For many years now I have catered to the haut monde in the great kitchens of Ritz hotels. It has been my privilege to prepare world-famous dishes for world-famous people. Yet never have these years dimmed in the least my memories of the tasty succulent food that was served in my boyhood home—and in thousands of French homes like my own—where even the simplest cooking was fine cooking because it was done with patience and loving care. It was, in fact, in homes such as these that the discerning tastes of France's great chefs—and the famous gourmets who have inspired and honored those chefs—sprouted and flourished.
French cooking, like American, is to an extent regional. Just as in America, different sections take great pride in their specialties. That small province of Le Bourbonnais in the center of France that borders on the Allier River is where my home was, and it was my mother's skillful and discriminating cookery, her unforgettably delicious meals, that were my first inspiration and decided my career.
My mother's kitchen with its well-scoured stone floor, whitewashed walls, and small-paned casement windows was as French as the tricolor that waved over the town hall. It was far, indeed, from the efficient compactness of a modern American kitchen, was not as scientific looking —but oh so cheerful! I remember how the sunshine streamed in through the windows on bright days, marking off big sunny squares on the floor, how the copper pots gleamed, and how, even on dull days, the whiteness of the walls seemed to chase away any gloom. French kitchens like ours had an inviting coziness, a warmth always pungent with tantalizing smells.
The cheeriness of our kitchen was due, however, only in part to the streaming sunshine and the comfortable warmth of the big black stove. More important was the spirit of my smiling, friendly mother who was the queen of this little domain. Pictures of her bustling in her kitchen—her capable hands on the rolling pin flattening out a fat ball of pastry, or carefully skimming the pot-au-feu, or perhaps carrying a soufflé to the table, carrying it so very gently lest its magic puffing collapse too soon—these pictures have been constantly before me. Perhaps my memory now serves me so well because all these kitchen activities were so fascinating to me, were a continual lure. None of the games which we children played in the garden could hold me when my mother called “petit Louis” and I knew that I might help with—or at least watch—some special dish that was under way. Her love of fine food made the daily meal-getting a delight and a challenge, turned us children into little gourmets with our first solid food, and was responsible for my begging to be allowed to go away and serve a chef's apprenticeship.
Our kitchen lacked the vast array of equipment that seems so important today, lacked, for instance, even a meat grinder and an egg beater. Sharp knives minced and chopped to every degree of fineness, wire whips whisked to any desired lightness. Our bowls were the old-fashioned, mustard-colored, earthenware kind and we mixed with wooden spoons. We had relatively few utensils for all the delicious dishes which were turned out. Copper was used for cooking vegetables and sauces, black iron for frying, sautéing, and general cooking, and brown earthenware casseroles, in several shapes and sizes, for soups, stews, and all kinds of baking. Our stove was heated with coal or wood, had no convenient gas cocks or electric switches, and no thermostat to regulate—or thermometer to tell— the oven's heat. Cooking was quickened or delayed by moving the pots nearer or farther from the hot center and the oven was judged by the feel of its heat on the hand—judged, I might add, with great accuracy.
Ours, I know, was a typical French kitchen and the fine cooking that was done in it was typical, too. My mother, like most French women, had learned to cook when a girl by watching her mother, grandmother, aunts, and friends. She was given small tasks at first, then took on more complicated ones until she had trained all her five senses on this very important and, to her, delightful occupation. She learned the feel of foods, such as the lightness of brioche dough when ready for the oven or the resistance meat gives the fork when not quite done; she knew how foods should look, how fine the meat should be chopped for hachis or how coarse the vegetables for hors d'oeuvres; she could tell freshness by smell; and determine the heat of fat by the sputtering sound of chicken or fish frying in it. But above all, she learned to taste with discrimination—that neverending tasting that warned her just when to remove the faggot or advised an extra ten minutes' cooking. Using the senses so constantly makes them keener and keener and I think cannot fail to make a better and better cook. The way, in fact, a French housewife does use her senses instead of depending entirely upon recipes and mechanical aids is, I think, one reason why women like my mother thought of cooking as a creative art, never a tiresome chore.
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