French Domestic Cookery

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The definitive cookbook on French cuisine for American readers: "What a cookbook should be: packed with sumptuous recipes, detailed instructions, and precise line drawings. Some of the instructions look daunting, but as Child herself says in the introduction, 'If you can read, you can cook.'" —Entertainment Weekly “I only wish that I had written it myself.” —James Beard Featuring 524 delicious recipes and over 100 instructive illustrations to guide readers every step of the way, Mastering the Art of French Cooking offers something for everyone, from seasoned experts to beginners who love good food and long to reproduce the savory delights of French cuisine. Julia Child, Simone Beck, and Louisette Bertholle break down the classic foods of France into a logical sequence of themes and variations rather than presenting an endless and diffuse catalogue of dishes—from historic Gallic masterpieces to the seemingly artless perfection of a dish of spring-green peas. Throughout, the focus is on key recipes that form the backbone of French cookery and lend themselves to an infinite number of elaborations—bound to increase anyone’s culinary repertoire. “Julia has slowly but surely altered our way of thinking about food. She has taken the fear out of the term ‘haute cuisine.’ She has increased gastronomic awareness a thousandfold by stressing the importance of good foundation and technique, and she has elevated our consciousness to the refined pleasures of dining." —Thomas Keller, The French Laundry

Originally published in the French language as Cuisine 1000 recettes.

Published in 1832 in Philadelphia, Domestic French Cookery by well-known French writer Louis-Eustache Audot was translated and adapted for an American audience by Eliza Leslie, one of the most popular and prolific American cookbook authors of the 19th century. This classic French cookbook was originally published in Paris in 1818 and has had 87 editions—the American adaptation was also very successful with over 6 editions printed in 23 years. For the American version of Domestic French Cookery, Leslie took great pains to adapt the work for American tools, techniques, and available food. As stated in her preface, Leslie notes that she “aimed at making a book of practical utility to all those who may have a desire to introduce occasionally at their tables good specimens of the French culinary art.” Furthermore, Leslie deemed food items such as sheep’s tails and calves’ ears as below her American audience’s tastes and instead focused on including “respectable” recipes such as Maccaroni Soup, French Coffee, Fine Lemonade, Convenient Lemonade, French Cucumber Pickles, and Chocolate Drops. This edition of Domestic French Cookery was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War patriot and successful printer and publisher, the society is a research library documenting the lives of Americans from the colonial era through 1876. The society collects, preserves, and makes available as complete a record as possible of the printed materials from the early American experience. The cookbook collection comprises approximately 1,100 volumes.

Domestic French Cookery, 4th ed. By Sulpice Barue

This is it! The everyday French cookbook you’ll truly cook from, night after night. Grounded in the wisdom of classical French cooking, yet updated for today, Everyday French Cooking emphasizes easy technique, simple food, and speedy preparation of French cuisine without sacrificing taste. Too often, French cooking evokes images of fine dining at ornate restaurants where a small army of chefs hover over sauces for hours, employing precision technique, special utensils, and obscure ingredients to craft elegant dishes. But this image of French cooking bears little resemblance to the way real French families eat. The French, like their American counterparts, want healthy and delicious food made quickly from easy-to-find ingredients using typical, everyday utensils. From modern takes on classic French dishes—like fish meunière and boeuf bourguignon—to recipes for the kind of cooking found in typical French homes today, Everyday French Cooking goes beyond a typical cookbook to include engaging anecdotes, local color, and keen insights about French home kitchens, as well as tips, tricks, and shortcuts to make French cooking accessible to any home cook. Dozens of beautiful finished-food photographs will further inspire you to cook fresh, vivid everyday French food any night of the week. Enjoy making, sharing, and savoring simple French recipes including: Melty Goat Cheese Salad with Honey and Pine Nuts Scallop Chowder with Fines Herbes Any-Day Chicken Sauté Steak with Cherry and Red Wine Sauce Pork Chops with Mustard-Caper Sauce Simple Beef Stew from Provence Roasted Salmon with Leeks, Wine, and Garlic Classic French Pizzas Strawberry-Caramel Crèpes with Mascarpone Cream Chocolate Pot de Crème Lemon Curd Crème Brûlée Time-pressed cooks will especially appreciate the entire chapter of main-dish recipes that can be made in 30 minutes or less. Indeed, this book proves, again and again, that the joys of the French table are open to everyone. You can live modestly and cook simply, yet dine splendidly, night after night.

Emphasizing easy technique, simple food, and speedy preparation, Everyday French Cooking provides tips, tricks, and shortcuts to make modern French home cooking accessible to any chef.