The most popular dishes of France

Why do we all go gaga for Gallic gastronomy? By the time you reach the end of this article, I guarantee you’ll be wanting to nip off and make something delicious – a tarte tatin, a flammekueche, pain perdu, cassoulet…

Boeuf Bourguignon

Let’s start with Boeuf bourguignon – which is considered to be the national dish of France. Beef cooked slowly in fruity red wine, until its tender and soft, sticky and savoury. Made for soaking up the juices with a piece of baguette.

The birthplace of this dish is Bourgogne – Burgundy. Yes, the name is a bit of a giveaway. No one knows how old the recipe is, probably hundreds of years, but the first mention of it in a cookbook was in 1867. French people argue about the best way to cook it (of course). Do you marinade the beef in red wine the day before or not? Which type of beef is best? Which part of the beef is best? Everyone has their own way to cook it and everyone does it a little different. Anne-Sophie Pic, the French chef-owner of three-Michelin-star Maison Pic, adds tandoori spices, Yves Camdeborde of the Avant Comptoir du Marché restaurant in Paris adds chocolate and orange zest. And that’s typical of a proper traditional recipe: everybody can improvise and make the dish their own. Recipe for boeuf bourguignon

Cassoulet

Another famous and favoured flavoursome stew of France is Cassoulet. In parts of the south and southwest France, people are crazy about Cassoulet. Friends can fall out over the recipe! Some say goose, some say mutton, and some say duck. Some say breadcrumbs for the topping – others say no breadcrumbs. Everyone has their own way of making it.

Cassoulet is a rustic and robust French country stew that typically includes white beans, pork and poultry. It’s been popular for hundreds of years in France and legend has it that the origins go back to the Hundred Years War (1337-1453). During a siege at Castelnaudry, Languedoc, the inhabitants pooled their resources and came up with a casserole. The soldiers ate it and found the strength to fight off the English invaders. The legend of cassoulet was born! Or was it born in Toulouse? Or Carcassonne? Much like the ingredients, stories vary wildly from one area to another, and families hold dear to recipes that have passed down the generations. Restaurants can make their name on the back of a delicious cassoulet. Recipe for cassoulet

Poulet Gaston Gerard

Another Burgundy special and another happy accident?! The recipe was created in 1930 by the wife of the Mayor of Dijon, Gaston Gerard. She was cooking for a very special guest, a famous gourmand of the time called Maurice Edmond Sailland, whom everybody called Curnonsky, a celebrated writer of Gastronomy in France and dubbed The Prince of Gastronomy. Madame Gerard accidentally put too much paprika in a chicken dish she was cooking and to rectify it she added crème fraiche and white wine and called it Poulet Gaston Gerard. Curnonsky loved it, and it’s now a Dijon classic. That’s how the best recipes are created if you ask me! Recipe for poulet Gaston Gerard

Tarte Tatin

Tarte Tatin is no ordinary apple tart. Imagine soft, caramel-coated apples kissed with the merest touch of cinnamon and blanketed by flaky, buttery puff pastry! Heaven on the lips (maybe not on the hips). It’s fabulous served warm, with a nice blob of crème fraîche — or even better, a scoop of cinnamon ice cream.

Legend has it that this delicious dish was created by a happy accident in the 1880’s at the Hotel Tatin in Lamotte-Beuvron, about 100 miles (160 km) south of Paris. The Tatin sisters owned the hotel and one of them, Stéphanie, did most of the cooking. One day when she was totally overworked, she started to make a traditional apple pie but left the apples cooking in butter and sugar for too long. It was too late to start again so she tried to rescue the dish by putting the puff pastry base on top of the pan of apples, quickly finishing the cooking by putting the whole pan in the oven. She turned the tart upside down and served it. Her dish was such a huge success with guests that it was put on the menu. Word spread and the tarte tatin is loved to this day. Recipe for tarte Tatin

Crepes Suzettes

Crepes Suzettes are very thin pancakes served with an orange sauce after they are set on fire!

This is one of those cases where no one really agrees on who invented the recipe, and there are several different legends. A firm favourite is that in 1896 of a young pastry chef called Henri Charpentier, working at the Café de Paris in Monte Carlo, dropped alcohol on hot pancakes he was preparing for the Prince of Wales, future King Edward VII. Unable to salvage them, he served them anyway. Luckily for him, the dish was a great success. When the prince asked him the name of this dessert, the wily Chef said he had invented it especially for the Prince and would call the pancake after him. The Prince however, asked that the name of the young woman who was dining with him be given the honour. And you guessed it: her name was Suzette. Recipe for crepes Suzette

Roquefort Cheese

In France, cheese come before dessert. And cheese is revered. If you ever see the cheese aisles in French supermarkets, or better, go to a fromagerie, a cheese shop often run by affineurs, people who are expert at maturing cheese. Cheese heaven.

One of the most popular cheeses in France is Roquefort a stinky, creamy, crumbly ewe’s milk cheese. Delicious slathered on buttered bread, super scrumptious if you add a little bit of quince jelly to it. Or melt it with some cream and pour it over a frilled steak.

It’s one of the oldest cheeses of France. More than 1000 years ago Roquefort, or something very similar, was offered to the Emperor Charlemagne by the bishop of Albi. The emperor thought the cheese had gone off, so he picked out the blue-green veins with his knife, until the bishop explained that these were the tastiest bits. After that, Charlemagne enjoyed it so much, he asked the bishop to send him two cartloads a year. In 1925, Roquefort cheese became the first French foodstuff to enjoy the protection of an appellation, a qualification that indicates the geographical origin and quality of a product.

Roquefort comes from Roquefort-sur-Soulzon in Aveyron, east of Albi and north-west of Montpellier in a region where sheep-farming have been around for about three thousand years. And there’s evidence that cheese has been made here for at least 6000 years. It can only be called Roquefort cheese if it comes from this place.

Legend has it that a young shepherd was looking after his flock, and he spied a pretty shepherdess and fell in love, so he left his sheep to woo her and being a Frenchman, he made sure his lunch was going to be safe so he put it in a cave. As you do. Or at least, as they did back in the day. He had prepared curd on a piece of bread.

But the shepherdess wandered off. He spent days looking for her, but never found her and eventually went back to the cave. And you guessed it, the cheese had gone all mouldy in the damp cave but he was so hungry – he ate it. And Roquefort was born.

And to this day – Roquefort is still made in chilly damp caves! Recipe for Roquefort butter and walnuts

Opera cake

This chocolatey concoction is a deliciously sweet classic with quite a modern history but that’s the thing with great French food – the history doesn’t have to be old, history is being made all the time by chefs and home cooks creating wonderful food.

You’ll see Opera cakes in every boulangerie, and every baker has his own way to present this chocolate delicacy. It was invented only in 1955 when great French pastry chef Cyriaque Gavillon worked at the legendary Dalloyau shop in Paris. Dalloyau have been trading since 1682 and were suppliers to the court of Versailles. It was the perfect match when Gavillon, a genius with patisserie and an artist who created the most amazing cakes and sugar decorations, and Dalloyau got together.

When inventing the Opera cake Gavillon wanted to make something that in taking one bite, would give a taste of the whole cake. He worked on layers of chocolate ganache and golden almond flavoured sponge soaked in coffee syrup and topped with coffee butter cream and chocolate. He came up with a wonderfully sophisticated cake. His wife told him it reminded her of the Paris Opera House, Palais Garnier, because the of the rich dark colour and gold layers are like the balconies which are covered in gold – very Versailles. It was a name that stuck, the Opera cake was born.

Feeling peckish after all that?! Head to our gastronomy section – you’ll find hundreds of delicious French recipes and fascinating food stories…

Janine Marsh is the author of several internationally best-selling books about France. Her latest book How to be French – a celebration of the French lifestyle and art de vivre, is out now – a look at the French way of life.