Recipes

Recipe Styles Become Distinctive in the seventeenth century. Some remain just a few lines, little throwaway ideas like John Murrell’s apple pufs (a type of pancake) and La Varenne’s sautéed asparagus finished with herbs and cream. Others are very long indeed, several hundred words of intricate explanation of processes such as making bread or puff pastry. As a result, the length of a recipe text conveys a much better idea of how much more, or less, work is involved than in the past. The two-day procedure described by Nicolas de Bonnefons for kneading, raising, and proofing the rich dough for brioche tells it like it is—a lot of hard work.