Le Cuisinier François

Every one of us has been taught in our history class that the Europeans came to India to trade in spices. Spices used to be a very major source of income for Indian traders and it was one of the major export items. It was their love for spices that Columbus set out to find the western sea route to India; it was spices, which drove Vasco de Gamma, round the Cape of Good Hope to India.

But any of us who has had contemporary European cuisine will know that it does not have any spices at all. It is very lightly flavoured with herbs like parsley, bayleaf etc herbs commonly available in Europe itself. What happened to the European love of for spices? Suddenly it disappeared. Yours truly was very intrigued as why this happened and what caused this.

Like the question, the answer too is a very complex one so bear with me. May 29, fall of Constantinople. The centuries old Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Turks lead by Mehmed II. Constantinople modern day Istanbul used to serve as a very vital link between Europe and Asia and was a major check post along the spice trade route starting in India and leading up to Florence, Geneva in Italy and Paris in France. The Ottoman Turks stopped the free movement of European traders to India and taxed them heavily for passage across the Ottoman Empire. Thus all major existing routes to India were blocked. The only way was through sea. So Vasco de Gamma in 1497 and Columbus in 1492 set out to find sea routes to India. Both of them were successful though in their own ways. The period also coincides with Renaissance.

In the year 1651 François Pierre de la Varenne a French chef in the court of Louis XIV wrote a book Le cuisinier françois (roughly translated as the French cuisine), the founding text of modern

French cuisine. This book was La Varenne broke with the Italian traditions and revolutionized medieval French cookery in the 16th century. The seventeenth century saw a culinary revolution, which transported French gastronomy into the modern era. The heavily spiced flavours inherited from the cuisine of the Middle Ages were abandoned in favour of the natural flavours of foods. Exotic spices (saffron, cinnamon, cumin, ginger, nutmeg, cardamom, nigella, seeds of paradise) were, with the exception of pepper, replaced by local herbs (parsley, thyme, bayleaf, chervil, sage, tarragon). New vegetables like cauliflower, asparagus, peas, cucumber and artichoke were introduced. Special care was given to the cooking of meat in order to conserve maximum flavour. Vegetables had to be fresh and tender. Fish, with the improvement of transportation, had to be impeccably fresh. Preparation had to respect the gustatory and visual integrity of the ingredients instead of masking them, as had been the practice previously.

The Europeans previously used meats like seal, peacock, whales etc that had no flavour of it own and used loads of spices to impart a taste. la Varenne made the emphasis on using meat like pork, geese, duck, frogs and turkey which had a flavour of its own and used herbs to enhance the flavour rather than using spices to impart flavour. He understood that good food has a subtle natural flavour of its own and the chef's duty is to bring out the natural flavour and not to suppress them.

This philosophy of cooking gradually spread throughout Europe and gradually the use of spices became redundant. It took roughly 100 years for the European cuisine to become what we know it today.

Modern food historians speculate that if the book had been written around 100 or 200 years back the entire history would have been different. Fall of the Constantinople was one of the major causes of Renaissance. Had this book been written earlier the fall of Constantinople would not have affected the Europeans so significantly as their requirement for spices would have gone down automatically. de Gamma and Columbus would have never set out. America would not have been discovered (well at least not at the time it was discovered). Some even suggest that Renaissance would have never happened as finding new sea routes and the age of exploration and discovery would have never taken place. Colonisation of India would have never taken place, as the colonisers were initially traders. Thus the world as we know now would have been different.

Keeping aside all the speculations and views aside the book without fail revolutionarised contemporary European cuisine.