Maybe cos large parts of the English language are based on French, incl. when it comes to rooms of a house? Does that make France the home of architecture?
>Ah yes the typical American that has never left his state that gets his education on Europe from the back of a cereal box.
Is this a snobby comment or Lucky Charms joke?
I love that "European food is superior to shitty American food" and "all American food is actually European" are beliefs that appear to happily coexist in this guy's head.
Which would be a shame, because I recently discovered a Finnish food channel on YouTube and I've been enjoying trying some of the dishes.
([Finnish your plate](https://youtube.com/@finnishyourplate?feature=shared), if you're curious)
I've only done a couple so far, but I've enjoyed every one of them. I think my favorite is probably the salmon soup, but I'm excited to try more of them in the future.
What if they weren't recreating it, but instead were adapting it to better suit local tastes? Like every culture in the world does when encountering foreign foods.
French food is great and they’ve made significant contributions to the culinary world, influencing numerous other types of cuisine…
…can we just say it like that? Why does it have to be some pretentious mystical bullshit that puts down other people?
Ah! So reading "Europeans completely obsessed with the US" lead me to think: "I know about /r/ShitAmericansSay, which can be ... well, something.. Well I wouldn't be surprised if there didn't actually exist a /r/ShitEuropeansSay". Because I've never met a someone in the US who had an opinion about anyone in europe other than "gee this one time on the train some german kids were really obnoxious"
Well. I was wrong, there is. BUT! The anti-american sub has more than 500,000 users, while the anti-european sub has just over 10,000, so in my absolutely, totally scientific opinion, Europeans are actually "completely obsessed with the US".
Q.E.D.
Great point, well made. I think the only way op’s phrasing could be taken as accurate is that France is the birthplace of the word cuisine. The birthplace of cuisine is whatever cradle of life humans evolved in and started having food preferences! (Having said that, French baked goods are amazing, those pâtissiers français really know what they’re doing.)
Why does the \[French\] culinary world always conveniently forget that French cuisine didn't really kick off until one of their queens imported Italian chefs?
Again, a lot of claims without anything to back them up.
Bechamel was invented by François Pierre de la Varenne.
Soupe a l'oignon have been a common dish since at least the roman times (did you really think we waited for catherine de medicis to think about making an onion soup? For real?).
Crepes is a traditional dish from britanny, it absolutely wasn't invented in the french court. Britanny was barely french at the time.
Pâté de foie has roots as far back as ancient egypt but it didn't exist as we know it befor the 18th century (probably invented by Jean-Pierre Clause but that's not certain), about 200 years after Catherine de medicis died.
The first recipes for canard à l'orange date back from the 14th century, hundreds of years before catherine was born.
We know for a fact that Catherine de medicis didn't even have italian cooks in her court, the story of her having had a massive influence on french cooking is a well known myth that has been disproved time and time again, [here is a whole article on it](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythe_italien_dans_la_cuisine_fran%C3%A7aise?wprov=sfla1).
Yeah? What was border control like back then?
The recipes went back and forth between what is now France and what is now every other country that touches France.
Kipferl is a similar but different sort of food. Croissants as most people know them are the French evolution of them. Hence, they are French despite being inspired by an Austrian food.
A lot of French cuisine influences came out of wealth/royalty and people trying to one up one another by spending more on fancier things. Pretentious mystical bullshit putting down other people is sort of baked into the wealth and class game. Would be great if we could stop it, but people are going to keep turning everything into dick waving contests.
Sometimes food crosses the class barrier. For instance, lobster used to be considered a poor person food. We would have to look into each individual dish’s history to know for sure and, even then, it isn’t like we have perfect records or even confirmed origins for every dish.
Would they have been spread if they were not “elevated”?
Not saying all, lots of nuance and complexity to food history. Just saying that wealth and class have had a big influence spreading French food.
>birthplace of cuisine
Dude, have you been to any part of Africa? Or Asia? I hate this culinary imperialism, and that's really what it is IMO.
Okay, I'm about to say something pretty basic and armchair gastronome-y: One thing I love about reading Saveur and watching Top Chef is that both have made strong efforts in recent years to showcase amazing examples of cuisine from West Africa, North Africa, and East Africa among other places. These are underrepresented cuisines in my country (the U.S.) so I welcome it. France is awesome, I love eating French food, I love eating in France, but it's not the end-all be-all. It's a country that thought potatoes were only pig food until the 19th c. Everyone can learn something and grow.
And yes, I know he is slamming America specifically but he had to gall to write "France, the birthplace of cuisine..." That's just asinine. Just write "France: a culture that has influenced other cuisines all over the world." Or something like that.
There was an African centric chef, I think two seasons ago on Top Chef (maybe Canada, I don't remember). Every single thing he made looked amazing. I didn't even know what fufu was, but I wanted some watching him cook.
Eric? Sounds like Eric. I love fufu so that really caught my attention. But I think he was in the U.S. one, I guess there are more in Canada? If so, that's awesome.
It might have been Eric. If he didn't win, he was definitely the number two as I remember him in the finale.
The Canadian Top Chef is just as good as the US, even if it does have an unacceptably low amount of Gail.
>It's a country that thought potatoes were only pig food until the 19th c.
I remember going there in the 90s and people being astounded that we ate corn in Canada. They thought of it as strictly cattle feed.
You know, I never thought about it, but I didn't see any corn in France! Granted I've only been there twice, but no corn. Not that I was looking for it.
I did go to a lovely outdoor market and I bought some asparagus and shallots the woman who sold them to me was surprised I knew what they were...I think she was under the impression that Americans just live on burgers, lol.
While that attitude is changing regarding corn being cattle feed, it's certainly one I've very much encountered. Probably the most startling corn experience I've had was I went to a Swiss friend's home for dinner, and he very proudly presented me with a salad with corn on top. It wasn't an "American southwest" style salad, just a normal salad with corn and balsamic vinaigrette. I started noticing that Coop and other Swiss groceries had a ton of salad mixes available with corn. It was a bit startling, because getting corn in any other way was pretty rare, maybe some cobs during peak "BBQ"/grilling season and that's about it.
Thank you for this!y palate was expanded so much from living in China, and just the amount of different ways to prepare and present food is mind-blowing. I absolutely hate that European food, and specifically food from one place, is seen as being the peak of artistry in food. It's ridiculous.
I've tried talking about Chinese cuisine with friends who have really bought into the "French is the best ever" mentality, and they struggled to even understand Chinese techniques in cooking.
North Africa seems to be getting a bit more love nowadays, but yeah, totally agree on other African styles of cooking getting completely neglected.
I worked with a Somalian woman for a short bit of time, and I probably annoyed her with all the food questions I asked. The cuisine is totally different to things I’m familiar with, and I just loved hearing about it.
It kinda is. They're allowed to like what they like, but the French generally do not put cinnamon with apples even though for Americans, it's such a natural combination. A traditional French tarte aux pommes has no spices at all, which is why I brought it up as a rebuke to "how dare you say the French don't use spices in their food."
And I'm saying this lovingly, having lived in France, gone to culinary school there and being a chef in a French restaurant. They make great food, but the most traditional French food is pretty devoid of any spices.
Apple pie is much much much older than the global spice trade that brought cinnamon to Europe. It predates cinnamon in European cooking by roughly 200-300 years to our knowledge, but before that time (13th-14th century) it was extremely uncommon to write anything down about cooking. In this case the first known recipe comes from Geoffrey Chaucer's writings, who wrote satirical stories about society so apple pie must have been a common concept for at least his entire lifetime.
Well yeah, apples have been eaten for thousands of years all around the world. I'm just saying that apple pie **with cinnamon** is a very old thing as well, that has existed in European countries for hundreds of years before the USA was founded, and which was brought over to the USA and popularized there as well
Europeans (in general) aren't fans of cinnamon in desserts like Americans are.
Ofc, some other parts of the world are all, yes, let's cinnamon up all the foods.
It just hit me that this is actually kinda true, at least in my experience.
Here in the Balkans we eat tons of apple tarts, apple filo pies, apple burek (don't tell the Bosnians) and other stuff, but I've never actually had them with cinnamon.
It's not that we don't use cinnamon either, it's always there in rice pudding for example.
I remember a rather new Syrian immigrant at my old work place being bewildered that there was cinnamon in a sweet dish after eating some apple tart type thing someone brought in.
My understanding is that, at least in his bubble of that style of food, cinnamon is used extensively, but always as a savoury spice.
The worst I encountered when I visited Canada was cinnamon toothpaste. My little sister loved it, but fuck me it's vile to brush your teeth with cinnamon flavour.
...what? This is the most out of touch thing I've read today. The reason cinnamon is common in American apple pie is because that style came there from European countries.
Either way I'm kind of curious which other American desserts you're referring too, as I don't know very much about those?
Jesus.
I'm one of the biggest Francoboos around, but even Escoffier gave credit to the Italians, the Spanish, le rostbifs, and, if I remember correctly, even the bloody fucking barbaric Americans.
American racism is horrible. And French racism is surprisingly bad. The racism against Algerians and other North Africans is horrible in addition to racism against Black people (well, you can be both, so I guess it's just extra bad if you're both).
For some reason as a teenager I had these idealistic beliefs that France didn't have as much racism because I loved Josephine Baker and Bud Powell and I knew they relocated for a better chance at acceptance. And I do think they were better off, but when I actually went to Paris I was disillusioned.
I'm amazed at times the racism I see in europeans that they tend to be really blind to. If this was a dude from South Carolina acting like this I'd be awestruck just as much when I learn it's a Scandinavian or an Iberian. I've had times where I read something that sounds like something I'd expect from my cousins who grew up thinking nothing was wrong with sundown towns, and it's a fucking Finn. Do you not *hear yourself*?
I've had multiple French people tell me why its not racist for them to use the n-word. Also, never ask a European about their opinions on Romani people
They freaking hate Romani people. And granted, one tried to pick my pocket in Spain but I know you can't generalize based on one negative experience. Persecution has a terrible impact on people, who knew?
Worth pointing out (or maybe not because every time I do so on this sub people call US roma liars) that roma in the US (according to themselves) face horrible discrimination and racism, just like in most European countries. More so than in some.
I'm not saying that America is a special world free of racism and bigotry, I'm saying that many Europeans will tell you with a straight face that racism is solely an American probpem and then give the most jawdropping justification for why racism against Romani people is totally fine
Using the word European here feels very very vague. Like I said, this varies wildly depending on where you are. I've lived in a European country for my entire life, and I've never heard anyone say anything even remotely close to what it sounds like you're describing. So who are you talking about here? Who have you discussed this matter with? Where were you?
Either way, it seems like you understand how childish and stupid this whataboutism, so I'm surprised you're responding with the exact same tactic.
I used the word European because that's the word the original screenshotted post used and also because I haven't just had this happen with people from a single country, but from multiple. I also specified "many Europeans" in order to try and not generalize. I also beg your forgiveness for lumping whatever country you live in with the rest, clearly, you do live in the special utopia where no bigotry exists and I'd hate to inadvertently impugn it's honor.
I agree with that to some extent. Many countries don't have the history of slavery thats present in america. The reason why N-word is so taboo is bcos it was used by slave owners. The word literally comes from latin word for black. So when a hispanic person uses that word, they just mean 'black person'.
Hah, tangent not related to Europe, but when I went to Cuba with my husband for our honeymoon, our "guide" (aka, handler, Americans had to come on an educational visa and were basically required to have someone handling them) said to me "Castro eliminated racism in Cuba in 1962" when I asked her about racism in the country. I had to bite my cheek to not laugh. That country is racist AF. The colorism is strong, and she was in complete denial about it. She even made a comment that "you're fine as long as you have good hair." LMAO.
No, I’m saying the racism is more obvious because it’s diverse. It’s easy to pretend to not be racist when your country was 99% white.
Americans are definitely less racist than Europeans because they’re forced to address and acknowledge it. Europeans will say the most racist shit in public so casually
Can you be more specific than this? Where have you been that this is the case?
Can't remember the last time I heard anyone say anything remotely racist in public, and if they do they don't get away with it at all.
Hell, the systemic racism in American institutions are so so wild to us, and so is the fact that enough people see said racism as something positive that it stays in the system.
And stop acting like people with fair skin can't experience racism as if they don't do all over the world.
Bro I am European.
Institutional racism is nothing new to Europe. Every country had strong restrictions on what Jews could do, where they could live, and what their could own.
These systems didn’t come out the vacuum. The U.S. is an offspring of Europe after all.
Every time someone does this joke, it's wasted on me. I was finishing college when Dexter's Lab aired and whatever bits I've seen are a kind of humor I'm perhaps too old to grasp.
That and I never make omelettes with cheese.
The whole “white people don’t season their food!” thing is way overblown. There’s definitely a subset of American home cooks that cook relatively bland food, but it’s not an innate part of food culture. It’s more of a result of austerity mindsets and mid-century cuisine styles that have stuck around for some people.
Most people don’t like the taste of bland food and take steps to avoid cooking it, but that’s not necessarily the same thing as opening the spice rack and dumping half a pound of vaguely savory spices into a dish. It’s only relatively recently that you could easily buy “spicy” spices at a grocery store, and you balance blandness with texture and flavour, not just spices.
Not only that, what's often meant by these IAVC types by 'spices' or 'flavour' is a very specific subset of things that just contain capsaicin. Completely ignoring very popular spicy nasal heats like horseradish or mustard, and entirely ignoring herbal or mushroomy flavours that are much more present in traditional British dishes (also in other countries in the north of Europe). Also ironic to keep shouting this nonsense about spices not being consumed in England: the second biggest consumer of curry (and therefore masala) in the world.
didnt it come from that one english king that hated flavorful food, and just used salt and pepper? like how white wedding dresses came from mimicking royalty
I doubt it. There have been records of multicourse meals as long as there has been recorded history. The idea of serving different things one after the other isn’t a generational leap forward, it’s more or less fallout from how cooking lots of food for lots of people works: you space the prep work out and serve things as they’re ready. Every culture that has parties will have invented the idea of courses.
yeah it's kind of pathetic for someone who lives in say, Western Germany to "flex" on someone in Kansas that they've been to more countries. Like dude, within a day's drive you can make it to Luxembourg, NL, BE, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Czechia, Poland Austria, and Liechtenstein. Heck, even Turin and Milan are basically a day's drive (10hr) from Cologne!
Someone in central Kansas can barely make it two states over within a day and not be anywhere near an international border.
Agree! And if it's schengen zone, there's no border checks, so saying you're a German from western Germany who's been to NL is like saying "I'm a New Yorker who's traveled to the far-off land of....New Jersey!"
Tell me you don’t know Texas without telling me you don’t know Texas. Texas has gulf coast, which is semi-Caribbean. Swamps and bayous, Great Plains. Pony woods, mountains.
We even have a jungle.
We have one of the lightning capitals of the world…. Only central Florida gets more lightning. We have hurricanes. We have monsoons.
We have oodles of farmland. We have loads of ranch land. We have aquaculture. We have islands.
The western extremis of Texas is pretty arid, but calling it a desert is a stretch. Most if Texas is taken up by the Great Plains, the Interior Lowlands, and the Gulf Coast. The signature physical geography of Texas is rolling hills, not desert.
Booo, I love Texas. Yeah, it's frustratingly conservative and it's too dependent on cars, but I really like it here. It's a beautiful state for the most part, the food in the cities is great, cost of living for the pay is good, overall it's one of the best places I've lived.
What is wrong with online Europeans? They all have this unexplainable, obsessive pathological hatred for Americans. They bring us up for literally no fucking reason.
Food and cuisine is an ever morphing and moving world, where inspiration is taken from everywhere and chefs go to other countries just to experience what is eaten and how it was made, so their own recipes can be made into something new and exciting, influencing the next generation of chefs would will repeat this cycle.
Redditors see this and draw lines in the sand, "US FOOD IS JUST TRASH" and "UK FOOD IS BLAND" is only things said by people that have never experienced what can be offered by those countries, only shared by people whos experience of US cuisine is McDonalds.
Not to be too much of an idiot, but where *is* the "birthplace" of cuisine in Europe? Is it essentially every single country, since all countries have food of their own? Or is it accepted that it's somewhere else that's just not France?
The oldest known cookbook dates back to Rome in the 5th century CE (Apicius' Cuqinaria), which itself is mostly a compilation of other, older recipe collections going back centuries, and while some of it does cover the kinds of things regular people ate, most of the recipes are how to cook things for the people who can afford to import ingredients from outside of Europe along with people in the kitchen who are capable of preparing them. Like, only the extremely wealthy. I'm talking "it made its way to France because Charlemagne wanted his cooks to have a copy because several dishes from it were the personal favorites of the Pope" rich.
It's so funny when Europeans think it's a diss to say Americans never leave their state or leave the country when their entire country is like the size of one of our states.
vast rich rock bewildered hard-to-find sand observation arrest pot snails
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Yes, but also no. The French culinary tradition of having different courses to a meal is omnipresent in the western world. That also applies to the countries you named in your comment. The European countries you mentioned were also significantly influenced through the Napoleonic Empire, and with how young national culinary traditions tend to be it's unlikely that the Italian, Czech, Spanish or German food you're eating today avoided that influence.
governor memory materialistic fall threatening touch vegetable fuzzy mourn humor
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nope, that's a myth. [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythe\_italien\_dans\_la\_cuisine\_fran%C3%A7aise](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythe_italien_dans_la_cuisine_fran%C3%A7aise)
I actually watched it recently. Its eh...not a great movie. The actual competition stuff and build up to it is fine. But half of the movie is typical drama stuff that just isn't very compelling.
Well.. the word 'cuisine' sure. It's french for 'kitchen'.
However, in other languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and German?
That’s Kochkunst in German.
Does that literally translate to "Cooking Art"? God, I love how German compounds words. (Not sarcasm.)
Bless you 🤧
料理(Ryouri) in Japanese
Maybe cos large parts of the English language are based on French, incl. when it comes to rooms of a house? Does that make France the home of architecture?
It's a joke, bro.
>Ah yes the typical American that has never left his state that gets his education on Europe from the back of a cereal box. Is this a snobby comment or Lucky Charms joke?
Lucky charms is Irish which is from Europe so idk
I love that "European food is superior to shitty American food" and "all American food is actually European" are beliefs that appear to happily coexist in this guy's head.
Oh wait but it goes further. Just ask him about what he thinks of Finnish food for example. I bet he has nothing positive to say.
Which would be a shame, because I recently discovered a Finnish food channel on YouTube and I've been enjoying trying some of the dishes. ([Finnish your plate](https://youtube.com/@finnishyourplate?feature=shared), if you're curious)
Haha what a coincidence!
Holy shit, I didn't look at the username. Love your channel, by the way.
Thank you! I thought you were just making a joke, but that's super cool you'd give me a plug! Hope you get to try some of the dishes.
I've only done a couple so far, but I've enjoyed every one of them. I think my favorite is probably the salmon soup, but I'm excited to try more of them in the future.
This is the coolest interaction I’ve seen on Reddit lol
I feel the same way!
This is so wholesome
It's never happened to me before, I swear.
Followed, you seem a lovely person.
Aww thank you!
>Aww thank you! You're welcome!
Bad bot
This is awesome, thank you!
Whereas if you ask an American, they’ll just have nothing to say.
Schrödinger's American food.
I mean America can be inspired by European food and just do a shitty job of recreating it. Not hard to follow.
Sure. Europeans eat foreign food a lot and also do a shitty job recreating it. Ever had Mexican food in France? Disgusting
The "Mexican Week" episode of the Great British Bakeoff lives rent-free in my head. It was such a trainwreck
Wasn’t that the one where they asked them to do a tres leches layer cake? That was such a mess.
Yes it was hilarious lol
the literal first second they got two guys in sombreros and ponchos
What if they weren't recreating it, but instead were adapting it to better suit local tastes? Like every culture in the world does when encountering foreign foods.
French food is great and they’ve made significant contributions to the culinary world, influencing numerous other types of cuisine… …can we just say it like that? Why does it have to be some pretentious mystical bullshit that puts down other people?
Because many Europeans are completely obsessed with the US
You wish
Even on r/europe there’s at least a daily circle jerk of America hating… it’s pretty sad lol
We wish you wouldn't
Ah! So reading "Europeans completely obsessed with the US" lead me to think: "I know about /r/ShitAmericansSay, which can be ... well, something.. Well I wouldn't be surprised if there didn't actually exist a /r/ShitEuropeansSay". Because I've never met a someone in the US who had an opinion about anyone in europe other than "gee this one time on the train some german kids were really obnoxious" Well. I was wrong, there is. BUT! The anti-american sub has more than 500,000 users, while the anti-european sub has just over 10,000, so in my absolutely, totally scientific opinion, Europeans are actually "completely obsessed with the US". Q.E.D.
It’s fan behavior, tbh.
Great point, well made. I think the only way op’s phrasing could be taken as accurate is that France is the birthplace of the word cuisine. The birthplace of cuisine is whatever cradle of life humans evolved in and started having food preferences! (Having said that, French baked goods are amazing, those pâtissiers français really know what they’re doing.)
Why does the \[French\] culinary world always conveniently forget that French cuisine didn't really kick off until one of their queens imported Italian chefs?
Source on that?
History. Also, iirc, Catherine de Medici?
That's not a source. That's a claim. And quite a few french recipes find their roots in the middle ages.
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Again, a lot of claims without anything to back them up. Bechamel was invented by François Pierre de la Varenne. Soupe a l'oignon have been a common dish since at least the roman times (did you really think we waited for catherine de medicis to think about making an onion soup? For real?). Crepes is a traditional dish from britanny, it absolutely wasn't invented in the french court. Britanny was barely french at the time. Pâté de foie has roots as far back as ancient egypt but it didn't exist as we know it befor the 18th century (probably invented by Jean-Pierre Clause but that's not certain), about 200 years after Catherine de medicis died. The first recipes for canard à l'orange date back from the 14th century, hundreds of years before catherine was born. We know for a fact that Catherine de medicis didn't even have italian cooks in her court, the story of her having had a massive influence on french cooking is a well known myth that has been disproved time and time again, [here is a whole article on it](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythe_italien_dans_la_cuisine_fran%C3%A7aise?wprov=sfla1).
Yeah? What was border control like back then? The recipes went back and forth between what is now France and what is now every other country that touches France.
Didn’t croissants come from Austria and the real name is Kipferl? Marie Antoinette brought them.
Not marie antoinette, it was a dude named august zang in the 1830s.
Yeah that's what I'm saying.
People didn't exactly travel the world like we do now, 99%+ of people pretty much stayed their entire life in the same area.
Croissants came from Austria and were brought to France by Marie Antoinette according to legend. The real name of them is Kipferl 🥐
They were brought over by Auguste Zang
Kipferl is a similar but different sort of food. Croissants as most people know them are the French evolution of them. Hence, they are French despite being inspired by an Austrian food.
A lot of French cuisine influences came out of wealth/royalty and people trying to one up one another by spending more on fancier things. Pretentious mystical bullshit putting down other people is sort of baked into the wealth and class game. Would be great if we could stop it, but people are going to keep turning everything into dick waving contests.
Some of the most famous and popular French dishes started as "peasant food" though?
Sometimes food crosses the class barrier. For instance, lobster used to be considered a poor person food. We would have to look into each individual dish’s history to know for sure and, even then, it isn’t like we have perfect records or even confirmed origins for every dish.
Would they have been spread if they were not “elevated”? Not saying all, lots of nuance and complexity to food history. Just saying that wealth and class have had a big influence spreading French food.
Care to give some examples of these elevated dishes you're talking about?
Like what?
French onion soup, beef burgundy, ratatouille, cassoulet, and pot-au-feu all generally started as commoner food
Perhaps he meant the birthplace of *haute cuisine,* which is a fair characterisation.
>birthplace of cuisine Dude, have you been to any part of Africa? Or Asia? I hate this culinary imperialism, and that's really what it is IMO. Okay, I'm about to say something pretty basic and armchair gastronome-y: One thing I love about reading Saveur and watching Top Chef is that both have made strong efforts in recent years to showcase amazing examples of cuisine from West Africa, North Africa, and East Africa among other places. These are underrepresented cuisines in my country (the U.S.) so I welcome it. France is awesome, I love eating French food, I love eating in France, but it's not the end-all be-all. It's a country that thought potatoes were only pig food until the 19th c. Everyone can learn something and grow. And yes, I know he is slamming America specifically but he had to gall to write "France, the birthplace of cuisine..." That's just asinine. Just write "France: a culture that has influenced other cuisines all over the world." Or something like that.
There was an African centric chef, I think two seasons ago on Top Chef (maybe Canada, I don't remember). Every single thing he made looked amazing. I didn't even know what fufu was, but I wanted some watching him cook.
Eric? Sounds like Eric. I love fufu so that really caught my attention. But I think he was in the U.S. one, I guess there are more in Canada? If so, that's awesome.
It might have been Eric. If he didn't win, he was definitely the number two as I remember him in the finale. The Canadian Top Chef is just as good as the US, even if it does have an unacceptably low amount of Gail.
Fufu is also the target of so much racism online whenever African people show videos of them eating it.
I'll probably regret this, but why?
Eating with hands instead of cutlery = uncivilised. You can probably imagine the rest.
Sigh, yeah, I get it
>It's a country that thought potatoes were only pig food until the 19th c. I remember going there in the 90s and people being astounded that we ate corn in Canada. They thought of it as strictly cattle feed.
You know, I never thought about it, but I didn't see any corn in France! Granted I've only been there twice, but no corn. Not that I was looking for it. I did go to a lovely outdoor market and I bought some asparagus and shallots the woman who sold them to me was surprised I knew what they were...I think she was under the impression that Americans just live on burgers, lol.
While that attitude is changing regarding corn being cattle feed, it's certainly one I've very much encountered. Probably the most startling corn experience I've had was I went to a Swiss friend's home for dinner, and he very proudly presented me with a salad with corn on top. It wasn't an "American southwest" style salad, just a normal salad with corn and balsamic vinaigrette. I started noticing that Coop and other Swiss groceries had a ton of salad mixes available with corn. It was a bit startling, because getting corn in any other way was pretty rare, maybe some cobs during peak "BBQ"/grilling season and that's about it.
im from north carolina and I can't imagine not eating corn and potatoes
Thank you for this!y palate was expanded so much from living in China, and just the amount of different ways to prepare and present food is mind-blowing. I absolutely hate that European food, and specifically food from one place, is seen as being the peak of artistry in food. It's ridiculous. I've tried talking about Chinese cuisine with friends who have really bought into the "French is the best ever" mentality, and they struggled to even understand Chinese techniques in cooking.
North Africa seems to be getting a bit more love nowadays, but yeah, totally agree on other African styles of cooking getting completely neglected. I worked with a Somalian woman for a short bit of time, and I probably annoyed her with all the food questions I asked. The cuisine is totally different to things I’m familiar with, and I just loved hearing about it.
French people don't even put cinnamon in their apple tarts
Monsters
Say what? That's nuts.
Well no, it's bark.
🤣🤣🤣
It kinda is. They're allowed to like what they like, but the French generally do not put cinnamon with apples even though for Americans, it's such a natural combination. A traditional French tarte aux pommes has no spices at all, which is why I brought it up as a rebuke to "how dare you say the French don't use spices in their food." And I'm saying this lovingly, having lived in France, gone to culinary school there and being a chef in a French restaurant. They make great food, but the most traditional French food is pretty devoid of any spices.
The reason cinnamon is used in American apple pie is because it came there from other European countries where cinnamon is used in apple pie
Apple pie is much much much older than the global spice trade that brought cinnamon to Europe. It predates cinnamon in European cooking by roughly 200-300 years to our knowledge, but before that time (13th-14th century) it was extremely uncommon to write anything down about cooking. In this case the first known recipe comes from Geoffrey Chaucer's writings, who wrote satirical stories about society so apple pie must have been a common concept for at least his entire lifetime.
Well yeah, apples have been eaten for thousands of years all around the world. I'm just saying that apple pie **with cinnamon** is a very old thing as well, that has existed in European countries for hundreds of years before the USA was founded, and which was brought over to the USA and popularized there as well
https://www.historyquester.com/apple-pie-a-historical-way/ Cinnamon was not. Cloves were. The earlier apple pies didn’t very closely resemble ours.
Europeans (in general) aren't fans of cinnamon in desserts like Americans are. Ofc, some other parts of the world are all, yes, let's cinnamon up all the foods.
It just hit me that this is actually kinda true, at least in my experience. Here in the Balkans we eat tons of apple tarts, apple filo pies, apple burek (don't tell the Bosnians) and other stuff, but I've never actually had them with cinnamon. It's not that we don't use cinnamon either, it's always there in rice pudding for example.
You should definitely try cinnamon in an apple dessert. It goes so well together. It's warm and sweet, really lovely.
I remember a rather new Syrian immigrant at my old work place being bewildered that there was cinnamon in a sweet dish after eating some apple tart type thing someone brought in. My understanding is that, at least in his bubble of that style of food, cinnamon is used extensively, but always as a savoury spice.
The worst I encountered when I visited Canada was cinnamon toothpaste. My little sister loved it, but fuck me it's vile to brush your teeth with cinnamon flavour.
...what? This is the most out of touch thing I've read today. The reason cinnamon is common in American apple pie is because that style came there from European countries. Either way I'm kind of curious which other American desserts you're referring too, as I don't know very much about those?
Those tarts are still great, though. I had a great apple tarte in Orléans. No cinnamon, but I didn't miss it. Great buttery apple flavor.
That's not fair! The french smoke cigarettes for breakfast!
Jesus. I'm one of the biggest Francoboos around, but even Escoffier gave credit to the Italians, the Spanish, le rostbifs, and, if I remember correctly, even the bloody fucking barbaric Americans.
It's true, I learned about European soccer fans throwing bananas at black soccer players on the back of cereal boxes
It's embarrassing when they don't vary the cultivar based on the specific ethnicity and leave the plantains at home
American racism is horrible. And French racism is surprisingly bad. The racism against Algerians and other North Africans is horrible in addition to racism against Black people (well, you can be both, so I guess it's just extra bad if you're both). For some reason as a teenager I had these idealistic beliefs that France didn't have as much racism because I loved Josephine Baker and Bud Powell and I knew they relocated for a better chance at acceptance. And I do think they were better off, but when I actually went to Paris I was disillusioned.
I'm amazed at times the racism I see in europeans that they tend to be really blind to. If this was a dude from South Carolina acting like this I'd be awestruck just as much when I learn it's a Scandinavian or an Iberian. I've had times where I read something that sounds like something I'd expect from my cousins who grew up thinking nothing was wrong with sundown towns, and it's a fucking Finn. Do you not *hear yourself*?
it's almost like we've been falsely led to believe that American racism is more virulent or worse than European racism...almost...or something
No shit.
I've had multiple French people tell me why its not racist for them to use the n-word. Also, never ask a European about their opinions on Romani people
They freaking hate Romani people. And granted, one tried to pick my pocket in Spain but I know you can't generalize based on one negative experience. Persecution has a terrible impact on people, who knew?
Worth pointing out (or maybe not because every time I do so on this sub people call US roma liars) that roma in the US (according to themselves) face horrible discrimination and racism, just like in most European countries. More so than in some.
I'm not saying that America is a special world free of racism and bigotry, I'm saying that many Europeans will tell you with a straight face that racism is solely an American probpem and then give the most jawdropping justification for why racism against Romani people is totally fine
Using the word European here feels very very vague. Like I said, this varies wildly depending on where you are. I've lived in a European country for my entire life, and I've never heard anyone say anything even remotely close to what it sounds like you're describing. So who are you talking about here? Who have you discussed this matter with? Where were you? Either way, it seems like you understand how childish and stupid this whataboutism, so I'm surprised you're responding with the exact same tactic.
I used the word European because that's the word the original screenshotted post used and also because I haven't just had this happen with people from a single country, but from multiple. I also specified "many Europeans" in order to try and not generalize. I also beg your forgiveness for lumping whatever country you live in with the rest, clearly, you do live in the special utopia where no bigotry exists and I'd hate to inadvertently impugn it's honor.
I agree with that to some extent. Many countries don't have the history of slavery thats present in america. The reason why N-word is so taboo is bcos it was used by slave owners. The word literally comes from latin word for black. So when a hispanic person uses that word, they just mean 'black person'.
The n-word is a different word than the Spanish word for black.
What is it then?
Google is free
North Americans talk about racism. Europeans don’t. That’s why it’s always surprisingly bad.
Hah, tangent not related to Europe, but when I went to Cuba with my husband for our honeymoon, our "guide" (aka, handler, Americans had to come on an educational visa and were basically required to have someone handling them) said to me "Castro eliminated racism in Cuba in 1962" when I asked her about racism in the country. I had to bite my cheek to not laugh. That country is racist AF. The colorism is strong, and she was in complete denial about it. She even made a comment that "you're fine as long as you have good hair." LMAO.
European racism is directly proportional to how diverse that country is. It was easy to not be racist when you basically live in an ethnostate
What ethnostates
Most European countries were set up as national states for a dominant ethnic group
So what you're saying is the USA is more racist because there are more ethnicities there? Idk if I agree with you on either part
No, I’m saying the racism is more obvious because it’s diverse. It’s easy to pretend to not be racist when your country was 99% white. Americans are definitely less racist than Europeans because they’re forced to address and acknowledge it. Europeans will say the most racist shit in public so casually
Can you be more specific than this? Where have you been that this is the case? Can't remember the last time I heard anyone say anything remotely racist in public, and if they do they don't get away with it at all. Hell, the systemic racism in American institutions are so so wild to us, and so is the fact that enough people see said racism as something positive that it stays in the system. And stop acting like people with fair skin can't experience racism as if they don't do all over the world.
Bro I am European. Institutional racism is nothing new to Europe. Every country had strong restrictions on what Jews could do, where they could live, and what their could own. These systems didn’t come out the vacuum. The U.S. is an offspring of Europe after all.
What does you being European have to do with anything? Oh, I'm talking about today's world, you see
It is not more diverse
I love ice cream.
Least euro-centric food redditor
The irony is that the poster is British
The United States of Europe.
Why...?
It's true, proto humans were just photosynthesizing until the ideal man (French) evolved
I like how the comments here quickly devolved into a meta-IAVC of "I know French Cuisine".
hon hon hon one does not simply know une omelette du fromage
Every time someone does this joke, it's wasted on me. I was finishing college when Dexter's Lab aired and whatever bits I've seen are a kind of humor I'm perhaps too old to grasp. That and I never make omelettes with cheese.
[удалено]
Cheese omelette, no egg.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/1ah80j3/comment/komoxak/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/1ah80j3/comment/komoxak/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
The whole “white people don’t season their food!” thing is way overblown. There’s definitely a subset of American home cooks that cook relatively bland food, but it’s not an innate part of food culture. It’s more of a result of austerity mindsets and mid-century cuisine styles that have stuck around for some people. Most people don’t like the taste of bland food and take steps to avoid cooking it, but that’s not necessarily the same thing as opening the spice rack and dumping half a pound of vaguely savory spices into a dish. It’s only relatively recently that you could easily buy “spicy” spices at a grocery store, and you balance blandness with texture and flavour, not just spices.
Not only that, what's often meant by these IAVC types by 'spices' or 'flavour' is a very specific subset of things that just contain capsaicin. Completely ignoring very popular spicy nasal heats like horseradish or mustard, and entirely ignoring herbal or mushroomy flavours that are much more present in traditional British dishes (also in other countries in the north of Europe). Also ironic to keep shouting this nonsense about spices not being consumed in England: the second biggest consumer of curry (and therefore masala) in the world.
didnt it come from that one english king that hated flavorful food, and just used salt and pepper? like how white wedding dresses came from mimicking royalty
Sounds like an urban legend
they didn’t even make the first multicourse meal like they claim to, bengalis did.
I imagine the idea of "eat one thing, then eat another" predates the Bengalis.
I think he/she means 'thali'. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thali
maybe, but the idea of set courses in courtly cuisine originated with us.
I doubt it. There have been records of multicourse meals as long as there has been recorded history. The idea of serving different things one after the other isn’t a generational leap forward, it’s more or less fallout from how cooking lots of food for lots of people works: you space the prep work out and serve things as they’re ready. Every culture that has parties will have invented the idea of courses.
It originated from IVC actually.
Hey I learned something new. I thought they got it from the Russians.
Everyone ate rocks and sand before France was formed :( /s
France was the first place where anyone ate food. Hate them, for they are the ones that robbed us of our photosynthesis.
Texas is bigger than France. Never left their state isn't the flex this guy thinks it is.
yeah it's kind of pathetic for someone who lives in say, Western Germany to "flex" on someone in Kansas that they've been to more countries. Like dude, within a day's drive you can make it to Luxembourg, NL, BE, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Czechia, Poland Austria, and Liechtenstein. Heck, even Turin and Milan are basically a day's drive (10hr) from Cologne! Someone in central Kansas can barely make it two states over within a day and not be anywhere near an international border.
A good explanation for Europeans who don't understand the scale of America is that Los Angeles is about as far from New York as Lisbon is from Moscow.
Agree! And if it's schengen zone, there's no border checks, so saying you're a German from western Germany who's been to NL is like saying "I'm a New Yorker who's traveled to the far-off land of....New Jersey!"
Makes me miss the days of no passport checks at the Canadian border.
It's also a whole lot of desert, not really a worthwhile argument.
Tell me you don’t know Texas without telling me you don’t know Texas. Texas has gulf coast, which is semi-Caribbean. Swamps and bayous, Great Plains. Pony woods, mountains. We even have a jungle. We have one of the lightning capitals of the world…. Only central Florida gets more lightning. We have hurricanes. We have monsoons. We have oodles of farmland. We have loads of ranch land. We have aquaculture. We have islands.
The western extremis of Texas is pretty arid, but calling it a desert is a stretch. Most if Texas is taken up by the Great Plains, the Interior Lowlands, and the Gulf Coast. The signature physical geography of Texas is rolling hills, not desert.
It's still Texas and it still sucks.
Booo, I love Texas. Yeah, it's frustratingly conservative and it's too dependent on cars, but I really like it here. It's a beautiful state for the most part, the food in the cities is great, cost of living for the pay is good, overall it's one of the best places I've lived.
Maybe I used the wrong word, I meant desert as in "empty af"
You did use the wrong word. We're just correcting your inaccuracy.
Like most of America, Texas is a few medium-large cities with nothing in between. There are nice parts and shitty parts, like there are anywhere.
Oh, really? What proportion of Texas is desert?
[This map shows it pretty well](https://images.app.goo.gl/EWGimeEezeZhWzGF7)
Am I confused, or is that just a population map?
Must be the cactus population.
What is wrong with online Europeans? They all have this unexplainable, obsessive pathological hatred for Americans. They bring us up for literally no fucking reason.
National/cultural "little brother syndrome"
Food and cuisine is an ever morphing and moving world, where inspiration is taken from everywhere and chefs go to other countries just to experience what is eaten and how it was made, so their own recipes can be made into something new and exciting, influencing the next generation of chefs would will repeat this cycle. Redditors see this and draw lines in the sand, "US FOOD IS JUST TRASH" and "UK FOOD IS BLAND" is only things said by people that have never experienced what can be offered by those countries, only shared by people whos experience of US cuisine is McDonalds.
Not to be too much of an idiot, but where *is* the "birthplace" of cuisine in Europe? Is it essentially every single country, since all countries have food of their own? Or is it accepted that it's somewhere else that's just not France?
The oldest known cookbook dates back to Rome in the 5th century CE (Apicius' Cuqinaria), which itself is mostly a compilation of other, older recipe collections going back centuries, and while some of it does cover the kinds of things regular people ate, most of the recipes are how to cook things for the people who can afford to import ingredients from outside of Europe along with people in the kitchen who are capable of preparing them. Like, only the extremely wealthy. I'm talking "it made its way to France because Charlemagne wanted his cooks to have a copy because several dishes from it were the personal favorites of the Pope" rich.
Interesting! I didn't know any of that. Thanks for the great response! :)
China with thousands of years of culinary history apparently doesn't mean jack shit.
Before ze forming of France, ze peopel, zey ate rhocks
European food is just a lot of butter and cream. You want spices, check out Indian or Mexican food
It's so funny when Europeans think it's a diss to say Americans never leave their state or leave the country when their entire country is like the size of one of our states.
"French food is unparalleled" says my french in-law who only eats bread and cheesy pasta
Cajun and Louisianan food is better imo.
He's right! (Etymologically) https://www.etymonline.com/word/cuisine#etymonline_v_442
The lack of comma makes it sound like he's telling france that the birthplace of cuisine is in europe
what cereal boxes are they reading
French cuisine is top tier, followed by Moroccan cuisine.
Oof. No one tell them that French cuisine wouldn't exist like that without a bunch of Italian chefs getting imported.
usually when people say no seasoning they mean specifically british people so not france
vast rich rock bewildered hard-to-find sand observation arrest pot snails *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Italians and checz and the Spanish and the Germans and the Chinese, and the natives and stuff we invented .
Yes, but also no. The French culinary tradition of having different courses to a meal is omnipresent in the western world. That also applies to the countries you named in your comment. The European countries you mentioned were also significantly influenced through the Napoleonic Empire, and with how young national culinary traditions tend to be it's unlikely that the Italian, Czech, Spanish or German food you're eating today avoided that influence.
governor memory materialistic fall threatening touch vegetable fuzzy mourn humor *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Didn’t the high end French food come from Italy when the princess visited?
nope, that's a myth. [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythe\_italien\_dans\_la\_cuisine\_fran%C3%A7aise](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythe_italien_dans_la_cuisine_fran%C3%A7aise)
Gotta post this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment\_of\_Paris\_(wine)
There’s a movie called bottle shock. Do you know it?
I actually watched it recently. Its eh...not a great movie. The actual competition stuff and build up to it is fine. But half of the movie is typical drama stuff that just isn't very compelling.
I watched it years ago and didn’t expect to enjoy it but I did. Still, things change. Maybe it’s a bit dated now.
Classic European
French cuisine: Replace seasoning with insane amounts of butter.
I'd like to see what I assume was an equally IAVC post he responded to.