French Fancy by Sarah Lisle

 Xavier Marcel Boulestin wasn’t a trained chef but a home cook; he just loved and understood food. Food and cooking were a huge part of his life and he had a great affinity with it as a result of growing up in France, learning to cook and appreciate food from his mother and grandmother. 

As a result, the recipes in Simple French Cooking for English Homes

are all about simple, tasty, cheap, family-friendly French food, focusing on making the most of what you’ve got and getting the best out of it – using leftovers to their full potential and minimising waste. Not much of a wonder that it sold to a wide audience and influenced a revival of good food after WWI. 

At the time of publication, his recipes were very unlike what people understood French cooking to be about. He distilled the myths about French food and made it accessible. Among the chapters on soups, sauces, egg dishes, fish, meat, vegetables and sweets, he covers a wide range of dishes many of which are now known to be French classics. There’s even a chapter dedicated to salads, something we English, were clearly doing wrong in his opinion! 

Boulestin

has quite a distinct style of writing which, when reading the recipes, makes you feel like you’re by his side in the kitchen watching as he cooks. His recipes are concise without much detail, very few timings and no ingredients lists and yet still clear and easy to follow. He appeals to cooks to use taste combined with their instincts and imagination as well as some creativity to produce a good meal rather than follow exact measurements and instructions. 

His recipe for hachis parmentier, for example, simply says “melt a good piece of butter, add parsley, three small onions, or a large one, and shallots all chopped together. When cooked, put in your cold meat (anything leftover from different dishes will do), salt and pepper, stir well and cook for a little while. Butter a fireproof dish, put in your mixture, cover with potato purée and brown in the oven.” What could be simpler? 

Simple French Cooking for English Homes is a lovely book which warrants a place in the Classic Voices in Food series.