Author: Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson
File Type: pdf
French cuisine is such a staple in our understanding of fine food that we forget the accidents of history that led to its creation. Accounting for Taste brings these accidents to the surface, illuminating the magic of French cuisine and the mystery behind its historical development. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson explains how the food of France became French cuisine. This momentous culinary journey begins with Ancien Regime cookbooks and ends with twenty-first-century cooking programs. It takes us from Careme, the inventor of modern French cuisine in the early nineteenth century, to top chefs today, such as Daniel Boulud and Jacques Pepin. Not a history of French cuisine, Accounting for Taste focuses on the people, places, and institutions that have made this cuisine what it is today a privileged vehicle for national identity, a model of cultural ascendancy, and a pivotal site where practice and performance intersect. With sources as various as the novels of Balzac and Proust, interviews with contemporary chefs such as David Bouley and Charlie Trotter, and the film Babettes Feast, Ferguson maps the cultural field that structures culinary affairs in France and then exports its crucial ingredients. Whats more, well beyond food, the intricate connections between cuisine and country, between local practice and national identity, illuminate the concept of culture itself. To Brillat-Savarins famous dictumAnimals fill themselves, people eat, intelligent people alone know how to eatPriscilla Ferguson adds, and Accounting for Taste shows, how the truly intelligent also know why they eat the way they do. Parkhurst Ferguson has her nose in the right place, and an infectious lust for her subject that makes this trawl through the history and cultural significance of French foodfrom French Revolution to Babettes Feast via Balzacs suppers and Prousts madeleinesa satisfying meal of varied courses.Ian Kelly, Times (UK) **From Booklist French cuisine may or may not be the worlds best, but it certainly is the most widely influential cooking style, and it is unquestionably the standard against which all other cuisines are measured. In this culinary history, Ferguson traces how the cooking of the French nation survived revolutions and changes in fashion to reach the summit of good taste. She contrasts the aesthetic of French dining with the raucous, undisciplined cuisine of America. But she does find Americas attitude toward a single meal, Thanksgiving, a revealing exception to the general rule. In a striking epilogue, Ferguson minutely analyzes the film Babettes Feast, showing how French cooking came to stand in the film for art in general. She also delves into the differences between the film and Dinesens original story, which gave Babette a harder edge than did the movie. Although this work is determinedly academic, those interested in the history of food will discover a wide-ranging, intelligent, and original approach to the preeminent role of French cooking in the history of civilization. Mark Knoblauch American Library Association. lt Review Today more than ever in the culinary world we have a curiosity for how cooking has developed. French cuisine has been nurturing chefs and diners alike since its emergence. Priscilla Ferguson sensibly captures the essence of French cuisine by following the steps of its evolution as one of the most influential cultures in the world. Accounting for Taste is truly a remarkable contribution to gastronomical literature. - Chef Charlie Trotter