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By Root 2181 0

London, 1978. Reissued under the title The Cuisine of Paul Bocuse, Granada, London, 1982. This huge exposition of classical and traditional French cooking has very little to do with the nouvelle style of Bocuse’s colleagues. Bocuse himself acknowledges most of his recipes to Alfred Guérot ‘one of the great chefs, the most comprehensive chef of the first half of this century. . . . Thanks to his profound knowledge and his writing skill . . . his recipes are the most perfect in existence. . . . I have adapted Guérot’s recipes, transformed them.’ I know nothing of Alfred Guérot; but among many things to be learned from Maître Bocuse is that if confronted with one of his own particular specialities, sea perch in a crust stuffed with lobster mousse, you do not have to eat the crust, it is there to keep the juices in the perch; nor do you have to trouble to eat the lobster stuffing in the centre. ‘It is there to retain a certain moistness without which the perch has a tendency to dry out.’ Wonderful.

Great Chefs of France. Quentin Crewe and Anthony Blake. Marshall Editions Ltd., Mitchell Beazley, London, 1978. The Crewe/Blake journey around the three-star chefs of France was a tour de force in its own right. From ‘exalted simplicity’ at Barrier’s in Tours to a recipe for a pêche de foie gras created by Outhier of L’Oasis at La Napoule we are in a world of opulent temples where the customers may well consume a pound and a half of truffles per day and wine cards are two feet across. Their world and welcome, but Quentin Crewe is always instructive and Anthony Blake’s photography both revealing and beautiful.

French Regional Cooking. Anne Willan, Hutchinson, London, 1981. Another perambulation, and a very thorough one, round the produce and traditional cookery of the French provinces. Many of the dishes, like those I recorded myself, now exist only in books and it is good to find them again here. Recipes are very careful, and photography ravishing. The author founded and runs the much-respected La Varenne cooking school in Paris.

Savouring the Past: The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to 1789. Barbara Ketchum Wheaton. University of Pennsylvania Press and Chatto & Windus, London, 1983. The author views the history of French cooking mainly through the cookery books, and treats the subject with much insight. Documentation is meticulous, illustrations unusually well chosen.

They include the 1759 nouvelle cuisine mentioned in my note above.

BOOKS on bread and breadmaking. With today’s interest in the quality of bread, whether in Europe or the United States, and the growing awareness that a working knowledge of breadmaking techniques is as essential a part of cookery as frying, boiling, grilling, roasting and sautéing, the following books should make useful study.

Le Livre du Pain, Histoire et Gastronomie. Jacques Montaudan. Edita, Lausanne, 1974. French, Swiss, German, and other European breads. A chapter on la cuisine au pain offers some useful recipes. Handsome photographs of many different shapes and types of loaves make the book a worthwhile work of reference.

The Blessings of Bread. Adrian Bailey. Paddington Press Ltd., London and New York, 1975. Nothing specifically on France or French bread but good general history and splendid picture research.

English Bread and Yeast Cookery. Elizabeth David. Allen Lane, London; 1977, and Penguin Books 1979. (American edition with Notes and U.S. measurements by Karen Hess, Viking Press, New York, 1980, and paperback 1982.) Included here for its chapters on French bread and French yeast cakes—brioche, savarin, etc.—and recipes for pissaladières and quiches based on yeast doughs.

The Breads of France and how to bake them in your own kitchen. Bernard Clayton, Jr. Bobbs Merrill, Indianapolis and New York, 1978. Assiduous on-the-spot research and recipes for French breads from pain de ménage and pain de campagne to pain complet, a wholewheat health bread with the inevitable honey among its ingredients. From Poilane, the Paris bakery which has become something of a tourist attraction, comes