Old World Kitchen: The Rich Tradition of European Peasant Cooking

From Publishers Weekly
Exploring the culinary heritage of some 25 European countries, Luard offers 300 recipes that display a generous assortment of styles and flavors, organized here by basic ingredients. Italian risotto, French oatmeal soup and Spanish bean stew are characterized as "corner cupboard dishes." Dough-based fare includes Italian fusilli with chili, Bulgarian milk noodles and British steak-and-kidney pudding. Meat recipes range from small game like rabbit with beer and prunes (Belgium) to roast pork and apple sauce (England), shepherd's stew (Rumania), cottage pie (England), spit-roasted lamb (Greece) and even reindeer stew (Lapland). Seafood is also offered in a number of forms from simple grilled prawns (Spain) to bouillabaisse with sweet-pepper sauce (France). Breads, vegetable and sweet dishes round out the offerings. Cooks will note some recipes not known these days for peasant associations, as, for example, hollandaise sauce. Other recipes, like the potato-laden and entirely authentic Irish stew, may seem more curious than useful to some readers. A professionally trained cook, Luard resides in London and is a columnist of the Field. Illustrations not seen by PW. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Luard writes about the cultural and geographic influences upon European peasant cooking, and illustrates her text with appropriate recipes. Peasants usually structured their meals around "a single dominant ingredient at a single moment." The author is clearly knowledgeable about the 25 countries represented, and wants to tell all she knows. "Corner Cupboard Dishes" and "Shepherd's Meats" are particularly interesting. Instructions are conversational and over-detailed and often digress. For limited purchase. SPCopyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Book Description
Within the ken of the kitchen, the most basic elements of history, economy, and geography are carried by hand through time; recipes are records of that transmission, keeping culture in seasoned anecdotes. Such tales, told through many generations, provide the contents of Elisabeth Luard’s compendium of European peasant cooking. The more than 500 recipes Luard has collected are emblems of parochial lore and family tradition, of common wisdom and cunning necessity, and they treat every imaginable aspect of taste and appetite. The preparations described here are, as Luard writes, “the ‘mother-recipes’ from which all European cookery springs. . . . For most of us . . . they are as integral a part of our past, and of what shapes and nourishes us today, as our literature and songs, our paintings and technology.” We couldn’t agree more.


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Luard writes about the cultural and geographic influences upon European peasant cooking, and illustrates her text with appropriate recipes. Peasants usually structured their meals around ``a single dominant ingredient at a single moment.'' The author is clearly knowledgeable about the 25 countries represented, and wants to tell all she knows. ``Corner Cupboard Dishes'' and ``Shepherd's Meats'' are particularly interesting. Instructions are conversational and over-detailed and often digress. For limited purchase. SP


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