As a child I was somewhat mystified by my mother’s liking for century eggs, a Chinese delicacy known also as thousand-year eggs or Ming Dynasty eggs or pi dan.  I did not find them to [...]

In an 1895 drawing of the Prison de la Santé (Paris) appear the words “Celui qui ne veut pas travailler ne doit pas non plus manger”—part of a protestant temple was being used as the [...]

Talking about books with his parents and siblings during meals was a great influence in the life of the poet and novelist Bernard Leclaire (b. 1959), as he noted in an interview for the website [...]

Mobilization in France during World War I meant that villages could suddenly lose their only bread baker, among other essential workers.  As it was not customary for anyone to make their own bread at home, [...]

A painted plate made by the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory would of course be well-designed, if not intriguing as well.  Take for example the design called Les Meringues by Jean Charles Develly (1783 – 1849).  In [...]

While studying in Paris from 1899 to 1902, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877 – 1968) impressed Auguste Rodin (1840 – 1917) when he saw her sculpture Homme qui a faim, aka Man Eating His Heart, [...]

What is “home”?  Where can “home” be?   In an April 2001 interview for the magazine Label France (published by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Gao Xingjian (b. 1940) spoke of certain moments that [...]

Life, writers, and coffee—vast topics, yet all three cinched together can look like the following: in the 2007 book Mon père (textes inédits recueillis par Leïla Sebbar, coordonnés par Behja Traversac, mis en page par [...]

In eighteenth-century France a literary genre grew out of ridiculing and caricaturing women who sold fish at the market: le genre poissard.  The women’s speech, manners, and social class were targeted.  Fear and admiration of [...]

How many of us would eagerly read a bit of newspaper that has been used to wrap food?  All of us, ideally, if we had as voracious an appetite for reading as the writer Emmelie [...]

From vehemently rejecting the French word “menu” to using the very same word matter-of-factly in the title of one’s book—much can change in a few years.  In The Culinary Handbook: The Most Complete and Serviceable [...]

A cat being fed: would seeing images of this lead to curiosity about a women’s prison in Paris or about one of the few successful female painters from late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century France?  It [...]

In 1814 General Andrew Jackson urgently needed more soldiers in order to be able to fight off the British who were trying to take New Orleans.  On September 21st he appealed to the freemen of [...]

Gâteau?  Usually less complicated than one’s relationship with time.  The student of literature might think of Proust’s madeleine, the journey on which this petit gâteau takes the narrator of A la recherche du temps perdu [...]

Ingesting vinegar-soaked sorrel or medicinal lemon syrup may or may not be of much help in times of plague, whereas “Le courage, le sang-froid, la frugalité, sont les meilleurs préservatifs"— this proposal is found on page 330 of [...]

What might catch your eye at the marketplace?  A load of grapes being taken from or hoisted onto a harvester’s back?  A pickpocket?  Someone’s grocery basket despite the snowstorm?  The shopper over there?  That child [...]

Other than lunching in the style of Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863) by Édouard Manet (1832-1883), how else might the midday meal be taken?  A greenhouse-like room would be an interesting place to have lunch, [...]

If one comes across a couplet and a painting that, each in its own way, bind together food, power, exchange, identity, death, and birds, for starters, then why not invite others to reflect on such [...]

It is the second half of the nineteenth century in France, and you are purchasing plates, dishes, or bowls made by Joseph-Théodore Deck (1823-1891), a renowned ceramist.  What might those French wares look like?  Well, [...]

During the Franco-Prussian War (July 19, 1870 - May 10, 1871), a physician by the name of Christopher James Davis (1842-1870) from Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital in London went to Sedan, France because he wanted to [...]

Château Tour Saint-Pierre was renamed Château Lapin d’Or.  Château Larteau was renamed Château Lapin Impérial.  Château Senilhac was renamed Château Antilope Tibétaine.  Château Clos Bel-Air was renamed Château Grande Antilope.  These wine estates in the [...]

[…] et quant a parler de tout le bien qui ou dit livre puet estre noté, certes trop plus de vertueuses choses, mieulx dictes, plus auttentiques et plus prouffitables — mesmes en politiquement vivre et [...]

For what cause or reason might someone go on a hunger strike?   In 1966 Pierre Vallières (1938-1998) and Charles Gagnon (1939-2005) held a hunger strike in front of the United Nations in New York [...]

In 1918 the American Red Cross tried to improve the diet of schoolchildren in impoverished parts of Paris.  This project began after Dr. John B. Manning, who was working at a Rockefeller Commission dispensary in [...]

The year is 1701.  The dukes of Bourgogne and of Berry are passing through Montélimar, France.  What would be something representative of Montélimar to give them?  Nougat — a sweet made of egg whites, roasted nuts, [...]

University students in Paris during the Great Depression took the initiative to open a soup kitchen in the Latin Quarter even though they themselves neither did the cooking nor had enough money.  Part of their [...]

“Le luxe est le pain de ceux qui vivent de brioche.” — André Saurès (1868-1948), Voici l’homme (1906)   Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793) might not have actually said “Qu'ils mangent de la brioche” during the French Revolution, [...]

Parisian eateries play an interesting part in an etching by James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and in a painting by Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998), two American artists who had spent a considerable amount of time in [...]

Around eighty percent of the food items for consumption in current-day Guadeloupe are imported, mostly from France.  One item that sidesteps this domineering situation is crab, which has an interesting history.   During the 18th [...]

Absinthe, brandy, Camembert, candy, chocolate, cognac, Cointreau, cookies, Coulommiers cheese, lemon soda, Sauternes — advertising for many food items in France from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries used the Pierrot character.   [...]

Preferring a type of food other than French is not all that unthinkable, even if one does happen to dine regularly with Louis XIV, as can be seen in the writings of his sister-in-law Charlotte-Elisabeth [...]

France’s first anisette able to rival that of old houses from Amsterdam such as Lucas Bols (founded in 1575) and Wynand Fockink (founded in 1679) was the anisette produced by the 1755 company Marie Brizard [...]

What happens when a wine-producing region is affected by climate change?  Below is a sampling of what has been reported in the past five years: eleven articles and two podcast episodes listed in reverse chronological [...]

Books that put French cooking on a pedestal abound from the seventeenth century to the present day, but what of books in which French cooking shares the stage with recipes from other countries?  Except for [...]

Climate change has recently been disturbing coffee production in countries such as Cameroon, Haiti, and Côte d'Ivoire.  The consumer's concerns about reduced flavor quality and increased pricing for a cup of coffee (due to a [...]

By the end of the nineteenth century, metalwork made in Europe began competing with the local production of Morocco.  European merchants started to sell objects inspired by the local craftsmanship from the North of Africa. [...]

Whether words are more important than food or vice versa — interesting stances about this have been taken.  The following are a few examples.  Bon appétit !   I.   Food 1.   Je vis de [...]

Tea being made into a French drink almost as if by the sheer attitude of the fashionable crowd— that is a notion suggested in a number of magazines and newspapers during the early 1900s in [...]

In Morocco sugar loaves are offered on the occasion of a marriage proposal (two sugar loaves), weddings, births, or visits to persons celebrating their return from the pilgrimage to Mekka.  It is said that sugar [...]

Jam on bread can be comforting, routine, pleasant, appetizing, or too sweet.  We step into different territory, however, when we look at the French word marmelade as it has been used in figurative ways by [...]

The compotier (a generally long-stemmed dish or bowl for serving dessert or uncooked fruit) has been reworked in exceptional ways by Pierre Reverdy (1889-1960), Juan Gris (1887-1927), Marcel Mültzer (1866-1937), and Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933). [...]

Apple Marys and Apple Annies were women so nicknamed when they sold apples on the street as a way to eke out a living in New York City and other US cities during the late [...]