It may seem odd to use terms like 'rational' in reference to bread and fish.
This is especially true when we consider that none of the human attributes that influence food choices, such as personal tastes, regional customs, and dietary preferences, can be quantified.
But in the history of French cuisine, the words 'appropriate' and 'just' are applied to food as readily as 'tasty' and 'healthy'.
The standard systems evoked by medieval and Renaissance codes show that objective measures (precise weights, regulations, fines) played a role.
However, imprecise and subjective characteristics, philosophies and beliefs also invade our thinking about food and food supply.
Pork was considered barbaric by the Franks, but later became acceptable.
The Grand Paradis was readily accepted until its origins were properly known.
The French believed that the climate in France was ideal for agriculture.
Early modern France experienced a turning point, turning away from the Rule of St. Benedict, which linked a thoughtful diet to spiritual salvation, and from strict medicinal rules that addressed physical temperament.
Now the French, drawn to the pleasures of taste and spices, began to tout their innate qualities as a nation of "bon mangeure"—a nation of good eaters in every sense of the word.
Now, 'Bon Mangeure' was a category that distinguished civilized people (restraint and refinement) from savages (gluttony and crudeness).
Just as the classical Roman aristocracy classified peoples outside the Roman Empire, including the Franks, as barbarians.

---From "Chapter 2: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Age of Bread"

Surprisingly, the period when printed cookbooks were a triumph of haute cuisine for the upper classes coincided with one of the most severe famines in French history.
Bad weather led to catastrophic crop yields, which in turn led to rising grain prices, leading to severe famines that devastated the country in 1630, 1649, and 1652, culminating in the 'Medieval Famine' in 1661.
The Fronde, a series of revolts against the monarchy in the mid-17th century, exacerbated grain shortages by disrupting harvests and distribution to Paris.
In 1693 and 1694, unusually cold and wet spring and summer weather brought another severe famine, and France subsequently experienced a severe population decline due to widespread disease and a plummeting birth rate caused by hunger.
Ultimately, the grain shortages of the 17th century resulted in higher mortality rates than those that fueled the 18th-century revolutions.
The coincidence that the rise of haute cuisine in the upper class occurred against the backdrop of great famine further illuminates the highly decorative aspects of cookbooks and court cuisine.
Those who dined at court would spend lavishly on their appearance, even to the point of bankruptcy, wearing clothes that revealed their status, and like them, these cookbooks also flaunted their wealth.
French cuisine, as created and presented in 17th-century cookbooks, highlights the gap between the Parisian upper class and the rest of France.
Paris and the rest of the country had a master/slave relationship with regard to food supply, a relationship that became increasingly severe as transportation networks developed and government became more centralized.
The peasants of the countryside were practically being expropriated for the fruits of their hard labor to satisfy the bottomless desires of the Parisians.
This made Paris the true capital, and created a permanent divide between Paris and the provinces.

---From "Chapter 3 French Innovations: Cookbooks, Champagne, Canned Goods, and Cheese"

If French cuisine today is understood as haute cuisine, the credit goes to the events of the 19th century.
“Because gastronomy, as a modern social phenomenon, began in France in the early 19th century.”
Those who most loudly and proudly proclaimed the superiority of French cuisine belonged to the highest class and formed the familiar trio.
They are Marie-Antoine Carême, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, and Alexandre-Balthazar-Laurent Grimaud de la Rénière.
In this formula, gastronomy belongs to France.
And haute cuisine led France into modern times.
Common knowledge about French cuisine is often limited to the foods and techniques of the 19th century.
Because these three men spread the gospel of gastronomy far and wide, reaching both the powerful elite and the reading public, creating an indelible portrait of French cuisine.
The 19th century was the whole and the core of French cuisine.
This perspective makes sense when we consider that this period was also the culmination of a process in which rules were created and systematically codified by the chef and cookbook author Marie-Antoine Carême.
Carême so thoroughly defined French cuisine, and his followers so widely disseminated its techniques, that French cuisine became the sole model of haute cuisine for the courts of Europe and state banquets around the world.
The 'classic' French cuisine in today's Michelin-starred restaurants largely remains true to these fundamentals.
But that wasn't how it should be.
The era that welcomed Carême and his gastronomy brothers came in the wake of the turbulent Revolution of 1789, saw the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, witnessed three republics, two empires under two different emperors named Napoleon, and saw two short-lived revolts (the Hundred Days of Napoleon and the Paris Commune of 1871).

---From "Chapter 5 The 19th Century and Carême: French Cuisine Conquers the World"

Brillat-Savarin's "Tell me what you eat.
You will hear the saying, “Then I will tell you who you are.”
If you were to ask what movie about French food is best, you'd probably get "Babette's Feast."
French cuisine not only dominates restaurant culture and haute cuisine, but also occupies our culinary consciousness in literature and film, an imaginary embodiment of food that can be eaten at any time and place, preserving the moment.
Food images in literature and film may be realistic, but they are not reality.
These representations convey a selective image of how, where, and with whom we eat.
And through the power of repetition, enduring images tell us something about the collective acceptance of that particular moment in time when it comes to food.
French food narratives rely on associating French cuisine with sophistication and elite aspirations.

---From "Chapter 6: Literary Touchstones"

The history of French cuisine is not about gastronomy, not about terroir, not about peasants, but about all of these things.
It is never a single entity, but rather a series of layers.
A true mille-feuille of culinary exceptionalism, a blend of haute cuisine and bourgeois cuisine, Paris and the countryside, city and country.
The holistic view of French cuisine includes produce and dishes from outside France's borders, but transforms them, either nominally or in fact, to make them French.
Science and art come together to produce the finest bread and ensure the highest standards of AOC wine and cheese.
Above all, the history of French cuisine relies on myths and symbols that elevate eating beyond the realm of the physical into the realm of the imaginary.
The legends of cheese, the inventors of wine, and the stories of the names of sauces have become 'lieux de memoirs' (places of memory) for the French people.
A shared culinary history (whether created or not) creates a sense of solidarity among members of a national group, and the French have been exceptionally adept at creating and promoting a shared culinary identity that has become so thoroughly defined that it resonates around the world.

---From the "Concluding Remarks"