Accounting for Taste: The Triumph of French Cuisine

Capa
University of Chicago Press, 01/08/2006 - 262 páginas
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 Régime cookbooks and ends with twenty-first-century cooking programs. It takes us from Carême, the "inventor" of modern French cuisine in the early nineteenth century, to top chefs today, such as Daniel Boulud and Jacques Pépin. 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 Babette's Feast, Ferguson maps the cultural field that structures culinary affairs in France and then exports its crucial ingredients. What's 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-Savarin's famous dictum—"Animals fill themselves, people eat, intelligent people alone know how to eat"—Priscilla 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 food—from French Revolution to Babette’s Feast via Balzac’s suppers and Proust’s madeleines—a satisfying meal of varied courses.”—Ian Kelly, Times (UK)

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Índice

PROLOGUE Eating Orders
1
CHAPTER ONE Culinary Configurations
15
CHAPTER TWO Inventing French Cuisine
49
CHAPTER THREE Readings in a Culinary Culture
83
CHAPTER FOUR Food Nostalgia
111
CHAPTER FIVE Consuming Passions
149
A Fable for Culinary France
187
APPENDIX A BibliographyCookery Works by Date of Original Publication
203
APPENDIX B Sample of CookbooksBibliographie de la France 181198
205
APPENDIX C Research Notes
209
Notes
215
Bibliography
239
Index
253
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Passagens conhecidas

Página 232 - I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
Página vi - a tool-making animal," which is very well; for no animal but man makes a thing, by means of which he can make another thing. But this applies to very few of the species. My definition of man is, "a cooking animal.
Página 232 - As a nation, their food is heavy, coarse, ill prepared and indigestible, while it is taken in the least artificial forms that cookery will allow. The predominance of grease in the American kitchen, coupled with the habits of hasty eating and of constant expectoration, are the causes of the diseases of the stomach so common in America. The science of the table extends far beyond the indulgence of our appetites, as the school of manners includes health and morals, as well as that which is agreeable....
Página 202 - La cuisinière bourgeoise, suivie de l'office à l'usage de tous ceux qui se mêlent de dépenses de maisons, contenant la manière de connaître, disséquer et servir toutes sortes de viandes...
Página 232 - The Americans are the grossest feeders of any civilized nation known. As a nation, their food is heavy, coarse, ill prepared, and indigestible, while it is taken in the least artificial forms that cookery will allow. The predominance of grease in the American kitchen, coupled with the habits of hasty eating and of constant expectoration, are the causes of the diseases of the stomach so common in Amercia.
Página xiv - There is a familiar and too much despised branch of civilization, of which the population of this country is singularly and unhappily ignorant; that of cookery. The art of eating and drinking, is one of those on which more depends, perhaps, than on any other, since health, activity of mind, constitutional enjoyments, even learning, refinement, and, to a certain degree, morals, are all, more or less, connected with our diet. The Americans are the grossest feeders of any civilized nation known. As...
Página 68 - ... gravies, no flavour of cayenne and allspice, no tincture of catsup and walnut pickle, no visible agency of those vulgar elements of cooking, of the good old times, fire and water. Distillations of the most delicate viands, extracted in " silver dews," with chemical precision, " On tepid clouds of rising steam,
Página 103 - ... also speak of the artistic field, the philosophical field, etc.) is an independent social universe with its own laws of functioning, its specific relations of force, its dominants and its dominated, and so forth. Put another way, to speak of "field...

Acerca do autor (2006)

Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson is a professor of sociology at Columbia University. Her previous books include Paris as Revolution and Literary France.

Informação bibliográfica