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Jean-Robert Pitte - French Gastronomy: The History and Geography of a Passion

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Jean-Robert Pitte French Gastronomy: The History and Geography of a Passion
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This we can be sure of: when a restaurant in the western world is famous for its cooking, it is the tricolor flag that hangs above the stove, opined one French magazine, and this is by no means an isolated example of such crowing. Indeed, both linguistically and conceptually, the restaurant itself is a French creation. Why are the French recognized by themselves and others the world over as the most enlightened of eaters, as the great gourmets? Why did the passion for foodgastronomyoriginate in France? In French Gastronomy, geographer and food lover Jean-Robert Pitte uncovers a novel answer. The key, it turns out, is France herself. In her climate, diversity of soils, abundant resources, and varied topography lie the roots of Frances food fame.
Pitte masterfully reveals the ways in which cultural phenomena surrounding food and eating in France relate to space and place. He points out that France has some six hundred regions, or microclimates, that allow different agricultures, to flourish, and fully navigable river systems leading from peripheral farmlands directly to markets in the great gastronomic centers of Paris and Lyon. With an eye to this landscape, Pitte wonders: Would the great French burgundies enjoy such prestige if the coast they came from were not situated close to the ancient capital for the dukes and a major travel route for medieval Europe?
Yet for all the shaping influence of earth and climate, Pitte demonstrates that haute cuisine, like so much that is great about France, can be traced back to the court of Louis XIV. It was the Sun Kings regal gourmandisehe enacted a nightly theater of eating, dining alone but in full view of the courtthat made food and fine dining a central affair of state. The Catholic Church figures prominently as well: gluttony was regarded as a benign sin in France, and eating well was associated with praising God, fraternal conviviality, and a respect for the body. These cultural ingredients, in combination with the bounties of the land, contributed to the full flowering of French foodways.
This is a time of paradox for French gourmandism. Never has there been so much literature published on the subject of culinary creativity, never has there been so much talk about good food, and never has so little cooking been done at home. Each day new fast-food places open. Will French cuisine lose its charm and its soul? Will discourse become a substitute for reality? French Gastronomy is a delightful celebration of what makes France unique, and a call to everyone who loves French food to rediscover its full flavor.

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FRENCH GASTRONOMY
ARTS AND TRADITIONS OF THE TABLE

ARTS AND TRADITIONS OF THE TABLE

Perspectives on Culinary History

Albert Sonnenfeld, series editor

Salt: Grain of Life, Pierre Laszlo,

TRANSLATED BY MARY BETH MADER

Culture of the Fork: A Brief History of

Food in Europe, Giovanni Rebora,

TRANSLATED BY ALBERT SONNENFELD

French Gastronomy
The History and Geography of a Passion

Jean-Robert Pitte TRANSLATED BY JODY GLADDING COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS New - photo 1

Jean-Robert Pitte
TRANSLATED BY JODY GLADDING

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

Picture 2

Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the government of France through the Ministre de la Culture in the preparation of this translation.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Gastronomie Franaise Librairie Arthme Fayard, 1991; translation copyright 2002 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-51846-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pitte, Jean-Robert, 1949

[Gastronomie franaise. English]

French gastronomy : the history and geography of a passion / Jean-Robert Pitte ; translated by Jody Gladding.

p. cm. (Arts and traditions of the table)

Includes index.

ISBN 0231124163 (cloth)

1. GastronomyHistory. 2. Cookery, French.

I. Gladding, Jody, 1955. II. Title. III. Series.

TX637 .P57 2002

641.'01'3094dc21 2001028637

A Columbia University Press E-book.

CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at .

The sky was blue, all smiled, I left the table, I was happy.

Gustave Flaubert, Voyages, VOL. I

The trip was a delight The blue mountain in the warm mist seemed far away - photo 3

The trip was a delight. The blue mountain, in the warm mist, seemed far away. The stubble fields of the villages streamed with light and celebration, even the trees shadow was completely permeated with light and Dodin, pointing to a hare that was flying between the muddy feet of a cow, in front of the tottering gray stones of a little vineyard wall:

What wonderful country! Look, Rabaz, what a powerful combination: the animal, the cream, the wine an entire stew!

Marcel Rouff, La Vie et la passion de Dodin-Bouffant

CONTENTS F OR GENERATIONS OF ENGLISH SPEAKERS gourmand and gourmet were - photo 4

CONTENTS

F OR GENERATIONS OF ENGLISH SPEAKERS, gourmand and gourmet were wicked French words, and no post-Cromwellian Anglo-Saxon has ever found an equivalent expression for bon apptit.

Thus, French language hegemony: our prominent food magazines today include Saveur, Bon Apptit, and Gourmet. The inaugural (January 1941) issue of the latter featured columns entitled Bouquet de France, Gastronomie sans Argent, and Spcialits de la Maison, as well as a culinary lingo quiz asking for definitions of bisque, saut, ragot, petits fours, and la just about anything, enough to send us all posthaste to sign up for a Linguaphone course!

Jean-Robert Pittes splendid and entertaining analysis of the History and Geography of a Passion offers the most original, complete, and eminently readable explanation of, and justification for, Frances most enduring empire: gastronomy. Now we can understand why the French, in the words of Gertrude Stein, not only talk about food but talk about talking about food.

Pitte, professor of geography at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, is in many ways the creator of the field of cultural geography, or space as culture. To be understood, a place must be personalized. Landscape is created by mankind as a culture. The ecobalance of open-space farming and forest land, a gentle humanized contrast to the cruelly deforested American plains, didnt just happen spontaneously; it was a response to the Gallo-Roman hunger for a balanced diet (meat brought in by the hunter and produce grown by the farmer). This balance was made possible in turn by the low population density that has always characterized France, perhaps a result of the French clergys more relaxed ecclesiastical attitude toward sexuality.

To be sure, as a geographer, Pitte takes account of the usual truisms about Frances moderate yet diverse meteorology. France has some six hundred regions or microclimates, which allow Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Alpine agriculture to flourish. Then there are the rivers that, unlike those in Italy, never dry up, ensuring provisions of freshwater fish to complement the saltwater catch from coastal regions. The great gastronomic centers of Paris and Lyon grew up because of river systems leading from the surrounding farmlands directly to the markets: the Seine flows from east to west, the Rhne from north to south. Other culinary capitals (Bordeaux, Marseilles) became such thanks to their maritime harbors.

But cultural geography is truly interdisciplinary, incorporating ethnography, ecology, chemistry, biology, meteorology, and the study of the senses. For example, there are smellscapes. Certain regions, or even small and sharply delineated urban neighborhoods, may have characteristic odors. What is the linkage of those smells to the climate, soil, commerce; to the populations culinary habits; and to occupations practiced?

An especially useful adjunct to cultural geography is history. So I know the reader will find the chapter Is Gourmandism a Sin in France? to be particularly enlightening and as delighting as I did. Here, one can revisit the wonderful film, Babettes Feast. In contrasting the attitudes toward food of French Huguenots and Catholics, Pitte demonstrates that unlike the austere tradition typified by the precepts of the Calvinist Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French Catholic ethic was anything but ascetic, rather a good-natured conception of the sins of sensuality. Cardinal de Bernis only celebrated mass with a fine Meursault, so as not to make the Lord grimace at communion time. Nothing is too good for God.

The religious associations of the word passion imply suffering resulting from high or excessive commitment. The French national passion for gastronomy, au contraire, is, while perhaps obsessive, painless and pleasurable. Happy as God in France was a German simile much paraded about earlier in the twentieth century.

In preparing this short foreword, I had thought to skim the pages of Pittes book. Though I had already read it thoroughly at least three times, I found myself rereading and savoring every word. I know the same happy learning experience awaits readers of this edition.

Albert Sonnenfeld

PREFACE
The Kugelhopf Mold

I N 1871, MARIE-MADELEINE WENDLING, born scarcely seventeen years earlier to a family of Alsatian peasants in Grssenheim, near Colmar, came to Paris, determined to remain French. In her meager bundle, an unusual object commanded a special place: a Kugelhopf mold (she pronounced the word kouklouf with an accent she never lost). The object dated from the marriage of her mother, Catherinethat is, from 1840. This humble utensil, seemingly flimsy judging by what it was made of but rendered indestructible by its sentimental value, never ceased to be useful. It was for this, to some small extent, and for a few other symbols, that Alsace and Lorraine became French again. A million dead to recover the territory that served to fashion a cake moldthats a lot. But the soul of beloved objects has no price. That was what Marie-Madeleine thought watching Henri, her son-in-law, set off with a flower in his gun, and the entire bright young future with him, from the East Station where she had arrived in Paris the century before.

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