A Bite-Sized History of France

Contents

1. Our Ancestors, the Gauls

2. The Virgin of the Kidney

3. Barbarians at the Plate

4. Ode to Gluttony

5. Left Behind: The Goats of Poitou

6. The Sweetest King

7. They Came from the Sea

9. Of Monks and Men

10. Fighting for Plums

11. The Wine That Got Away

12. The Vegetarian Heresy

13. A Papal Red

14. The White Gold of Guérande

15. Legacy of a Black Prince

16. The Vinegar of the Four Thieves

17. The Cheese of Emperors and Mad Kings

18. La Dame de Beauté and the Mushroom Mystery

19. Fruits of the Renaissance

20. The Mother Sauces

21. Conquest and Chocolate

22. The Culinary Contributions of Madame Serpent

23. A Chicken in Every Pot

24. The Chestnut Insurgency

25. The Bitter Roots of Sugar

26. The Liquor of the Gods

27. The Crescent Controversy

28. War and Peas

29. The Devil’s Wine

30. An Enlightened Approach to Food

31. Revolution in the Cafés

32. Pain d’Égalité

33. The Potato Propagandist

34. The Pyramid Provocation

35. The Man Who Abolished the Seasons

36. The Fifth Crêpe

37. The King of Cheeses

38. A Revolutionary Banquet

39. The End of the Oyster Express

40. Revelation in a Bottle

41. The Curse of the Green Fairy

42. Siege Gastronomy

43. The Peanut Patrimony

44. Gastronomads on the Sun Road

45. A Friend in Difficult Hours

46. A Mutiny and a Laughing Cow

47. “Bread, Peace, and Liberty”: The Socialist Baguette

48. Couscous: The Assimilation (or Not) of Empire

49. The Forgotten Vegetables

50. Canon Kir Joins the Resistance

51. France and the United States: From Liberation to Exasperation

Acknowledgments