Tradition
Jun 27 2018“To understand cuisine, you have to understand the culture and way of life.” – Chef Guillaume, at Le Cordon Bleu
Founded in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the “Académie Français” is France’s national institution dedicated to the codification and preservation of the French language. Made up of forty members who hold office for life - modestly called “Les Immortals” - the Academy is tasked “to work, with all possible care and diligence, to give certain rules to our language and to make it pure, eloquent, and capable of treating the arts and sciences.”
Richelieu, ever on the hunt for new and creative ways to consolidate power of the French monarchy, saw language as an instrument of policy - that centralizing the governance of the French language could serve to further unite Francophone society under the crown.
The practical function of L’Académie has been to publish the official French dictionary, the “Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française”. It has published eight complete editions over its nearly four hundred-year history, the most recent edition having been put out in 1935. Les Immortals are hard at work on the ninth edition, having just finished Maquereau through Quotité. Their greatest challenge is deciding when new words deserve to be added to the official language - recent additions include words like “parka,” “photocopy,” “piano-bar,” and perhaps as a sign of the times, “dope,” “joint,” and “marihuana.”
If there was a “Dictionnaire” for French cooking, it would be “Le Guide Culinaire” by legendary French chef Auguste Escoffier. “Le Guide Culinaire” is the bible of French cuisine - codifying everything from the base stocks, to the “mother sauces,” to all the classic French recipes, to the “brigade system” of chef hierarchy and how kitchens should operate. Its iconic 1921 edition was designed for use by professional chefs, but also explicitly to educate the younger generation of cooks in the French culinary tradition. The fat and butter content of the recipes doesn’t exactly align with the modern diet, but Le Guide is still actively referenced in kitchens and used as a textbook in cooking schools.
French language, cuisine, and history are deeply intertwined. It is said the Eskimo language has fifty different words for “snow;” the French language has separate, unique words to describe nearly every specific, esoteric cooking technique.
“Singer” is to sprinkle a sauce with flour at the start of cooking, to give it a particular consistency. “Fleurer” is the specific gesture of dusting a countertop with flour, before rolling out dough. “Fondre” is to cook certain vegetables in water and butter, covered, until the liquid has evaporated, without browning. “Fraiser” is a technique for mixing dough evenly by smearing it with the fleshy part of the palm of the hand.
Other words are charmingly used to describe aspects of the cooking process. A lightly sizzling pan is described as “singing.” Little fat bubbles on the top of a pot of liquid are called “eyes.” To trim egg-white filaments from a poached egg is to “ébarber” - to shave it, like a beard.
Preparation styles of dishes have different names, depending on what vegetable is used as the base. A dish “Du Barry” means it’s made with cauliflower. “St. Germain” means white beans. “Clamait” peas, “Crécy” carrots, and “à jeuntuil” asparagus.
And history is preserved in dish names. “Crème du Barry” - a lush, creamy, and pure white cauliflower soup - is said to have first been prepared by a chef in love with the mistress of King Louis XV, the Comtesse du Barry. Taken by the Comtesse’s fair skin - “white as the full moon” - the chef wanted to create a soup as elegant and light.
“Lamb Navarin,” a lamb stew with carrots and turnips, comes from the 1827 Battle of Navarino, where an alliance of French, Russian, and British troops handily defeated Egyptian and Ottoman forces during the Greek war of independence. The French troops supposedly mocked their opponents, calling them “navets” - turnips - and a dish was created to commemorate the victory and wordplay.
Vegetables cooked “à l’anglaise” - “in the style of the English” - are boiled in heavily salted water, and served without sauce. The French saw British cuisine as comically simple, just having everything salted and boiled to mush, and so named this cooking style for their rivals across the Channel.
And Napoleon supposedly hated his vegetables being served in different sizes and shapes. So the “tourné” technique - “turning” vegetables like potatoes by cutting them into football-shaped oblongs - was created, and has remained a staple of elegant French dish presentation.
French cuisine, like the French language, remains a unifying force for modern France; a preservation of its history, a point of pride for its culture, and recognized internationally for its elegance and structure. Cardinal Richlieu would be proud.
But there is a central question that dogs French cuisine, and its bastion at Le Cordon Bleu. The same central question that drives L’Académie Français and its Dictionnaire. Indeed, perhaps the most challenging question for modern French society.
How do you reconcile the preservation of history, culture, and tradition, in the face of modern social and demographic change?
An important aspect of the culture itself is creating and passing down artifacts of its own preservation. French cuisine is an amber, trapping moments in history - beautiful Comtesses, idiosyncratic emperors, military victories - in the form of food. Each bistro becomes a museum, a temple; each dish a diorama; honoring tradition and the very act of doing things the same way they have always been done.
But diets change. Tastes change. “Fusion” restaurants push out traditional French establishments. Is this cultural evolution, or cultural destruction?
There are no French nationals in my class of nearly thirty at Le Cordon Bleu Paris. We come as pilgrims from countries all over the world, to learn and worship at the mecca of traditional French cuisine. We’ll all return home and bring a piece of French culinary history with us. This is preservation through education, through sharing. As the world comes to France, France also expands to the world.
Cardinal Richelieu’s legacy is a topic of debate among historians. But it is well understood that he brought what was a loose collection of squabbling feudal lords together into a cohesive, singular, internally-peaceful state.
In Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1839 play “Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy,” the Cardinal Richelieu character utters the famous line: “The pen is mightier than the sword.” Perhaps the fork can be pretty mighty too.