Paris has played a unique role in world gastronomy, influencing cooks and gourmets across the world. It has served as a focal point not only for its own cuisine, but for regional specialties from across France. For tourists, its food remains one of the great attractions of the city itself. Yet the history of this food remains largely unknown. A History of the Food of Paris brings together archaeology, historical records, memoirs, statutes, literature, guidebooks, news items, and other sources to paint a sweeping portrait of the city's food from the Neanderthals to today's bistros and food trucks. The colorful history of the city's markets, its restaurants and their predecessors, of immigrant food, even of its various drinks appears here in all its often surprising variety, revealing new sides of this endlessly fascinating city.

In the fourteenth century, French kings prized such fare as peacock, storks and herons. Guillaume Tirel not only cooked these dishes, he left a book on how to do it. Because (it is said) he had a long sharp nose, he was nicknamed "Taillevent" ("Slice-wind"), and his classic cookbook is often referred to as "Taillevent's Viandier." Le Viandier has survived in at least four different versions. Now Jim Chevallier has translated one of the earliest and most difficult versions - the so-called Fifteenth Century version. This affordable translation makes a precious historical document more readily available to recreational medievalists, food historians and students of medieval life. Luckily, too, many of the dishes listed use familiar ingredients such as chicken, veal, eggs and peas. Adventurous cooks can adapt these original period recipes for modern use, and impress their friends with brewets, pasties, galantines and coulis.

Overview The Gauls sat on hay (or maybe dog skins) to eat; the Romans lay on couches; the Franks preferred benches and stools. For a long time, lighting came from candles and torches. Dishes could be made of metal, marble, glass, porcelain, earthenware, and other materials. Silver and gold were used not only for platters but sometimes even for tables. The eighteenth century writer Le Grand d'Aussy takes a sweeping look at the furniture and furnishings used for meals over hundreds of years in France. In the process, he highlights some key developments in French industry: the introduction of faience, the development of what became the famous porcelain of Sevres. He ends his account with a glittering inventory of one medieval king's collection of objects in silver and gold. This new translation makes yet another portion of Le Grand's monumental work on food history available to English-speakers and provides ample insight for food historians, lovers of fine antiques and students of industry alike.

This new translation offers readers of English a unique look at eighteenth century London and England generally, compared to Paris and France in the same period. It was written by the sharp-tongued and observant journalist Linguet, who had moved there to start a French periodical far from French censorship. His observations range from overviews of official institutions like the Law and religion to descriptions of houses, furniture, markets. etc.

Is bacon fat meat? Chicken? Cheese? Eggs? All of these have been considered, at different times, meat or meatless foods by the Catholic Church. The eighteenth century historian Le Grand d'Aussy included several long passages on the complex history of Catholic fasting in France in his master work on the history of French food. Taken together, they explore the often surprising twists and turns this practice took from the time of the Franks to his own. Throughout the Old Regime, the distinction between meat and fast-day foods was central to French dining; the exact definitions, however, of what was meat and what was not and what days were to be observed as fast days shifted dramatically over this period. Le Grand, a former Jesuit, was particularly well-qualified to discuss this issue and does so with authority and wit, citing innumerable older sources in a rare, comprehensive study of this practice in France. He does so however across chapters on poultry, fish, eggs and dairy and seasonings (sometimes shamelessly digressing from a chapter's subject to look more closely at this issue). These passages have been newly translated and brought together here for a work sure to interest those with an interest in the history of French food or Catholicism itself.

Overview Green eggs were popular once, and long before Dr. Seuss, in France. Poached eggs were served with orange juice and spices. Easter eggs inspired not egg hunts, but loud, raucous processions. Cheese might be eaten with sugar and even cinnamon. Brie and Parmesan cheese were popular long before modern times. Butter could be preserved with salt, but also by being melted and put in earthenware jars. On fast days, when meat was forbidden, sometimes eggs were allowed, in other periods they were not; the same thing was true of milk and cheese. These facts are all found in the brief but wide-ranging chapter the eighteenth century writer Le Grand d'Aussy included on eggs and dairy products in his three volumes on the history of French food. Two hundred years later, modern food historians still turn to Le Grand's work for information on various foods, and this new translation gives a sample of the varied and colorful information they find there. NOTE: The section on fasting in this work is also included in the separate work "Catholic Fasting in France." If your own interest is in fasting per se, that work might be a better choice.

Le Grand d'Aussy ends his three-volume history of French food with these exuberant chapters, bristling with colorful details, about how fine dining in France grew more formal and more ambitious, remaining extravagant (by today's standards) even after the sometimes stunning, sometimes laughable excesses of the Middle Ages were reigned in and more sophisticated service and entertainment replaced a host of mechanical devices, pantomimes, and outright exotica. Le Grand draws on a classic cookbook and several forgotten memoirs to bring a wealth of details on menus, table decoration, royal households, customs, and entertainments to those who study the Middle Ages, food history, decoration or simply France in all its infinite variety. For the first time, this rich and unique text is available in English

One of the most complete histories of wine in France was written in the eighteenth century, a long chapter within Le Grand d'Aussy's masterwork on French food and wine (hopefully but misleadingly titled "History of the private life of the French from the origin of the nation until our days"). Le Grand starts with the Gauls, Greeks and Romans and the introduction of wine into France before discussing its development over the centuries and the appearance of the retail trade - merchants, taverns, inns - where wine could first be bought "by the pot." Starting with the first earthen vessels and wineskins used to transport wine, he traces the appearance of that useful microtechnology, the bottle. Drawing (as he does throughout) on a wealth of earlier authors, Le Grand lists the various wines that had been most popular over the centuries and then gives a brief look at some of the most commonly used grapes. He touches on wine from unexpected places such as Brittany, Normandy and... Paris, which for centuries was known for its wine before detouring for some pages into a squabble between Burgundy and Champagne. The French also drank foreign wines, including, once, those of Gaza and Cyprus, and he casts a glance at those before describing the ways in which wine could be used as a gift or payment and the celebrations associated with it. He ends with a look at "artificial wines," the highly flavored ancestors of todays cocktails and with the misnamed "fruit wines." Though frequently cited in culinary texts, Le Grand's masterwork is rarely translated at length and this new modern translation is a rare opportunity to experience the scholarship and lively tone of this classic work directly.

This original collection includes a number of poems on Paris, the Seine, the gargoyles of Notre Dame, the shifting moods of the city and the nostalgia it inspires. A quirky homage to garlic ("Saloon") is followed by a number of poems on great art (Picasso, Renoir, Japanese prints). The collection ends with an elegy to the author's mother. The same collection is also available on CD.

This collection of original scenes for two people presents examples of the kinds of situations frequently seen in television shows such as police and hospital dramas and sitcoms: a doctor revealing test results to a patient, a detective interrogating a suspect, a character scheming to deceive a friend... Each section is preceded by a discussion of the situations or locations in question and their use in such shows. Whether you are an actor looking for a scene to work on in class or a writer who would like to write for TV, this collection has a wealth of scenes and subjects to offer you.

Where did the baguette come from? A simple enough question, but this search for an answer ranges from the long breads of Babylon and Egypt to the first long (but wide) breads in France to the gradual evolution of long narrow breads from the eighteenth into the twentieth century, resulting in both the roll-sized "flute" and the gigantic jockos of the nineteenth century.

The Bastille is most known for being destroyed - it has endured as a symbol of absolute power that fell to popular anger. But few people, even in France, know anything about the actual prison, notably what it was like inside and the details of how the prisoners were really treated. As it happens, Linguet, once quite famous as a lawyer and journalist, was not only in it, but wrote about the experience, and did so only a few years before it fell - some of have said this book provoked its fall. Certainly it helped raise popular indignation against what many Parisians knew only as a looming presence at the end of one of its main streets. Ironically, most of what Linguet describes is less sinister than many ideas people had then and some still have now of the prison - its very secrecy made it seem more ominous. An accomplished journalist, Linguet describes arrival at the prison, the rooms, the furniture, the food, the guards, the rules, the chapel, even the clock (which showed two chained figures) and a wealth of other details. His own description of the castle is an enduring classic. But this annotated edition adds a great deal of additional information, even describing the various types of toilets in the cells. Extensive footnotes offer additional background and explanations of Linguet's references. This edition also includes an appendix with examples of input and exit forms, a description of the entire complex, two annotated views of the Bastille complex, a closer look at the meals served there and another prisoner's letter, with further descriptions of the conditions there, as well as an extensive bibliography. Whether your interest is in the French Revolution, the Old Regime, the history of prisons, or the forgotten but fascinating Linguet himself, this modern edition of an eighteenth century classic offers a wealth of material. NOTE: This edition is identical with that previously published by Jim Chevallier; the work has been retitled to distinguish it from standard public domain versions without annotation.