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

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

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

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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

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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. 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

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