2 - Primary Sauces: The Rise of Cookbooks, Cuisines, and Corporations

Summary

Abstract

This analysis considers the role of trade policies in forming French and English culinary traditions by contrasting import substitution with the rise of the joint-stock company. In 1651, the first printed French cookbook, Le Cuisinier François, communicated the culinary shift that abandoned exotic spices for native herbs. French cuisine was both an import substitute for spices imported through trade where France lacked a significant presence, and an export, disseminating the French culinary hegemony. French recipes and chefs came to England, but the methods and flavours did not take hold. I propose that English cookery shunned French excess and privileged the plainness, and stability of the old cuisine, and increasingly identified foreign spices with the maritime strength of England.

Key words: spices, cuisine, cookbooks, mercantilism, early modern

Changes in food habits are unpredictable and often paradoxical. The social, economic, and historical forces that shape decisions about how a culture eats can be difficult to identify, especially when the food in question has almost no intrinsic nutritional value. The ability to select food according to a set of preferences, rather than through necessity further complicates any analysis. Despite these limitations, it is not too broad a generalisation to posit that introducing a new food is not as difficult as discarding an existing, and well-established system of eating. Yet this is exactly what occurred in France over the first half of the seventeenth century, resulting in the first new cookbook to appear in France in over one hundred years. In 1651, the publication of Le Cuisinier françois marked a significant break with previous traditions of formal cookery. These changes included: a move away from exotic spices to indigenous herbs; the use of butter and flour (a roux) to thicken sauces; a move towards separating sweet and savoury flavours; and the first appearance in a French cookbook of two iconic French ingredients—foie gras and truffles.

The previous tradition of pan-European style courtly cookery had emphasised the pageantry of the meal and made extensive use of spices imported from the East at great expense. In a dramatic change of culinary direction around 1600, French chefs began to reject foreign spices, refined cooking techniques, and focused on the intrinsic qualities of ingredients sourced from within France.