Yep. And not even that high-end, either. Here are some midcentury Joy of Cooking recipe dishes that we now consider just standard “food items” that the average middle-class American in, say, 1940 would have considered quite exotic:
Quiche
“French bread” or baguette
Hollandaise sauce
Beef bourgignon
Chocolate mousse
Brioche
Petits fours
Canapes
Meringues
Macarons
Parfaits
Casserole au gratin
Fondue
Souffle
Croquettes
Creme brulee
Bisque soups
Eclairs
Omelette
Hors d’oeuvres
Vinaigrette dressing
Consomme
Mayonnaise and fricassee were probably sufficiently familiar culinary terms at that point not to seem too unusual, but I wouldn’t swear to it. And I’m ignoring more recherche terms like “pate” and “madeleines” and “vichyssoise” and “a l’orange” and “florentine” for anything cooked with spinach, and “chasseur” for things with mushroom and tomato brown sauce, even though I bet many Americans nowadays recognize them just as part of “food”.
Since the days of Delmonico’s in NYC in the mid- to late 19th century, French haute cuisine has been the gold standard for US “fancy food”. And over the decades, many of its basic components have diffused into American ideas of “ordinary food” as well.
[ETA: Didn’t notice that SanVito already said a lot of this, sorry!]
Spanish is the most common language in American high schools. French is the second most common language. Some schools have Latin. Mandarin, Punjabi, Tagalog, and American Sign Language aren’t very common.
I think French food suffers a bit from its own reputation. Most of us grew up having French food praised to the skies as something incredible and apart from other cuisines. So a person will go into a French restaurant expecting to have the food experience of a lifetime. When it turns out that what they are served is good to even excellent, they still aren’t very impressed because they were expecting something amazing. They can’t help but feel disappointed, even disillusioned.
That doesn’t really explain the lack of French restaurants around America, but maybe it does the lack of popularity.
The most common languages taught in kindergarten through the senior year in American schools are, in order, Spanish, French, German, Latin, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian. In American universities, it’s, in order, Spanish, French, ASL, Japanese, German, Chinese, Italian, Arabic, and so forth. Here’s the citation for this:
Charles didn’t invent that idiom, though: it’s a well-known saying about the utility of pig products, sometimes in the form “everything but the squeal”.
I’m familiar with the folkism but not the attribution. In any case, it seems kind of obscure for Charles. It’s not like shake a tail feather or hit the road, Jack.
One opened a few weeks ago near me and I really like it. Pastry prices are lower then restaurant desserts and a huge variety. Right now I’m hooked on the chicken Caesar sandwich.
We’ve got a fairly popular chain around here serving French-oid food. It’s decent bistro type food, but even then I think people’s perceptions of French food as being some combination of snooty, expensive, and fancy work against it.
Question: If French food were more popular, what specific French food would be popular? Like, if French restaurants were more common, what food(s) would you expect to be able to walk into any French restaurant and order?