Accounting for Taste

by Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst

• ISBN13: 9780226243245
• ISBN10: 0226243249
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-12-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

French cuisine is such a staple in our understanding of fine food that we forget the accidents of history that led to its creation.Accounting for Tastebrings these "accidents" to the surface, illuminating the magic of French cuisine and the mystery behind its historical development. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson explains how the food of France became French cuisine. This momentous culinary journey begins with Ancien Regime cookbooks and ends with twenty-first-century cooking programs. It takes us from Careme, the "inventor" of modern French cuisine in the early nineteenth century, to top chefs today, such as Daniel Boulud and Jacques Pepin. Not a history of French cuisine,Accounting for Tastefocuses on the people, places, and institutions that have made this cuisine what it is today: a privileged vehicle for national identity, a model of cultural ascendancy, and a pivotal site where practice and performance intersect. With sources as various as the novels of Balzac and Proust, interviews with contemporary chefs such as David Bouley and Charlie Trotter, and the filmBabette's Feast, Ferguson maps the cultural field that structures culinary affairs in France and then exports its crucial ingredients. What's more, well beyond food, the intricate connections between cuisine and country, between local practice and national identity, illuminate the concept of culture itself. To Brillat-Savarin's famous dictum"Animals fill themselves, people eat, intelligent people alone know how to eat"Priscilla Ferguson adds, andAccounting for Tasteshows, how the truly intelligent also knowwhythey eat the way they do. "Parkhurst Ferguson has her nose in the right place, and an infectious lust for her subject that makes this trawl through the history and cultural significance of French foodfrom French Revolution toBabette's Feastvia Balzac's suppers and Proust's madeleinesa satisfying meal of varied courses."Ian Kelly,Times(UK)

Author Biography

Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson is professor of sociology at Columbia University. Her previous books include Paris as Revolution and Literary France.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
Prologue Eating Orders	1	(14)
Culinary Configurations	15	(34)
Culinary Identities	15	(15)
French Cuisines	30	(19)
Inventing French Cuisine	49	(34)
Between the Old Regime and the New	50	(17)
The Cuisine	67	(16)
Readings in a Culinary Culture	83	(28)
From Cuisine to Gastronomy	84	(8)
Food Talk	92	(11)
The Gastronomic Field	103	(8)
Food Nostalgia	111	(38)
In Search of Cuisine Lost	111	(10)
Country Cooking	121	(10)
Cooking and Chefing	131	(18)
Consuming Passions	149	(38)
Conspicuous Cuisines	151	(14)
Identifying Cuisines	165	(9)
Tasting France	174	(13)
Epilogue Babette's Feast: A Fable for Culinary France	187	(16)
Appendix A Bibliography---Cookery Works by Date of Original Publication	203	(2)
Appendix B Sample of Cookbooks---Bibliographie de la France, 1811--98	205	(4)
Appendix C Research Notes	209	(6)
Notes	215	(24)
Bibliography	239	(14)
Index	253