Advertisement
Lyonnais, Bourbonnais, Nivernais
Appears in
By Alma Lach
Published 1974
To the south and west of Burgundy lie three of the best known areas of provincial gastronomy. Fish and game dishes dominate the menus of the Bourbonnais and the Nivernais, both being lands which specialize in copious country foods. The Lyonnais, though small in area, is great in cuisine. At its center is Lyons, the traditional capital of French gastronomy.
Historically, the city of Lyons lay across the trade routes from north to south and east to west. Merchants, bankers, and churchmen from Italy met there in the sixteenth century with their French colleagues. In the fine houses of Lyons along the Rhone the cuisine of late Renaissance Italy quietly passed into France. Here it was gradually transformed into a method of menu planning and cooking that was eventually to become the basis of haute cuisine.