Let me educate you about French Cuisine.
Now I have pissed you off on the first sentence, let's keep reading if you wanna learn something. My source is mainly "La Table des Français" from Florent Quellier (my teacher) who's one of the historian who made French cuisine recognized by the UNESCO.
> What is French Cuisine and how is it born ?
French Cuisine was born around the 16-17th century. Not from the peasants, like in many other countries, but odly directly from the highest nobility. The reason why is simply England and Netherland.
During the late Middle-Age, most noble courts were using large amount of spices. Indian trades was starting to intensify and the first thing nobles wanted was the prestigious spices. You wouldn't be able to eat a single meal in late Middle-Age without breathing fire.
But the trade was mostly controled by England and Netherland, selling to France as an outrageously increasing price. French nobles got fed up and took matters in hand. They decide to remove most spices from recipes and realised... it tasted bland as fuck.
So they actually took the time (they're nobles, they have time) to research how to improve the taste without spices. They rediscovered herbs, they created butter cooking, they invented many sauces and even made up several cooking tools. More importantly, they wrote books. Many cooking books, in a time where there was almost none in Europe.
French Cuisine had obvious troubles reaching the rest of Europe while spices was still the Dogme but in France it became an acceptable occupation for the nobility, even an Art for some. King Louis XV was actually known to cook some of his food himself.
When France influence became critical around late 16th-17th century, european courts finally started to copy French Cuisine (except Bongs because they hate French) and after the Revolution, cooks in noble house lost their jobs and went away, opening restaurants all over France and Europe. That's how it became the standard.
>>7493096
Tl;dr you Algerian phony.
ctrl-f
no SNAILS anywhere
>inb4 Americans going mad for no reason
>>7493139
>t. mad american
Are you sure you're ready for this, OP? Are you sure you're doing this in the right place, too?
So bascially seasoning became popular and affordable
and the rich people hated that poor people can now use seasonings
so the rich went back to eating poor people food and pretended it was high cuisine
>>7493163
>t. dumb American
>>7493166
>t. stupid American
>Americans pretending to be Europeans pretending to be Americans
>Europeans pretending to be Americans pretending to be Europeans pretending to be Americans
>>7493096
You should have said
>I'm french, let me educate you about cuisine
>>7493096
Interesting, thanks. It's people like you that are diamonds in the piles of steaming shit here. Where my ancestors are from in europe they use local oils and herbs, black pepper and hot spices are shunned. They do use stuff like nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon, but they did trade in with the far east.
>>7493209
Those are the very basic of French cuisine, congrats.
What a pile of revisionist shit. The only spice from India that England and Europe were interested in was black pepper. Which is very important in French cuisine. Some other spices were popular like cinnamon but they added no heat and was used as a dessert spice and not in savory dishes like it is in India and Ceylon. Also, to think that nobles in England were eating dishes that made them breath fire is a laughably imaginary notion. The colonial era was full of British nobility scoffing at the spicy food the natives eat just like you're doing. The only thing they were really interested in was exotic meats.
Finally, the reason French cuisine became the de facto training for chefs has more to do with standardization than anything. Just like the metric system invented by the French was adopted by the world as the standard so was French cuisine. It was the first to record and formalize techniques and recipes. And that itself lends itself to the French revolution.
I love French cooking but let's not just make up an alternate history to serenade it.
riveting tale chap
>>7493249
Agreed.
Well, mostly. I do know that the Chinese made an extensive documentation of cooking techniques and recipes which pre-date even Careme, but unlike the French, their classic cookbooks were not accessible to the rest of the world due to the language barrier. In fact, it's still difficult to find an English translation of classic Chinese cookbooks today whereas Careme, Escoffier, et. al. are widely read all over the world.
Lol equating spicy to breathing fire shows that you have no culinary training. The spices controlled by the British and Dutch wouldn't have you breathing fire. Black pepper has a numbing heat. The heat you associate with Indian spices comes from red chilli which came from the new world and was adopted into Indian cuisine in the era you're talking about. Wasn't adopted in Europe till a few decades later via Italy. And was never really adopted by the nobility.
>>7493275
Yeah. The Chinese loved to document everything. More is known about Indian history via China than it is through Indian writings. Speaking of which even India has a huge amount of writing about food but it has less to do with taste and more with medicinal values.
>>7493249
There's nothing alternate about this. Firstly about standardization you are just repeating what I said, French nobles wrote books and it became the standard because nobody else did before them.
As for spices, I think you're lost in chronology. I'm talking about late middle age, about Marco Polo,s time, when people were convince India was the garden of Eden. lots of spice came in Europe like saffron which was immensely popular. Many strong spices came in Europe and the lack of tasty food (noble were eating swans...) Made them popular to hide that terrible taste
>>7493288
Persians and Greeks were using saffron for a long long time.
>>7493276
Spices can hide taste, heat or no eat. Breathing fire is an image, don't stop on that. You are right about heat but black pepper (and long pepper) were not the only spices from India
All you plebs need to know is Italy taught you all how to eat. Without us you'd be still eating poop.
>>7493298
... Because they were in contact with India. Europe lost this contact thanks to Muslims, it become possible again thanks to Mongols
America here.
Why didn't they just go to McDonalds?
>>7493308
We're talking about pre-1789 France. They only had Burger Absolute Monarch.
>>7493308
Because we don't eat plastic food
>>7493288
Indian spices used in that period were cloves, cinnamon, ginger and saffron. All pretty mild especially when cooked. The amount of any of these you'd have to use to cover up bad taste is ridiculous. A red wine reduction would be a far easier way to do that. As a matter of fact, a fat like butter and an acid like wine would do a far better job of making bad meat edible than any amount of spices without heat could ever do. That's why the worst meat is still deep fried and served with a sweet and sour reduced sauce like ketchup or BBQ.
>>7493308
Solar burger !
>>7493340
> saffron
> mild
What the hell ? Have you ever used saffron in your life ?
For information, spices like the ones you spoke off ( and except saffron are all parts of original French cuisine) were use in large quantities in mixture with a base of vinegar, white wine, verjus or even almond milk. None of this is "mild". To correct the acidity, sugar was also used in recipes. So yes, middle age knew about your technics to hide the taste of food.
>>7493340
If you want more spices used in the middle age (too lazy to translate though)
Galanga, macis, lores,cumin, spic, aulx, etc...
