SUPERIOR CUISINE PORTFOLIO Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

SUPERIOR CUISINE PORTFOLIO - Essay Example He was known to be a lover of gourmet food and lavish banquets. Some of the directions we see in French culinary style including serving methods were effected mainly during his time. In the seventeenth century the regions near its borders, Italy and Holland, largely influenced French cuisine for example. Due to the Italian influence French cuisine at that time was nowhere near the delicate culinary style that it is today. As is typical of Italian cuisine, the French cuisine also showed excessive use and taste of sugar, salt with strong spices. Louis the XIV was determined to present French cuisine as a delicate and exotic cuisine and thereby transform France into a culinary capital in the eyes of the world. The staple base in most of the food that was eaten at that time was still bread among the peasants in the region. Louis the XIV, love for the culinary arts was aimed at bringing gourmet food to the peasants and he held many lavish banquets where the people received an education on French cuisine and treated as a form of Art. There was a drive to make food from fresh ingredients and herbs in place of strong and taste overwhelming spices. He also wanted all the components of the cuisine to be developed and perfected in France. This was his way of showing off the aristocracy of France as a nation. To enforce this that era saw a lot of ban of foreign ingredients. He also had a passion for gardening and urged the people to also grow their own vegetables and make the cuisine richer in taste by using fresh ingredients. Many innovations were effected because of the ban in foreign imports. Although France was unified as a nation it was a build up of people with varying cultural heritages and influences. Therefore people started producing ingredients that they were used to and familiar with. Due to proximity with other nations, the cuisine of population that lived near the border regions showed strong