Classic French Cuisine with Modest Origins
Photo by Carla Martinesi on Unsplash
The idea of French cuisine often goes hand in hand with visions of elegant dishes that are complicated in their preparation and presentation, harking back to times when chefs in the courts of kings and queens sought to impress on both counts while serving meals that would satisfy royal appetites and tastes. While this is true of many restaurants within France as well as around the world, it is an incomplete image of French cuisine. Some recipes that are centuries old continue to convene French families and communities around the dinner table and were adapted over time and by region to take advantage of locally available ingredients and advances in cooking techniques. Just as with haute cuisine, traditional dishes are prepared with attention to detail including the selection of high quality herbs, vegetables, and wine.
Classics such as coq au vin, poule au pot, and cassoulet are now widely served in homes as well as a variety of French restaurants. Long ago, when meals were prepared over a fire, these dishes allowed peasants to expand upon the vegetables and legumes that made up the bulk of their diet with rarely available meat to provide a delicious main course for a whole family. Legend holds that the Gauls sent a rooster to Julius Caesar as a symbol of their courage and defiance when Rome conquered Gallic territory in 58 B.C. Caesar then invited the Gallic chief to dinner where he was supposedly served that same rooster cooked in wine as a symbolic retort. Whether or not this was truly the origin of coq au vin, poultry cooked with vegetables in wine has graced French tables for generations.
In medieval Burgundy, coq au vin was a way to transform older birds, particularly roosters, into a hearty dinner by marinating the tough meat in wine and then slowly cooking it with onions, mushrooms, bacon, red wine, chicken blood, and herbs to infuse flavors into the stew. A lack of any of these ingredients was not a deterrent since water could be substituted for wine, bacon could be omitted, and other vegetables could be added depending on what was accessible. Over the centuries, hearth fires have given way to more sophisticated cooking equipment and coq au vin recipes have been adapted in various ways: browning instead of braising the poultry meat, white wine instead of red wine, adding carrots or cognac, and/or using only white or dark meat instead of a whole chicken, to name only a few. However, the dish continues to be a mainstay in households around France.
Coq au vin. Image credit: Beck from East Midlands, United Kingdon, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
As its name suggests, poule au pot consists of a whole chicken cooked in broth with vegetables and herbs in a pot – the French version of chicken soup. Lingering effects from the Wars of Religion in the latter half of the 16th century contributed to widespread famine that prompted the ‘good’ King Henry IV to express his concern for his subjects by wishing for every worker in his kingdom to have the means to cook a chicken in his pot every Sunday. For one week each winter in the city of Pau in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, the birthplace of King Henry IV, “La Poule au Pot est reine!” Restaurants celebrate his memory by serving their own versions of poule au pot and school children learn about this famous historical figure while lunching on the dish.
Another traditional stew with peasant origins is cassoulet, a dish that is emblematic of southwestern France and a source of pride and controversy. The town of Castelnaudary claims to be the birthplace of cassoulet during the Hundred Years’ War (a series of wars and truces between England and France from 1337 through 1453), when townspeople under siege gathered together whatever ingredients they could to make a stew that would fortify their defenders. All versions of cassoulet contain white beans and are cooked in an earthenware pot called a cassole, but otherwise vary from one town to the next as well as from cook to cook. The Castelnaudary cassoulet includes duck confit, pork, and sausage. Forty kilometers to the east, Carcassonne cassoulet contains mutton and occasionally local partridge meat, whereas the cassoulet of Toulouse to the northwest covers duck confit and local sausage with a topping of bread crumbs. Vegetables such as carrots, celery, and onion are also incorporated along with garlic and herbs and the cassole is set over low heat to allow the beans to gradually break down while bringing out the flavors of the salted meat, melding the ingredients into a savory stew.
Cassoulet de Carcassonne. Image credit: ignis, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In 1970, the Grande Confrérie du Cassoulet de Castelnaudary was organized to defend and promote the quality and prestige of cassoulet de Castelnaudary. Among its activities are an annual Fête du Cassoulet de Castelnaudary each August with parades, cassoulet tastings and meals, concerts, and other activities open to the public. The organization also promotes a Route du Cassoulet through the Aude region that connects visitors with restaurants serving cassoulet, the farms where beans are grown and ducks and geese are raised, artisanal cassole producers, and local vineyards. The pride in this regional French dish and its place in local heritage are evident and deserving of recognition.
These three classics of French cuisine are modest in origin yet sufficiently timeless to remain popular within France and beyond its borders. But, there are others. Although the well-deserved reputation of French haute cuisine may be intimidating, many classic French dishes are accessible, delicious, and adaptable for home cooks and restaurant diners with a range of budgets. After all, isn’t a dish that has outlasted the kings and queens of France very likely worth trying?
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Is your mouth watering yet? Try Julia Child’s recipe for coq au vin or one of many others online, or open the French food word search below to find coq au vin, cassoulet, and other French cuisine staples to whet your appetite.
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