What is a good French cookbook, with authentic recipes?

[shroomgirl]

LeNotre.....my poor pastry cookbook is much loved, no cover several pages gooped together....the pastry cream is much used.....

Julia Childs books....they've all been tried and true.

Daniel Boulud's cookbooks have had some interesting twists, as too Pierre Herme.....Bocuse has a decent cookbook....
Of course Time Life, the hardback with pix and stories is classic....well both the Classic French Cuisine and the Provencal......

[Harpua]

The Les Halles cookbook by Bourdain has a bunch of basic french recipes I've been looking for.

[CarlAird]

MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING Julia CHild AND grab her 3 DVDs!
Larousse Gastronomique is a Beauitful book but its an
Encyclopedia

[CarlAird]

MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING Julia CHild AND grab her 3 DVDs!
Larousse Gastronomique is a Beauitful book but its an
Encyclopedia

[CarlAird]

MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING Julia CHild AND grab her 3 DVDs!
Larousse Gastronomique is a Beauitful book but its an
Encyclopedia

[Harpua]

Yes, it's an encyclopedia but it has hundreds of recipes for basic dishes.

[chefjune]

Originally Posted by cakerookie

No doubt Julia Childs....might checkout Jacques Pepins as well...The French Laundry maybe another one you could checkout...James Patterson is another author of French cookbooks...

I think you mean James Peterson, no? He wrote one French book, among his bibliography.

I'll echo the votes for Julia and Jacques. Their work is "authentic" French, but much more easily understood by Americans. Anne Willan has also written a number of excellent books on French Cooking, as well as Patricia Wells and Lydie Marshall. My book is not bad, either.

[cakerookie]

Appreciate the correction there Chef........I did misspell it.

[boar_d_laze]

A lot of good recommendations. In addition:

Modern French Culinary Art, by Pelliprat -- This has been published under a number of titles. If it's thick, has a lot of pictures, and by Pelliprat, it's this book. Pelliprat was the Grand Old Man of Le Cordon Bleu, and taught many of the other names listed in this thread how to cook. His book represents the bridge between the old style Escoffier cooking and the simpler, flavor-forward recipes of regional and nouvelle. If you can perfect the more difficult dishes out of this book, you can cook. Everything you wanted to know about Grand Cuisine.

Any book by Elizabeth David -- Hard to find, not much in terms of recipe specifics or technique either. You pretty much have to know how to cook if you're going to get anything useful out of David. Her books are as much travelogues and reminiscence as cookbooks. Way out of print. They taught a generation of Britains to seek out good food. Regional cooking as authentic as it gets.

When French Women Cook -- Madelein Kammins. Cuisine bourgeois. Tres Francais, et authentique!

I've fooled around with Escoffier, and really, the recipes aren't much help. Like David, you have to know what you're doing going in to make sense out of it. The recipes need a lot of adjustment. I'm always a little leery of people who say they use Escoffier's recipes or learned to cook from his books. Not that it doesn't happen, just less often than you might think.

LaRousse is, well, LaRousse.

The big Gourmet Cookbooks have tons of good stuff, often reverse-engineered from great French restaurants in France and America. You have to pick and choose.

Not exactly "authentic" French food, at least not traditionally French, but you could do worse than looking at the various Chez Panisse cookbooks from Alice Waters. Waters was, and still is, at the forefront of the movement which puts ingredients first and is the hallmark of great cooking. Most of her dishes employ French technique and French sensibilities.

BDL

[siduri]

for the home cook julia child is the best cookbook i've ever used for quality of recipes, quality of explanations, clarity of illustrations and techniques. You cannot go wrong with one of her recipes.
I'm not in a position to argue about the authenticity of her stuff, but it sure seems authentic.
p.s. i have a personal letter from her - one of her recipes wasn't coming out and i wrote her and got a reply with a long introduction to how lucky i was to be living in rome with those WONderful little artichokes...

[boar_d_laze]

Julia Child was a great teacher, a great cook, and an author and co-author of a few good cookbooks and food related books. She was also one of the first, great stars of PBS, and helped define an era as a pop-star.

Because of television, it's easy to overlook the fact that her best books were collaborations with other, equally or more famous chefs and writers.

So, let's not forget Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, who deserve as much, if not more, credit for writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vols. I & II as Childs. IIRC, the other two women gave most of the credit to Beck.

And let's not forget the immortal Elizabeth David, who along with Juliet Renny, collaborated on French Provincial Cooking.

Also, Jacques Pepin.

IMO Child's greatest gifts was keeping things in perspective.

BDL

[chefjune]

Originally Posted by boar_d_laze

Julia Child was a great teacher, a great cook, and an author and co-author of a few good cookbooks and food related books. She was also one of the first, great stars of PBS, and helped define an era as a pop-star.

Because of television, it's easy to overlook the fact that her best books were collaborations with other, equally or more famous chefs and writers.

So, let's not forget Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, who deserve as much, if not more, credit for writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vols. I & II as Childs. IIRC, the other two women gave most of the credit to Beck.

And let's not forget the immortal Elizabeth David, who along with Juliet Renny, collaborated on French Provincial Cooking.

Also, Jacques Pepin.

IMO Child's greatest gifts was keeping things in perspective.

BDL

not sure where you have gotten your facts, but the bolded text is just not true. The three ran a cooking school together in Paris, and all three contributed to the FIRST volume, but Julia, being the American writing in English WROTE the book. Simone Beck (Simca) was a very close collaborator. Bertholle tested more recipes than she wrote. Bertholle's name is not on the second volume. By that time she was out of the picture altogether.

Any of Julia's biographies will corroborate the above, as will Judith Jones' autobiography.

[boar_d_laze]

Chef,

You're right about Julia Child's contributions to Joy of Cooking, of course. I don't know what I was thinking when I put my foot so deeply into my mouth. Looking back at what I wrote, I have a pretty good of idea of where my brain was at the time, though. Whoops.

My larger point about Julia Child was and is that her greatest value in the greater scheme of cookery is as teacher and popularizer, rather than a creator or complier of authentic French, or any other type of recipe. OTOH, it's possible to go too far devaluing her contribution there. It's important to highlight the contributions of other people who did so much to both modernize French cooking and bring it to the English-speaking home (and restaurant scene, as well).

I certainly owe her a great deal for whatever I learned and accomplished in my short career as a pro, and in my lifelong appreciation and continuing practice in the culinary arts. She communicated possibility, discipline and simplicity. Those are, in my opinion, the most important attributes in food -- both on the plate and in the cook.

BDL

[Casericco]

I would have to agree with you that she was a pioneer for getting more people interested in cooking.

[VERDEinVT]

The Great Book of French Cuisine by Henri-Paul Pellaprat

The Saucier's Apprentice by Raymond Sokolov