This is a very academic book in structure but it's still a fairly straightforward read as it discusses the evolution of food in France from the medieval period up to the Revolution. The emphasis is on French cooking savory dishes in particular, drawing on the works of several important chefs and cookbook authors of the era and their methods for cooking signature sauces, meats, and vegetables. Breads and preserved foods such as cheese are not expounded on, but there is a fascinating chapter on alcohol that addresses not only flavor but storage issues for brandy, wine, and champagne. The back of the book features a large section of very detailed recipes by the aforementioned major French cookbook authors, rewritten and thoroughly-tested for modern cooking. ( )

An enlightening (hah!) and comprehensive history of how French cuisine changed radically from a sweet-and-sour melange of flavors, ala modern Indian or Mexican cuisine, to dishes that focus on the actual flavor of actual primary ingredients, supported by sauces, as we know today. I was struck by the cyclic nature of culinary change, as cooks develop techniques to build ever-more-elaborate dishes, trading off with counter-acting forces pushing for simplicity, locality, and subtlety. Those forces can be seen more recently in the rise of nouveau cuisine in the 1970s, a term recycled from a similar (if more drastic) change during the time period reviewed in this book. And they can also be seen in the tension between the current two wings of the food movement, the Modernist wing and the Locavore/Slow Food wing.

Pinkard writes history very well, and manages to cover her remarkably intensive research into several hundred years of French names, cookbooks, and techniques in a comprehensible manner, while successfully stepping back from time to time for context and to describe larger trends. ( )

This wonderful book is a rare creature - a scholarly monograph (published by Cambridge UP, extensively researched and footnoted) which is also a thoroughly engaging, cover-to-cover read. I learned an enormous amount about the development of French cuisine. Susan Pinkard takes the reader on a culinary journey - discussing the prevalence of complicated, sweet, spicy food in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and the gradual shift that took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries towards "le gout naturel" - the then-radical idea that food should taste like its principal ingredients. En route, she debunks several historical myths - including the notion that medieval cooks used spices to disguise rotten meat or fish, in a time before effective preservation methods (as she notes, spices in the Middle Ages were incredibly costly, luxury items - and anyone who could afford them could certainly also afford the finest-quality meat and fish). She also documents the birth of a uniquely French, "delicate" style of cookery in the 17th century, quashing another popular myth that it was Catherine de' Medici who brought the foundations of haute cuisine with her from Italy.

The appendix at the end of the book is quite a treat - Pinkard includes a variety of 17th and 18th century recipes, adapted for modern kitchens and ingredients. I was surprised to discover how many of the seemingly simple, foundational ingredients of classic French cookery - like bouillon - take considerable time, money and effort to make. However, as she also notes, in Paris and other major cities, many home cooks would purchase such staple items pre-prepared, from so-called "restaurateurs" (the forerunner to the modern restaurant). So we modern-day cooks needn't feel bad about relying on convenient shortcuts ourselves!

I could go on with more fascinating tidbits from this excellent book, but there are too many. If you have any interest at all in French food, this is a very worthwhile read.

The history of French food until the end of Napoleontic era

Originally inspired by Greek science, food had to be balanced (quite like Chinese food) to optimise its medical use, leading to complicated dishes with many spices. European food was much more like Arab, Indian, or Southeast Asian food than it is today: the Romans even had fish sauces. Increased trade with the Arab world and the later seaborne empires led to spices becoming much cheaper. At the same time, the medical properties were questioned, which led to optimising the taste of a dish's major ingredient. You can find the development of Western philosophy reflected in the food eaten at the time.

The book includes a chapter on the development of wine from essentially plonk to "terroir", plus recipes from previous eras. ( )