For most of the past 400 years, it was a bedrock truth that the greatest cooking in the world was done in France; that the French were the masters of cuisine, haute and otherwise. Oddly, few people seem to believe this now, just as few people these days believe that an intellectual is someone who smokes Gauloises and strolls on the Champs-Elysees. Other nations have lost their respect for French gastronomy. In Europe, Italy has proved better at globalising its dishes, particularly pizza and pasta.
Still more decisively, the French themselves are relinquishing their old hegemony. A nation now wracked by self-doubt, they have begun to countenance the possibility that their way in the kitchen might not be the only way. The new edition of the Larousse gastronomique acknowledges defeat, honouring for the first time the cooking of the rest of the world (whose food was once seen as barbaric), with polite entries on Greece, New Zealand, Finland, India . . .
In many ways, this is a pity. It might have seemed arrogant of the French to assume that theirs was the only gastronomy, but you can afford to be arrogant when you're right. No western nation has ever perfected the arts of soup-making, bread-baking, egg cookery, meat cookery or sauce-making as the French have. Probably, no nation ever will. Just because France's Napoleonic ambitions have faded, it doesn't follow that the French should give up the entirely reasonable belief that they are God's gift to gastronomy.
To appreciate the magnificence of French classical cuisine, it's necessary to remember what it replaced. In the 16th century, European court cuisine involved many spices and much sugar in both sweet and savoury dishes. High-class food must have always smelled a bit like Christmas pudding, sticky and spicy. Then, in 1651, Francois Pierre La Varenne published The French Cook, and everything changed. Pepper became the dominant spice. The only other spices used in La Varenne's savoury dishes were cloves and nutmeg, and then only sparingly. Bouquet garni made its appearance, and mushrooms were used as flavouring for the first time. La Varenne was also the first to record the cooking methods "au naturel", "au bleu" and "a la mode". He gave recipes for ragouts, bisques and true French omelettes, and for oeufs a la neige, surely the most ingenious way ever devised for using yolks and whites in a single recipe. True French cuisine was born.
La Varenne's book has just been republished in a fine new edition by Southover Press (£22). Its appearance is timely, reminding us what we are missing when we pass over French food. For example, those who now vaunt the food of Italy against that of France often speak of its "simplicity", implying that French food is all frippery and complication, as compared with a kind of rustic Italian honesty. But La Varenne's recipes are simple in the best way, having just enough ingredients and no more. This, for example, is the whole of his recipe for young partridges: "Dress them and whiten them on the fire, stick them with lardons, rost it with verjuice under it, then serve." This short sentence is full of artistry. Notice how the verjuice (acid grape juice) goes under the birds, where it would help keep them moist; and how the partridges are "whitened" or blanched before roasting. The lardons would provide all the seasoning that a plump young partridge - the most delicious of all game birds - would require.
The recipes in The French Cook are as intelligent as they are concise. Fish is mainly seasoned just with butter, parsley and capers. Roast meats might be embellished with a telling touch of breadcrumbs and herbs. "Eggs with black butter" is just that, eggs seethed in browned butter with just a drop of vinegar added at the end.
We pretend to admire simplicity today, but it's seldom simplicity of this serene kind. Reading La Varenne makes me feel that we have become medieval barbarians again, convinced that any dish will be improved by a hefty pinch of cumin, a nugget of ginger, a splash of soy sauce. Television chefs often now describe food as "flavoury", a term of approval. But you don't need food to be "flavoury" when you understand, as La Varenne did, about real flavours.
Here is his recipe for mushrooms with cream: "Cut the biggest and, together with the smallest, fry them with fresh butter, parsley, chibols minced very small [chibols were a kind of young small green onions; use spring onions or shallots instead], salt and pepper. Then stove them in a small pot untill you be ready to serve, and then you may put some cream to them, which when it hath boiled a little while, and the sauce being thickened, you may serve."
Reading this recipe, it is easy to see why La Varenne's English editor should have confidently written: "Of all the Cookes in the World, the French are esteem'd the best."
