Interesting insights Pete,
I agree that regional cuisines are not owned by France, infact all countries and their history extoles a unique and wonderful expression of their culinany pedagree.
At this point, I am focusing on France.
I would love for you to start a thread on another country and it’s culinary lifeline.
To Continue with France.
By the end of the century, there is a new manifestation of interest in the cooking of at least a selected number of regions, particularly in the south and east.
Regionalists become active in places like Provence (Reboul publishes his famous Cuisiniere provencal just before the turn of the century), Lorraine (the cuisine of metz is documented in 1890 by E. Auricoste de Lazaque), in Alsace (Charles Gerard writes the first history of a regional cuisine in 1877, L’ Ancienne Alsace a table), Bordeaux (in 1898 Alcide Bontou publishes the first book claiming to be about the cuisine of Bordeaux)
Not to mention Marcel Herbet in Dax, south of Bordeaux, who already in 1858 had published a small Cuisinier gascon, reviving a title from the 18th century that, unlike its predecessor, actually contained recipes from the region! In short, when the 20th century begins, there seems to be a new-found interest in the foods of the provinces.  |