Delia Smith has given her brutal verdict on French food, declaring that good meals there are now ‘very hard’ to find.
Speaking to Noble Rot magazine, the celebrity cook said that modern French dishes are ‘not even meant to be eaten’ and were merely just a ‘fancy smear’ on a plate with ‘towers, foams, drizzles and dusts’.
Smith, 83, blamed chef Michel Guerard’s ‘cuisine minceur’ – a style of cooking developed in the 1970s that saw cooks recreate lighter versions of traditional French dishes – for appealing to ‘foodie snobs’ who were ‘watching their waistlines’.
This, Smith said, has seen some of France’s greatest chefs scrap the three ‘utterly essential ingredients: butter, cream and flour’, she said.
‘Sadly, all that is a distant memory and it’s very hard to find that kind of food in France now’, Smith said.
Delia Smith has given her brutal verdict on French food, declaring that good meals there are now ‘very hard’ to find
The celebrity chef said that that modern French dishes were merely just a ‘fancy smear’ on a plate with ‘towers, foams, drizzles and dusts’
Smith also said that French cooking is lacking its ‘utterly essential’ ingredients: flour, butter and cream
Its not the first time the former chef has spoken out against the rise of modern cooking.
The cookbook author’s comments on the decline of French food come after she recently expressed her concern over the future of the culinary scene in the UK and the decline of the TV cook in an interview with The Sunday Times.
In 2017, when Smith was made Order of the Companions of Honour at Buckingham Palace, she ave a speech revealing that she found modern food ‘poncey’ and ‘chefy’.
The celebrity foodie said food was now just ‘theatre on a plate’, exclaiming that she did not ‘like it at all’.
‘If I get more plat put in front of me with six dots of sauce on it, I will go mad’, she declared.
Delia Smith pictured at 32-years-old in 1973
Delia previously had a column for the Evening Standard, pictured. Other than slashing modern French food, she previously renounced vegan diets
Delia pictured with a fresh cake. Smith has offered her cooking wisdom to generations since the 1970s
The no-nonsense cook has also previously renounced vegan diets, telling the Financial Times that something in her believed it was ‘wrong’.
‘If people just want to eat vegetables – and some people do – that’s fine. But don’t say you’re helping the planet, because you’re not. Full stop.’
Smith has offered her cooking wisdom to generations since her first television appearance in the early 70s.
The TV chef’s book Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course, has been the third highest-selling on The Times and Sunday Times Best Seller list for the last five years.
Delia Smith’s Cookery Course, which is available on iPlayer, has attracted a new generation of viewers intrigued by how much things have changed in the past 50 years, as well as picking up tips that have stood the test of time.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
