Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [133]
The 16th century was a watershed for French cuisine. When Catherine de Médici, consort to Henri II, arrived in Paris from Florence in 1533, she brought with her a team of chefs and pastry cooks adept in the subtleties of Italian Renaissance cooking. They introduced such delicacies as aspics, truffles, quenelles (dumplings), artichokes, macaroons and puddings to the French court. Catherine’s cousin, Marie de Médici, brought even more chefs to Paris when she married Henri IV in 1600. The French cooks, increasingly aware of their rising social status, took the Italians’ recipes and sophisticated cooking styles on board, and the rest – to the eternal gratitude of epicures everywhere – is history.
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SMOKE-FREE PARIS
And they said it could never happen in the capital of a country where more people smoke (and eat more saturated fats and exercise less) than almost anyone else in the developed world. On 1 January 2008 France expanded a year-old ban on smoking in public places (schools, hospitals, offices etc) to include all bars, restaurants, night clubs, and even – sacrè bleu! – sacrosanct cafés. It’s true that, unlike their London equivalents, café and bar owners here have the option of installing a hermetically sealed smoking room covering up to 20% of the café’s surface area, though no food or drink can be served within. And hotel guestrooms – not the lobby or other public spaces – are a separate matter, something that has caused no end of confusion even in the industry (Click here). But one thing is clear: a fag with that café crème or Armagnac is no longer an option (at least indoors). Those of you who still engage in the retro habit of smoking tobacco have two choices: stub out or step out. And, boy, can the rest of us now breathe easy.
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France and its capital enjoyed an era of order and prosperity under Henri IV, who famously wished all of his subjects to have a poule au pot (chicken in the pot) every Sunday. Later in the 17th century, the sweet tooth of Louis XIV launched the custom of eating desserts, once reserved for feast days and other celebrations, at the end of a meal.
The most decisive influence on French cuisine at this time, however, was the work of chef François-Pierre de la Varenne (1618–78), who learned his trade in Marie de Médici’s kitchens. La Varenne’s cookbook, Le Cuisinier François (1651), was a gastronomic landmark for many reasons. It was the first to give instructions for preparing vegetables; it introduced soups in the modern sense, with the ‘soup’ being more important than the sops it contained; and it discarded bread and breadcrumbs as thickening agents in favour of roux, a much more versatile mixture of flour and fat. Most importantly, La Varenne downplayed the use of spices, preferring to serve meat in its natural juices sharpened with vinegar or lemon juice. A basic tenet of French cuisine was thus born – to enhance the natural flavours of food in cooking and not to disguise it with heavy seasonings.
The 18th century, the so-called Grand Siècle (Great Century) of reason, brought little enlightenment to the French table apart from dishes and sauces named after lords and other royalty by their sycophantic chefs. This was the century when newfangled foodstuffs from the New World – tomatoes, corn, beans, red pepper and especially the potato so integral today in French cuisine – gained currency, and when the fork became a standard part of the table setting. Most important was the new trend to serve dishes in a logical order rather than heaping them in a pyramid on the table all at the same time (Click here).
This century also saw the birth