French Provincial Cooking (23 page)

For those who use French and American cookery books as well as English ones, there is also the question of differing units of weight and measurement. To convert kilos and grammes into pounds and ounces is simple enough, given that both French and English recipes are based on the system of weighing with scales. The American method, that of measuring everything by volume, makes the conversion of their recipes and vice versa much more difficult; and the fact that American liquid measurements are based on the 16-ounce pint instead of the English 20-ounce Imperial pint, makes for further confusion.

Some of these confusions I have tried to sort out in the following tables of approximately equivalent measurements. And please bear in mind that when I say approximate I mean that these equivalents are sufficiently accurate for the conversion of recipes but would not be accepted by a Standards Board. For that matter, neither would the majority of scales in common domestic use, and as for the cup-measuring system for solid ingredients, it appears to me even more chancy.

SOLID MEASUREMENTS

LIQUID MEASUREMENTS

SOLID MEASUREMENTS

LIQUID MEASUREMENTS

COOKERY BOOK MEASUREMENTS

 

How much, I am sometimes asked, is a pinch, a dash, a drop, a suspicion, a glass? When such measurements are given in a cookery book, it is fairly obvious that a little more or a little less will make no difference, and that precise amounts of, say, salt, nutmeg, garlic or other flavourings must be left to each cook’s discretion. However, for those who are worried by the vagueness of such directions, here are the interpretations, most of them as given by Philéas Gilbert in the 1931 edition of
La Cuisine deTous Les
Mois.
The table was not included in the original edition of this work, so one concludes that it was at the requests of readers that he included it in the revised edition. I do not really see of what practical use it is to know how many grains constitute a ‘pinch’ because few of us possess chemists’ scales on which to weigh out such minute quantities. But for occasions when one might wish to calculate a recipe in large quantities, the knowledge would be useful.

LIQUID MEASUREMENTS

SOLID MEASUREMENTS

TEMPERATURES AND TIMING

 

The following table should be regarded only as an approximate guide, and the temperatures given in the recipes in this book should be taken to mean those appropriate to the oven of an ordinary average-sized domestic cooker. (For cooking in very small or very large ovens, temperatures very often have to be adjusted; lowered slightly in the first case and increased in the second.) But even with tricky dishes like soufflés and the roasting of small birds, a certain margin of difference can be allowed both in temperature and timing. For large birds, roasts and stews the latitude is greater. It does not, for example, make a vast difference if you cook a stew at gas No. 1 or No. 2, or if you roast a chicken at 380 deg. or 390 deg. F. And although a certain degree of reliability has been achieved in the regulation of modern ovens, a great many people still use cookers on which the oven temperature controls bear little relation to reality. Only experience of your own oven, or alternatively the purchase of a thermometer, can be the solution in these cases. But please do bear in mind that as far as oven-cooked stews and similar dishes are concerned, timing, temperatures and quantities of liquid are calculated for cooking in earthenware, iron, or other heavy pots with properly fitting lids, so that the food will heat slowly and cook evenly with the minimum of evaporation of the liquid.

TABLE OF EQUIVALENT OVEN TEMPERATURES

THE approach to French sauce cookery for the small household is a totally different one from that of the restaurant or the grand private establishment presided over by a professional chef. On the one hand, you have the sauces of so-called ‘classic’ cookery, based on large quantities of stocks and broths, essences and meat glazes, the
fonds bruns
, the
fonds blancs,
the
jus,
the
fumets
of game and of fish, all obtained by lengthy simmering, straining, reduction and all the processes which imply time, expense, a large staff, an elaborate
batterie de cuisine,
plus a very highly developed sense of taste and a devotion to his work which the cook does not always possess.

The result of all this sauce mystique, evolved in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when conditions were so utterly different from our own, is that today sauces have become a horribly debased branch of cookery. There now appear to be in Anglo-French cooking just two basic sauces: a thick brown one, known as
espagnole,
and a thick white one which passes for
béchamel.
The
espagnole
, made with flour and brown stock, heavily flavoured and coloured nowadays with tomato purée, is heated up over and over again and appears, flavoured with cooking port, as
sauce madère,
with shreds of orange peel as
sauce bigarade,
with diced gherkins as
sauce piquante,
with a chopped tinned truffle as
sauce Périgueux.
The
near-béchamel
becomes, with the addition of cheese,
sauce Mornay
, with a little chicken broth,
sauce velouté,
with tomato purée
sauce aurore.
The inevitable result is that every dish has the same basic flavour, and because the sauces are stale, not a very good one at that.

In simple French household cookery, because they are made freshly and in small quantities, sauces are rather different both in conception and execution. The first principle is that whenever possible the sauce for a given dish is composed of elements supplied by the main ingredient of that dish itself. That is to say, the trimmings of a joint, the giblets of a bird, the carcase and head of a fish, are simmered to make a broth or
bouillon
which will eventually supply the basis of the sauce. When no such elements are present, as in the case of grilled meat or fish, eggs, vegetables, rice, pasta and so on, then there are the egg and butter sauces of which
bearnaise
and
hollandaise
are the two most obvious, and the vegetable purée sauces such as
Soubise
(onions), tomato, mushroom. Then there are the sauces of which the juices of the meat or fish itself
after
it has cooked form the basis, with cream or wine or stock and a binding of yolks of eggs or flour and butter (
beurre manié
) being used to complete it.