Cookbook that Changed the World : The Origins of Modern Cuisine

French cooking enjoys a reputation as the most refined and sophisticated cuisine in the world. But to what do we owe this awesome and enduring reputation of French food? And how did the French become the supreme arbiters of Western cooking? In a book full of fresh lore about the history of cookery, T. Sarah Peterson reconstructs the seventeenth-century revolution in French cooking that explains why we eat as we do.

In 1651 in Paris, the unknown cook François Pierre de la Varenne published Le Cuisinier François, and changed the course of culinary history. His recipes caused such a stir in gastronomic circles that he has been remembered ever after as having brought about a renaissance in cooking. But what was so different about Varenne''s recipes? To the modern reader, they seem very acceptable indeed. But to contemporaries, who were used to dining on sweetly fragrant dishes, the salt-acid taste characteristic of ingredients such as asparagus, artichokes, foie gras and sweetbreads came as a shock.

In this ground-breaking book, Peterson reveals how Varenne turned out to be the father of modern cuisine, and explores the history of cooking in a way that will appeal to all those fascinated by food and gastronomy. She discovers how Varenne, with his world-changing book, altered the course of cooking for ever, and why his ideas remain with us still.