From Revolt, a Cuisine : French Rivet Attention on the Palate

In 1982, when Jean-Loup Chretien, the first French astronaut, went into space in the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz T-6, he did not have to share the kasha and chicken of his Soviet colleagues.

Instead, the French space agency supplied Chretien with creamed crab hors d’oeuvres, two types of pate, Alsatian-style stewed hare and Breton crayfish.

Soviet officials said the meals they provided would sustain the health and working ability of the cosmonauts, but French officials said their meals would not only do the same but would add “an element of psychological comfort.”

Reflection of Life

The French menu was not a flashy attempt to attract publicity but a reflection of one of the most enduring and vital elements of French life--the extraordinary amount of energy and thought devoted day in and day out to cuisine.

Other nations may have better food. But it is doubtful that any other nation on earth treats its cooking and the study of its cooking with more care and respect.

“I would not call it the greatest cuisine in the world,” historian Jean-Louis Flandrin of the University of Paris said. “The Chinese cuisine is greater than that of France. Other European cuisines may even be better than French cuisine. But at least in Europe, French cuisine is the most prestigious.”

Chefs Lost Jobs

The prestige is deeply rooted. It is hard for historians to figure out exactly why France became so preoccupied with its food over the years. But both royalty and revolution probably had a hand in shaping the tradition. After kings and aristocrats elevated the place of food in early centuries, the French Revolution drove chefs out of their high-society jobs and into the Paris restaurant business. A tradition followed.

From time to time, alarms are raised about the state of the art of cooking in France. “The food of France, although it has gone off disastrously, is still the best there is,” the American reporter and essayist A.J. Liebling wrote 25 years ago. “But we are headed for a gastronomic Dark Time.”

More recently, in a 1985 report prepared for the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Agriculture, novelist Jean Ferniot warned that French cuisine was losing its lofty place on the international scene.

Despite these Cassandras, a foreigner cannot help marveling at the overpowering role of the art of cooking in French life. It is no accident, for example, that the Ministry of Culture helped commission a study of cuisine. Since in France, the art of cooking is looked on somewhat like the art of film-making, both are in the natural province of the Ministry of Culture.

For more than four months, the National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions in Paris has been showing an exhibition called “The French and the Table.” While a slide and sound show in one part of the museum describes the history of gastronomy in France, the audience begins to sniff a new perfume seeping into the room, offering the fragrances of various breads. The perfume, created for the exhibition, is called Boulangerie, the French word for bakery.

Concern for food is instilled early. At elementary schools, the lunch menu, posted every day, usually lists four courses, including cheese. But the cheese course is not labeled simply “cheese.” The menu promises Camembert, Brie, bleu d’Auvergne, Gruyere or any of the other 265 cheeses of France. The child soon learns to distinguish.

The evidence of the importance of food is ubiquitous. L’Histoire, a French magazine, devoted an entire issue recently to “5,000 years of gastronomy” in France. The French government classifies and protects eight cafes and restaurants in Paris and 25 outside Paris as “historic monuments.”

Chefs Rise and Fall

The annual ratings of French restaurants by the Michelin Guide are treated as top news, with journalists rushing to interview or photograph the chefs who have just gained a star, or lost one.

In a period of recession and high unemployment, the numbers of people working in the French restaurant industry has increased. A recent survey showed that the French who worry about the inroads of American cultural influences such as television and pop music into French life worry least about the threat of American cuisine.

Flandrin, the French historian, believes that the reputation of French cuisine began in the 16th and 17th centuries, when French cooks abandoned Oriental spices in favor of natural flavors: onion, truffle, mushroom, mint, garlic, caper, anchovy. “This was noticed by travelers coming from other countries and mentioned in their writings,” he said in a recent interview.

About this time, chefs also dropped their old insistence on spectacular dishes like wild birds cooked and served in their plumage. Taste took precedence over appearance. Taste became so important that by the end of the 17th Century, writers were using the expression “good taste” as a metaphor describing the ability to select the best in art, literature and music.

The courts of the powerful French kings set standards in good taste for cooking and art throughout Europe up to the time of the French Revolution.

Forced Into Restaurants

But the truly great international reputation of French cuisine did not develop until the 19th Century. British historian Theodore Zeldin attributes this mainly to the revolution, which threw out of work many cooks of the aristocracy. To earn a living, they opened restaurants in Paris. Before the revolution in 1789, Paris had fewer than 50 restaurants; by 1820, it had almost 3,000.

With the French penchant for classifying, theorizing and philosophizing about every-day phenomena, the sudden and enormous increase in the number of restaurants in the 19th Century provoked a good deal of intellectual activity about cuisine. Chefs wrote about their work. Amateurs, who called themselves gastronomes, criticized the work of chefs and tried to set standards. Gastronomic societies were formed. Publishers started gourmet magazines.

“What made France a paradise for gastronomes,” Zeldin wrote, “was the respect that good cooking--like good literature--received, the constant concern over standards and the excited discussions about recipes and quality.”

This attitude, which still continues, solidified the worldwide prestige of French cuisine.

In his report to the French government about the current status of French cuisine, novelist Ferniot lamented that French dishes in restaurants throughout the world are usually cooked by non-French chefs, mainly Swiss, Germans and Austrians.

Also, Ferniot said, it was a serious error to believe that French cuisine was still an international favorite. He cited a poll that showed Americans preferred Italian, Chinese and Mexican restaurants to French restaurants.

Stellar Experiences

To help redress the situation, the government accepted Ferniot’s proposal to set up a National School of Culinary Arts at the university level and a National Center of Culinary Arts.

The so-called problems of French cuisine these days, however, strike an outsider as tangential. Paris still offers some experiences in dining that cannot be matched elsewhere.

A gastronome can step back into time in Paris and eat at one of the great 19th-Century restaurants like Le Grand Vefour in the Palais Royal. A favorite of Victor Hugo, Le Grand Vefour still displays the sumptuous and mirrored ornamentation of the 19th Century and still serves excellent meals.

Perhaps even more important, one can remain in the 20th Century in Paris and dine at a far newer establishment like Taillevent, an establishment that some food writers regard as the finest restaurant in the world.

Founded in 1950, Taillevent offers wondrous meals served in an unhurried atmosphere orchestrated by an extraordinary attention to detail. There may be greater cuisines in the world than French cuisine, but it is hard to fret about that while dining at such a place.