History of French cuisine: 4 golden phases

With unforgettable and unrivaled chefs of all time such as Carême, Bocuse, Escoffier, La Varenne, Fernand Point and Taillevent, French cuisine is considered the foundation for all basic forms of Western cooking.

French cuisine is as old as the times when dinner began to become a fun time for families. From being just another meal, in the 15th century French cuisine created a new wave in Renaissance Europe.

It was then that common foods began to be decorated. The flavor was emphasized with new improved storage techniques. With regular new discoveries in food preparation, food preparation was now becoming an art form. Even the less or less used vegetables were served in a presentable way with artistic carvings; for example, garlic, truffles, mushrooms, etc.

On a lesser known fact is that French cuisine was quite effected with the Italians. For various reasons, French cuisine shares much with Italian.

Here are the varied auras of French cuisine.

1. The Medici era of French cuisine

It dates from 1540. Around this time, Catherine de’ Medici (pronounced MED-a-chee), daughter of the Duke of Urbino, married the future king of France, King Henry II. While traveling to France, a host of skilled cooks arrived with her. Experts on the way to Florence, the new queen became a great instrument of change. She regularly hosted lavish banquets and made sure that all the influential women in the city attended these banquets dressed in her finest attire. These parties had become almost a fashion saga.

Just a few years later, another Medici married another French king. The gastronomic ideas kept coming and the culture kept growing. Dining gradually became a major activity in France.

At that time, like the Italians, the French began to decorate their tables with fine china, glassware, and modern tableware. All in all, dining has become an indispensable part of French culture.

2. Le Cuisine François era of French cuisine

As food culture had already taken root deep in France, La Varenne, a well-known French chef, wrote the first cookbook in history in 1652. This book was later considered to be the bible of French cuisine. This book featured detailed instructions on preparation methods along with recipes arranged in alphabetical order.
3. Louis XIV era in French cuisine

French cuisine experienced another milestone in this era when the ‘fork’ became an essential and regular part of having food. Also Louis XIV came up with a new idea of ​​serving food. Unlike before, when all the dishes were placed together on the table and ended up getting cold, Louis XIV introduced the sequential serving of the dishes. That’s when cooks began experimenting with assorted utensils and containers of odd sizes to add that flavor to the look and enhance food preparation.

4. Nouvelle Cuisine era in French cuisine

As the newly introduced changes began to seep into homes across the country, the two cultures blended in a very Western way. The mix of old and new became known as New Cuisine or Nouvelle Cuisine. Classic French dinner methods were quite expensive, time consuming and tedious. Here people settled on some simple, modest and practical feeding methods.

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