My Cooking and My Garden: COOKING

Cooking has always been a part of my life, I was keen to learn how to cook correctly since I was a little girl, and I am still doing it today.

I am sharing my Reading that I did from New Larousse Gastronomique. It is about cooking. Enjoy

COOKING. CUISINE – The French word cuisine is used for the art of preparing dishes (food) and the place (kitchen) in which they are prepared.

Cooking is An ancient art, born when primitive man first discovered that if a hunk of meat was placed near the fire, it tasted better, and was easier to eat. Some ingenious man found a way of heating water in a stone hollow out into a basin. The clay vase succeeded this primitive pot. The spit and the pot, however rudimentary in the beginning, made many culinary operations possible. Prehistoric finds such as fragments of pottery, flint and bronze implements and traces of hearths throw light on the origins of cooking. (New Larousse Gastronomique)

French cooking in the Middle Ages

Viollet-le Duc gives a picture of what kitchens were like at the time:

“In the houses of the Middle Ages, chimneys were large and high; a man could get inside the chimney without bending, and ten or twelve People could sit comfortably around the hearth. Inside these chimneys strong andirons, called landers, were needed to hold the enormous logs that were put On the fire, and to prevent them from rolling into the room. There were andirons for the kitchen and for other places; the former were complicated in form because they were put to Various uses. Their uprights were furnishes with support or hooks to take the spits; they were surmounted by an extension in the form of a small brazier on which dishes could be prepared or kept warm.

“The division of stoves into several compartments as in our day was seldom seen. The dishes were cooked on the fire itself, and these fierce fires did not allow for dishes which needed constant stirring or to be made in frying pans.

“The andiron-braziers, filled with charcoal, were at a convenient height and at a distance from the fire. Sometimes they were divided, into two compartments, in which case it was possible to prepare and cook four dishes outsides the hearth. Over the hearth hung pots, suspended from hooks or tripods; in front of the fire one or two spits turned several pieces of meat. Only in this way could a large meal be prepared.

“Before the twelfth century, only roast meats and boiled vegetables were eaten, and the art of making stews was almost unknown. What was needed were good clear fires, large hearths on which many long spots could be set, and space for hanging vast cauldrons.

“The architects of the twelfth century began to put an oven in kitchens, and tables on which to arrange food before serving it. From the fourteenth century onwards, sauces were much appreciated. Ovens were needed to make the many dishes which were served at the big feast of the time. The equipment of the kitchens began to improve.

“In the castles and convents of the Middle Ages, the chimney was not always built against the wall in the room kept for cooking, but was sometimes built in the middle of the vaulted roof, and the hearth set in the centre of the room. A kitchen like this resembled a tower, open at the top, without joists to separate the intervening space into floors, and with the diameter decreasing towards the top. Such a kitchen can still be seen in the Palace of the Popes at Avignon.”

View of the kitchen Fontevrault Abbey (New Larousse Gastronomique)