Julia Child Said Anyone Could Cook French Food. Julia Child Was Either Very Optimistic or Had a Better Kitchen.
PARIS — French cooking is considered the gold standard of global cuisine. It is the basis of formal culinary training. It produced the concept of the restaurant, the brigade system, the French mother sauces, and the idea that food is worth thinking about seriously. It also produced, in the hands of everyone who is not a trained French cook attempting it in their own kitchen, a category of disasters so specific, so reliably reproducible, and so thoroughly documented on cooking platforms that several culinary publishers have proposed a dedicated “French Cooking Fails” cookbook. The proposal is, according to our sources, under consideration. It would sell magnificently.
The Souffle
The souffle is France’s greatest culinary joke. The French include it on menus. The French teach it in cooking schools. French cookbooks describe it in the same confident register used for scrambled eggs. Then the non-French cook makes one, follows every instruction, watches it rise magnificently, opens the oven door at the critical moment to check, and watches it return to the universe as quietly and completely as a hope that never quite materialised. The souffle is not collapsed. The souffle has simply become a denser, sadder, still technically edible version of itself. It is now a “savoury custard.” You tell guests it was always a savoury custard. The guests are polite. The guests have never met a proper souffle. This is technically fine.
Patricia Holloway, a food blogger from Melbourne who moved to Paris and enrolled in a professional cooking school, documented her first souffle attempt in a video that has 2.3 million views. The souffle rose perfectly. She gasped. She smiled at the camera. She opened the oven for the beauty shot. The souffle registered its disapproval and descended. The video cut to Patricia’s face. The video ends there. This fifteen-second arc has resonated globally because it captures something universal about ambition, timing, and the indifference of baked goods to our emotional needs.
The Bechamel Catastrophe
Bechamel sauce is one of the five French mother sauces. It is composed of butter, flour, and milk. It is described in every cookbook as “simple.” What cookbooks do not adequately explain is the ratio of butter to flour to milk must be precise, must be cooked in the right sequence, must be stirred at the right speed, and if any of these elements deviates slightly from correct, you will produce either a liquid with ambitions or a paste with delusions. The bechamel that breaks is the bechamel that appears normal for most of its existence and then suddenly separates into something that resembles a geological event. The technical term is “broken sauce.” The experiential term is “dinner cancelled.”
The Cooking Class
Paris offers dozens of cooking classes for tourists. They are excellent, welcoming, and staffed by professional teachers who have seen everything and maintained their composure through it all. The croissant class, in particular, produces outcomes ranging from “remarkably good” to “theoretically a croissant” to “flat bread with ambition.” Every student leaves convinced they could replicate the experience at home. Approximately 4% of them actually can. The other 96% produce, in the privacy of their own kitchens, objects that they describe as croissants with the conviction of someone who knows what a croissant should be and is choosing to believe that what they’ve made is, in some important sense, that. It’s bread. It’s good bread. It is not a croissant. Paris would like to clarify this, but kindly.
All the ambition, most of the calories, at Virtuosal.com.
