Food Seminar Blog

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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.   [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]