{"id":15530,"date":"2017-09-25T11:33:24","date_gmt":"2017-09-25T09:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colleensparis.com\/?p=15530"},"modified":"2017-09-25T13:18:52","modified_gmt":"2017-09-25T11:18:52","slug":"david-downies-parisian-love-affair-with-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/2017\/09\/david-downies-parisian-love-affair-with-food\/","title":{"rendered":"David Downie’s Parisian Love Affair with Food"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"David<\/a>“A Taste of Paris, A History of the Parisian Love Affair with Food<\/strong>” is a fun book in David Downie<\/a><\/strong>‘s style. In his latest book, David combines history, travelogue and a personal quest.\u00a0David’s quest this time: “What is it about the history of Paris that has made it a food lover’s paradise?” In “Taste” you can follow his Paris food seduction from 53 BC to the present.<\/p>\n

Bringing Paris food history alive, David takes us back to the barbarian Parisiis squatting and eating with no tableware and demonstrates how the Romans were the more elegant diners and knew how to entertain and cook refined meals. He presents lots of written culinary activity between the 1300s and 1792 (end of the Ancien R\u00e9gime) with all the King Louis’s, their chefs and the chefs\u2019 cookbooks.<\/p>\n

In “Taste” food origin myths are dispelled. What food do Egyptians, Mediterranean Jews and Greeks have in common? Foie-gras. Sorry, the delicacy does not have French origins. Many French recipes originated in Italy. French food culture is multi-ethnic even today.<\/p>\n

Paris Food History in Multi-courses<\/strong>
\n\u201dTaste\u201d is a history book with David’s humour and presents a timeline of who was cooking up what and when. I would like to imagine what life would be like if school history books had a food timeline relationship. If you thought \u201cnouvelle cuisine\u201d began in the 1970s, think again. Some where else along this timeline of Paris food history, which clearly began when the Romans were bathing at Cluny, you will find the answer.<\/p>\n

Throughout “Taste” David often references cookbooks through the centuries, their recipes and what you will find in them. For example, the ingredients of the real blanquette de veau in Fran\u00e7ois Marin’s recipe from 1739; the original healthful cr\u00e8me br\u00fbl\u00e9e au citron vert from 1691 or the sauce recipes of Taillevent, chef of kings Charles V and VI. His sauces from the 1300s vary in colorful shades of “whitish greenish and reddish”: ginger-cinnamon cameline; gingery dodine de layt; piquant verjus-based sauce.<\/p>\n

A Food Tour of Paris<\/strong>
\nIf you are a Paris restaurant and cuisine curious individual, have a pen and paper or Google Maps and a phone app open for note taking while reading “A Taste of Paris”.<\/p>\n

David references many restaurants noted for their food style and decor. I want to check out Anne-Sophie Pic\u2019s restaurant with the “table d’h\u00f4te” in the centre of the room. The style dates back 250 years before restaurants were known as restorative places to eat with fixed menus.<\/p>\n

He suggests where to go from bistro dining to elegant bewigged wait staff at Versailles.\u00a0The food history of ruling monarchs and emperors and the debauchery of the Regency and Palais Royal enliven the historical story telling.<\/p>\n

He researched and read the cookbooks, recipes, almanacs, encyclopedia and the how-to-books of “proto-food theorists”, Jean Anthem Brillat-Savarin and Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de la Reyni\u00e8re (Billat-Savarin and Grimod de la Reyni\u00e8re for short). David was a reviewer for Gault &Millau and has had a full career of food and travel writing (when you could earn a living prior to the internet rage).<\/p>\n

David possesses the basic qualifications to write “A Taste of Paris”: an interest and knowledge of food, wine and lifestyles. His four earlier books centre on food, wine and lifestyles about Italy and Burgundy.<\/p>\n

Other David Downie book reviews on Colleen’s Paris<\/strong>
\nParis, paris: Journey into the City of Light<\/a>
\nParis to the Pyren\u00e9es, A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James<\/a>
\nDavid Downie in Wikipedia<\/a>
\nDavid Downie on National Public Radio (NPR)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“A Taste of Paris, A History of the Parisian Love Affair with Food” is a fun book in David’s style. David combines history, travelogue and a personal quest.\u00a0David’s quest this time: “What is it about the history of Paris that has made it a food lover’s paradise?” You can follow his Paris food seduction from 53 BC to the present. Bringing Paris food history alive, David presents lots of written culinary activity between the 1300s and 1792 (end of the Ancien R\u00e9gime) with all the King Louis’s, their chefs and the chefs\u2019 cookbooks. David takes us back to the barbarian Parisiis squatting, eating with no tableware and demonstrates how the Romans were the more elegant diners and knew how to entertain and cook refined meals. In “Taste” food origin myths are dispelled. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15533,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[722,669,663],"tags":[843,1008,1007,612,465,805],"class_list":["post-15530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-books-guides-writing-workshops","category-food-drink-health","tag-book-review","tag-chefs","tag-cuisine","tag-david-downie","tag-food-2","tag-history"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Downie_Taste-of-Paris_6225.jpg?fit=960%2C1280&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15530"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15538,"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15530\/revisions\/15538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}