SC - Tablemanners query

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Bear wrote:
>
>When you add Anne-Marie's evidence that late period French cooking is its
>own style and not a derivative of Italian cooking, the entire tale of how
>Catherine and her cooks influenced French cooking becomes questionable.
I'm
>sure she greatly influenced French cooking and style, she had the position
>and wealth to do so in her later years.  I'm not sure that the common
>perception of how she influenced French cooking has any basis in fact.

As I recall it (I don´t have the book here), Barbara Ketcham Wheaton has
shown, in Savoring the Past, that Catherine´s arrival had no apparent effect
on French court cuisine in the 1530s and 40s. She had some cooks in her
retinue but they certainly did not revolutionize French cooking - Italian
influences had begun to show earlier than this (and so had French influences
on Italian cooking).

Nanna
(who partly fell into the Catherine de Medici trap herself in her book)