Image: Sebleouf · CC BY-SA 4.0
Simple French Food
- Year
- 1974
- Era
- 20th century
- Origin
- USA · Americas
- Language
- English
- Category
- English 20th C
Simple French Food, issued by Atheneum in 1974, presents Richard Olney's discursive exploration of provincial French cooking, organised around ingredients, techniques, and meditative essays rather than conventional recipe categories. Written by an American living in Provence, the work proved deeply influential among a generation of Anglophone cooks and writers, championing seasonal, market-led cookery and helping shape the sensibility later associated with Chez Panisse and the Time-Life Good Cook series Olney subsequently edited.
Cooking from this book
Gratin of Chard Stalks
Signature dishAmong the dishes most often linked with this book is a humble gratin of chard ribs, the pale stalks usually discarded in other kitchens. Olney treated them with characteristic seriousness, baking them under cream and cheese until tender and burnished. The dish encapsulates his philosophy of simple French food: peasant ingredients, unhurried technique, and a refusal to see anything in the vegetable garden as waste. It became a touchstone for a generation of American cooks seeking authenticity over spectacle.
An editorial note on a dish associated with this book, written for The Coquinist. It is not a reproduction of the book's recipe.
