A GREAT BOOK OF FRENCH CUISINE

Here I am in the company of 125 “global chefs” at the Pebble Beach Food & Wine festival, where I am hosting, “California Costal.” All my partner chefs work in California and there are 24 of them. I make up the 25^th (though not cooking here anymore).

In making the list of 125 some chefs may have been forgotten. Making me wonder what great chefs from the past, like Alexandre Dumaine, should we remember now for instruction and inspirations. You read about the heritage of Dumaine in this inspiring Gourmet article by my pal Naomi Barry. About the genius of finding the perfect ingredients. http://www.gourmet.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/magazine/1960s/1964/02/alexandredumaine.html

In the lobby on the way in to look at where the event would be, I saw a copy of this famous book where it talks a lot about what it means to be a chef. Reminding me that this “Great Book” helped me while head chef at Chez Panisse to become exactly that.

One could be tempted to subtitle this book ‘A Paradise of Gastronomy,’ and I would, but Maurice-Edmund Saillant, the “Prince-Elect of Gastronomes,” who wrote with the nom de plume of Curnonsky, already did so in his preface to the 1950 English edition, then titled Modern Culinary Art.

Henri-Paul Pellaprat was born in 1869 and, following the culinary profession tradition of the times, apprenticed at the age of thirteen as a pastry cook and then as a confectioner. His first job was at the famous Belle Epoque institution, the “Café de la Paix.” After military service, he entered the Cordon Bleu cooking school as a professor. War intervened as Pellaprat was called up in 1914 only to be discharged in 1915 because, at 46, he had seven children to support. The school was closed temporarily by the war, but when the Cordon Bleu reopened, Pellaprat rejoined it, staying there as head chef until 1932 when he retired. But he could not sit still. His first book, La Cuisine au Vin appeared in 1934, followed by a book on sandwiches, another on puff pastry, and finally, in 1935, his masterpiece L’Art Culinaire Moderne with its 3,500 recipes and 700 pages which Curnonsky, in his preface to it, calls a “real Encyclopedia of the Table and Culinary Art.”

Along with the recipes, six hundred easy-to-follow cooking techniques and tips, and a lexicon of French cooking terms, this book is about menus, wine service, floral decoration, beverages, and table duties as well as cooking. Pellaprat believed that it was the duty of a good cuisinier or chef to transmit to the generations who would replace him, everything he had learned and experienced.

He summarized the four types of French cookery. They are: La Haute Cuisine: The most elaborate and sophisticated cooking one of the greatest achievements of France. “La cuisine bourgeoise: Middle class cooking, the triumph of both Cordon Bleu holders and housewives. La cuisine regionale: The provincial cooking of France. La cuisine impromptue: Impromptu cooking which, using whatever is at hand, is the simplest and the quickest type of cooking.

At Panisse I thought I would try my hand at all of them.

Decades later I was challenged by the owners of Vendome Press to edit and modernize the 1966 U.S. edition. One that was smothered in Home Economics.

I was intrigued by one of my culinary heroes, Michael Field, wrote the introduction to that edition. Intrigued because it was his cookbook that my friends and I used while in college but living off campus. At the time, Michael was consulting editor for the Time-Life series Foods of the World, one of which was my favorite The Cooking of Provincial France by M.F.K. Fisher with Julia Child as consultant. Field was obviously very impressed with Pellaprat’s book which had been translated into five languages and had sold 750,000 copies throughout the world. And felt that the appearance of the American edition was in the nick of time. America at that time was in the grips of the religion of convenience and synthetic foods. Field felt that the country was in danger of forgetting what the aroma, taste, and even appearance of good, honest food can be.  He thought that Pellaprat would give us heart. Reaffirming “lucidly, persuasively, and precisely” the dignity of our relation to the food we eat.

It is no mistake on Henri-Paul’s part that “The Art of Entertaining and Serving” sets the mood and tone of his culture before we get to cook its food. In my revised edition I left this section on manners intact. Its message seems even more relevant or necessary (some of it now tongue in a very well-bred cheek) today as then. Making the point that polite behavior is a ritual performed for the sake of other people. That if you are entertaining at home, pleasantly astonishing your guests as they first enter the door and having them leave with a radiant warmth is what it’s all about. The wit of Pellaprat’s contemporary, Cole Porter, tells us all:

“Don’t hit the person across from you with bits of toast,

And don’t, when dinner is nearly through, say ‘Who’s the host?’

It isn’t done.”

Inspiring me to write my book on table manners because good ones teach all the rest of them.

James Beard’s first (1940) cookbook, Hors d’Oeuvre and Canapés, grew out of his entertaining and catering business. In a 2003 article on Jim and his book by another hospitality maven, Nina Griscom, she worries that giving a party today using Beard’s guidelines would cause her guests to think she was giving “an anthropological theme party!” She wonders about the tongue, stuffed eggs, and melon balls (“anything in ball shapes is deader than raspberry vinaigrette”), just as I did when reading the recipes for them in Pellaprat. But then I reminded myself that in one of the first French cookbooks, Le Cuisiner Francois by La Varenne in 1655, there is raspberry vinegar. That stuffed eggs are back in style and never really left. Here are mine with Pickapeppa sauce.

That mention of melon balls did give me a start, but when Pellaprat steeps them in Madeira, I could forget the currently time-worn shapes and love the flavors. 

Griscom does finally admit that the fundamentals of giving a great party have not changed in the last 65 years. That is why the word Moderne in the original title of Pellaprat’s cookbook is most important. Despite the heavy dose of classicism, the book has not aged and is as convenient to use now as it was in the thirties. As Field points out, French cooking for Pellaprat was a dynamic process, and his procedures and recipes kept constant pace with its movement, without committing the egregious error of letting the recipes lose their specific profiles and the individuality of the cuisine. The recipes have surprising quality of contemporaneity and are never needlessly complex or contrived, whether they depart from tradition or not. The Italian, Spanish, Indian and American dishes that Pellaprat tasted in his travels are reproduced with culinary intelligence and fidelity. So don’t be surprised to see non-French recipes like Chicken Sukiyaki, Cockaleekie Soup, and another superb soup, Schtchi Russki whether Sour with sauerkraut or green (sorrel, spinach, nettle).

I dropped the menu section in the original book, simply called “Menus.” They are not as eloquent to us now as they were for Pellaprat’s time. But I would not mind a one-stop lesson in grand French cooking by enjoying a grand buffet that includes Eggs Carmen, Filets of sole Floralies, Salmon Moscow style, Glazed trout Vladimir, Rock Lobster Bouquetière, Glazed Filet of Beef, Saddle of veal, Stuffed duck Charles Vaucher, Scallops of foie gras Lucullus, Salad Belle Hèlene, Charlotte Royale, Macedoine of Fruit in Champagne, Neopolitan cassata, Mexican cake, Dobos torta, Glaceed fruits, and Spun-sugar basket with frosted petits-fours. All that in one room!

I would, however, browse the menu section and put together one of my own menus. Following the rules set down in his chapter “The Art of Entertaining”, and keeping in mind its firm instruction also to improvise. Such as, for a hot summer dinner.

Botvinia Soup (cold soup made with sour kvass, to which boiled sorrel, beet tops, spinach, green onion and nettle, boiled sturgeon or salmon as well as ice are added)

Deviled Spring Chicken (young chicken browned in butter, painted in mustard, cayenne, buttered breadcrumbs and more butter, and finished in the oven)

Soufflé Potatoes

Photo Courtesy of Cincinnati Magazine

Salade Mimosa

Snow Eggs

Photo Courtesy of ThespruceEats.com

As here, I prefer my Floating Clouds without drizzled caramel and almond slivers.

Would any lover of French cooking not want to join me?

Then, after dinner with a very old Madeira, I would remember Pellaprat’s final words in the preface. “Let the ministering angels of the home be assured that we have done all possible to be of service to them and to give a wider knowledge of the art which is so dear to our heart - the best ‘French Cookery.”

Amen.