Jonell Galloway grew up on Wendell Berry and food straight from a backyard Kentucky garden. She is a freelance writer. She attended Le Cordon Bleu and La Varenne cooking schools in Paris, worked for the GaultMillau restaurant guide, CityGuides and other restaurant guides in France and Paris, and for Gannett Company in the U.S., and collaborated on Le tour du monde en 80 pains / Around the World with 80 Breads with Jean-Philippe de Tonnac in France; André Raboud, Sculptures 2002-2009 in Switzerland; Ma Cuisine Méditerranéenne with Christophe Certain in France, and a biography of French chef Pierre Gagnaire. Before moving to Switzerland, she ran a cooking school called Spontaneous Cuisine in France, and in the U.S., a farm-to-table restaurant called The Three Sisters, which she owned with her two sisters. She organizes the Taste Unlocked bespoke food and wine tasting awareness workshops with James Flewellen, a wine tasting specialist. She is an active member of Slow Food and runs the food-writing website and Facebooks pages under the moniker The Rambling Epicure. Her work has been published in numerous international publications and broadcast on public radio.
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, born the Marquise de Sévigné, was one of France’s most prolific letter writers of the seventeenth century. Known often as simply Madame de Sévigné, she was known for her love of chocolate, although her letters of 1671 reveal that she sometimes had a love-hate relationship with it.
In her letter of February 11, 1671, to her ailing daughter, Madame de Grignan, she wrote:
“You’re not feeling well, did you not sleep? Chocolate will make you feel yourself again. A thousand times I have thought: she has no chocolatier near her, poor child. What will you do?”
Letter of May 13, 1671:
“I beg you, my dear soul, my beautiful, to not eat any more chocolate. I’ve turned against it myself. A week ago I suffered from 16 hours of colic that gave me an acute kidney infection.”
Letter of October 25, 1671, when Madame de Sévigné’s daughter, who was pregnant, continued to follow her mother’s earlier words of advice:
“Chocolate, what can we say about it? Aren’t you afraid you’ll burn your very blood? All these miraculous effects, do they not hide something obscure?”
Letter of October 28, 1671:
“I wanted to reconcile myself with chocolate. I ate some the day before yesterday to help me digest my dinner and enjoy my supper. I ate some more yesterday just to get a little nourishment and to help me fast until evening. It had all the desired effects: this is why I find it so pleasant. It does what it is intended to do.”
Many people call it Black Friday, but not being a consumerist, I just relax on the sofa after a full day of cooking for Thanksgiving. Like everything, I do it in style.
Et pevent estre diz en francois gloutons et gourmans./ And can be said in French gluttons and gourmands.—Nicolas Oresme, fourteenth century
Les gourmands font leurs fosses avec leurs dents. / Gluttons dig their graves with their own teeth.–Henri Estienne, sixteenth century
Gourmandism is an impassioned, considered, and habitual preference for whatever pleases the taste. It is the enemy of overindulgence; any man who eats too much or grows drunk risks being expelled from the army of disciples.”–Jean-Antheleme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste (1825)
The meaning of gourmand is now certainly closer to gourmet than it is to glutton, but our evidence shows clearly that gourmand and gourmet are still words with distinct meanings in the bulk of their use, and are likely to remain so.—Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, 1994
In English, there is confusion about the term gourmand. Technically, it means “one who is excessively fond of eating and drinking,” just like in French, but it is often used as a synonym for gourmet. Being a French speaker, I cringe every time I hear it used to mean “a connoisseur of food and drink.”
Yes, I’m a purist, and perhaps I’ve lived in France too long to find this acceptable, because being a gourmand has a pejorative connotation in French. It means someone who enjoys too much of a good thing and can’t quite control his appetites. It means “glutton”. It’s quite all right to be a gourmand of books or theatre, but not of food, as paradoxical as that may seem.
All major Western religions deem gluttony a sin. It is one of the Seven Cardinal Sins, with moderation being the virtue.
Gourmandizing means overeating or eatingimmodestly; it means eating like a refined pig or stuffing oneself with good food and drink.
Gourmand is extended to other sensual pursuits as well. You can have gourmandes lips; I’ll let you imagine the meaning of that. One can also be too gourmand about money, i.e. like in a little too much.
Then comes the question of whether gluttony includes pleasure, because gourmandise does, despite its negative connotation, contain an element of pleasure. Gourmands eat too much, but they do so with pleasure.
Gourmandise may be a sin in the eyes of religion, but thanks to Brillat-Savarin, probably France’s greatest gastronomic writer ever, it recovered its sense of finesse in his “meditations,” and he spent a good deal of time looking for evidence that it was a sin. He found none, he said. All the etymologists and theologians had gotten it wrong. He concluded that gourmandise is in reality a passionate, reasoned, regular preference for objects that please the taste buds. It is, he said, the enemy of excess and is only to be encouraged. That’s one writer’s opinion.
Some say the word gourmand probably comes from the Burgundian gorman, but that’s not clear. Gourmet is different, despite the fact that it may well have the same root, groumet, meaning “servant orvalet in charge of wines,” from the MiddleEnglishgrom, meaning boy orvalet (as in groom). Somehow along the way gourmand took on the meaning friand, often linked to glouton, meaning “greedy.” A gourmet is a person who cultivates a discriminating palate and knows how to appreciate both good food and wine. In French, its synonyms are gastronome, expert, connoisseur, or master. In English and used as an adjective, gourmet often means “fancy” food. It does not carry with it the connotation of excess or lack of self-control, either in French or in English.
It’s interesting to look at the origins of words, and they do change meaning over time, as we have seen, and when they are borrowed by other languages. Whether this is technically the case in English with regard to gourmet and gourmand is still questionable however, because one often sees the word gourmand used in lieu of gourmet.
Twitter Chat with David Downie about A Passion for Paris: Romanticism and Romance in the City of Light, his latest book
To participate, go into the twitter box at the top right marked “Search Twitter.” Type in #PassionParisTwitterChat. Our Twitter handles are @RamblingEpicure, @DavidDDownie or @JonellGalloway and you should find the questions and chats. Click the leftward arrow under a tweet to take part in that conversation or to ask a question. When there have been long discussions, click View Conversation under the Tweet.
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People predestined to gourmandism are in general of medium height; they have round or square faces, bright eyes, small foreheads, short noses, full lips and rounded chins…..People to whom Nature has denied the capacity for such enjoyment, on the other hand, have long faces, noses, and eyes; no matter what their height, they seem to have a general air of elongation about them. They have flat dark hair, and above all lack healthy weight; it is undoubtedly they who invented trousers, to hide their thin shanks.”–inThe Physiology of Taste
Gratin dauphinois, which consists of thinly sliced potatoes cooked slowly with cream and garlic, seems a simple enough dish. Purists and traditionalists say there’s no cheese and no egg, despite the fact that Escoffier himself used them, and that’s what makes it difficult to achieve.
Michelin star chef Michel Rostang, who was born and raised in the region, doesn’t use them and claims that’s the only authentic way to make it. In fact, if you add cheese and nutmeg, it becomes a gratin savoyard. The real secret is in the choice of ingredients and the patience it takes to make it. A good gratin should melt in the mouth, yet the top should be crunchy.
The Dauphiné was an ancient province of France, located in the southeast, corresponding roughly to the départements of Isère, Drôme, and Hautes-Alpes plus a bit of the Rhône and the Italian Alps.
Is haute cuisine still relevant? Yes. What’s happening with it and does it still matter?
In 2009, Michael Steinberger, in his book Au Revoir to All That, declared that the ostensible decline of Michelin-starred restaurants mirrors the decline of France. While it is true that French cuisine, in particular the haute cuisine of the gastronomic palaces, may be threatened by high overheads and a weak economy, it would be wrong and premature to announce its demise. Profit margins are slim in high-end, labor-intensive restaurants, and labor laws are strict. The over-indulgence of the grandes tables of the past with their thousands of bottles of ancient claret in the cellar has been compromised by taxes on stock and thirty-nine hour work weeks that simply don’t work in the restaurant business, even if it’s four hours more than in other sectors.
Despite all that, French cuisine is still alive and kicking, and the number of Michelin star restaurants increases every year: today France has 26 three-star restaurants, four more than in 2000, and 80 two-star restaurants, ten more than in 2000, according to the Financial Times. In 2015, there are 25 per cent more one-star restaurants. These palaces remain quintessentially French in their food, service and organization. Simplified versions of these chefs’ dishes are published in cooking magazines and imitated in millions of homes around France, making it relevant even in middle class households. French families may not eat in such establishments often, but they will save and go to them once a year for a special occasion. This French devotion to their food traditions will ensure its survival.
Vonnas in the east of France is the home of the legendary Michelin-star chef Georges Blanc. He is best known for his Bresse chicken with cream and mushrooms. Traditionally, this chicken is eaten with potato pancakes. This recipe is inspired by Blanc’s mother, La Mère Blanc, who ran his restaurant before him. He learned to cook at her apron strings.
Vonnas is in the Rhône-Alpes region of France, known for poulet de Bresse chickens and poultry, frogs, Reblochon and Beaufort cheese, as well as gratin dauphinois, made with raw potatoes, thick cream and garlic, and pork products, plentiful in the bouchons, small restaurants found in Lyon.
