Published 2002
Waverley Root, in his marvelous work The Food of France, divides France into four regions based on the principal cooking fat used in each. In the southwest it’s goose fat; in the southeast, olive oil; in the northeast, lard; and in the northwest, butter. While the distinctions among the cooking styles of France’s many regions have blurred a great deal since the Second World War, these divisions are still applicable to traditional regional cooking. For most of us, French cooking is almost synonymous with cooking with butter. This is because classic French cooking—the cooking that evolved in the French court and later in fine restaurants—has been based on butter since the seventeenth century. (In medieval cooking, lard was more common.)
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