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ABSTRACT
This essay examines the depiction of French ragout in eighteenth-century English literature, arguing that the dish reflects social apprehension regarding ideological, cultural, and military conflicts between England and France. This essay first traces a brief history of ragout, along with an overview of the dish’s cultural connotation and complexity, in eighteenth-century English society. It next delves into the concept of eighteenth-century English Francophobia, demonstrating that this sentiment was a mixture of national pride and anxiety amid England’s identity crisis under the potential French cultural threat. Finally, the essay examines ragout in eighteenth-century English literature and identifies the dish as the target of French pretension and cultural invasion. This research highlights the fact that eighteenth-century English authors’ satirical portrait of ragout underscored xenophobic gastronomy and cautioned against a simple interpretation of the dish. The caricature and representation of ragout as a feminized, artificial, and laughable dish reinforces eighteenth-century English writers’ concern for the invasion of foreign culture by emphasizing the contrast between authentic ‛Anglo’ meat consumption and ‛Franco’ sophistication.
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Notes
1 Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, 246.
2 Ibid., 478.
3 Counihan, The Anthropology of Food and Body, 19.
4 Ferguson, ‛Culinary Nationalism’, 104.
5 Wood, ‛Wholesome Nutriment’, 616.
6 Barthes, ‛Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption’, 17.
7 Montanari, Food is Culture, 93.
8 Gunkel, ‛Food and Culture’, 246.
9 Bickham, ‛Eating the Empire’, 71.
10 Wright, A History of English Food, 231–54.
11 At least in sixteenth-century Europe, ragout constituted most poor households’ meals, because its thickness and flavour cater to unprivileged classes’ appetitive and nutritional needs. See Melitta Weiss Adamson, Food in Medieval Times (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004), 227–8.
12 Clark, ‛Thoughts for Food, I: French Cuisine and French Culture’, 35.
13 Fine, ‛The Transformative Influence of La Varenne’s Le Cuisinier Francois (1651) on French Culinary Practice’, 7.
14 Volk-Birke, ‛Questions of Taste: The Critics as Connoisseur and the Hungry Reader’, 169.
15 Notaker, A History of Cookbooks, 281.
16 This study focuses on the cultural significance of ragout as a representation of French taste both domestically and internationally, although the concept of French national cuisine was developed in the Nineteenth century through various discourses such as gastronomic journalism, culinary treatises, cultural commentary, political philosophy, and novels. See Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, ‛A Cultural Field in the Making: Gastronomy in 19th-Century France’, American Journal of Sociology 104, no. 3 (Nov 1998): 597–641.
17 Mennell, All Manners of Food, 103.
18 Ibid., 133.
19 Notaker, A History of Cookbooks, 281–2.
20 DeJean, The Essence of Style, 116.
21 Peterson, Acquired Taste, 197.
22 Spray, Eating the Enlightenment, 228.
23 Ibid., 241.
24 Woodhouse, English Travelers in Paris, 1660–1789, 83–4.
25 Sherman, ‛Gastronomic History in Eighteenth-Century England’, 399.
26 Davis, ‛Consuming Faith’, 180.
27 Watts, Meat Matters, 2
28 Harris, ‛Religious and National Stereotyping and Prejudice in Seventeenth-Century England’, 37–40.
29 For example, fourteenth-century English writers could have opposed to French writing with unique literary styles. See A. G. Rigg, ‛Propaganda of the Hundred Years War: Poems on the Battles of Crecy and Durham (1346): A Critical Edition’, Traditio 54 (1999): 169–211. Furthermore, critics generally agree that Restoration England witnessed the beginning of English Francophobic tradition. See David Magliocco, ‛We Do Naturally … Hate the French: Francophobia and Francophilia in Samuel Pepys’s Diary’, in Stereotypes and Stereotyping in Early Modern England, ed. Koji Yamamoto (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022), 218–42. This anti-France atmosphere could also be triggered by the aversion to French politics. See Tim Harris, ‛Francophobia in Late-Seventeenth-Century England’, in Louis XIV Outside In: Images of the Sun King beyond France, 1661–1715, eds. Tony Claydon et al. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 37–56.
30 Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837, 33.
31 Ibid., 91.
32 Langlands, ‛Britishness or Englishness’, 58.
33 In the Eighteenth century, English society exhibited a pervasive intolerance of French customs, extending beyond their disapproval of Catholicism to encompass the realm of sexuality. As such, English Francophobia manifested itself in a multitude of forms, reflecting a wider unease with the perceived threat posed by French culture to English identity. See Robert Morrison, The Regency Revolution: Jane Austen, Napoleon, Lord Byron and the Making of the Modern World (London: Atlantic Books, 2019).
34 Potkay, ‛“The Structure of His Sentence is French”: Johnson and Hume in the History of English’, 290.
35 Sudan, Fair Exotics, 17.
36 Beal, ‛À La Mode De Paris’, 144.
37 Morieux, ‛French Prisoners of War, Conflicts of Honour, and Social Inversions in England, 1744–1783’, 81.
38 The Francophobic sentiment in English literature should not be taken as a complete rejection of the French literary tradition by English literati. For example, Philip Connell cautions against the misinterpretation of a critical attack on French neoclassical poetic style as a total denial of French influence and origin in English literature. See Philip Connell, ‛British Identities and the Politics of Ancient Poetry in Later Eighteenth-Century England’. The Historical Journal 49, no. 1 (Mar 2006): 161–92.
39 Hellstrom, ‛Francophobia in Emma’, 617.
40 MacKenzie, ‛Romantic Literary History’, 42.
41 Kooy, ‛Coleridge’s Francophobia’, 928.
42 Bromley, ‛Britain and Europe in the Eighteenth Century’, 401.
43 Ou, ‛David Garrick’s Reaction Against French Chinoiserie in The Orphan of China’, 36–7.
44 Goulbourne, ‛The Comedy of National Character’, 349–50.
45 Gollapudi, ‛Jokes and Party Strokes’, 408.
46 It is worth noting that eighteenth-century English paintings also show the prevailing distrust and satire of French food and dietary habits. Among the notable examples are James Gillray’s French Liberty British Slavery (1792) and Isaac Cruikshank’s French Happiness, English Misery (1793). The former juxtaposes a lean Frenchman devouring raw onions and an obese Englishman carving a big chunk of beef, while the latter presents four Frenchmen fighting over a frog and the other four Englishmen enjoying their meat and ale at the same time. Both paintings ridicule French manners and satirized English vulgarity. Similarly, William Hogarth’s The Gate of Calais, or, O The Roast Beef of Old England (1748) integrate anti-French food prejudice and English national pride. The roast beef at the centre of the painting symbolizes Hogarth's celebration of English liberty and democracy, while French food, in Piers Beirne’s words, ‘reflects and encourages slavery, poverty and popish superstition’ (436).
47 A Character of France, 19.
48 A Satyr Against the French, 16.
49 Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 40.
50 Addison, The Works of Joseph Addison, 156.
51 Addison, Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, &c., 474.
52 Disraeli, Curiosities of Literature, 4th ed, 467.
53 Swift, A Modest Proposal, 21.
54 Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, 15.
55 Fielding, Tom Jones, 29.
56 Shapin, ‛You Are What You Eat’, 389.
57 Mars. ‛Experiencing French Cookery in Nineteenth-Century London’, 219.
58 Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 386.
59 Ibid., 386.
60 The Connoisseur 19, 148.
61 Ibid., 151–2.
62 Fielding, The Grub-Street Opera, 112.
63 Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837, 257.
64 Smollett, The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, 282.
65 Kidd, British Identities Before Nationalism, 234–7.
66 Spiering, Food, Drink, and Identity in Europe, 32–3.
67 ‛On Potatoes’, 302.
68 Ibid., 303–4.
69 Swift, ‛A Panegyrick on the Dean’, 47.
70 Burns, Collected Poems of Robert Burns, 134.
71 Gigante, Taste: A Literary History, 161–6.
72 Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 35.
73 Austen, Jane Austen’s Letters, 20.
74 Warren Roberts argued that Austen’s Francophobic experience might be the result of the French Revolution and Napoleon Wars. See Warren Roberts, Jane Austen and the French Revolution (London: Athlone, 1995), 46. Maggie Lane also noticed that ragout may imply Austen’s patriotism and sarcasm when she sees the blind follower of French taste. See Maggie Lane, Jane Austen and Food (London: The Hambledon Press, 1995), 151.
75 Prociani, Food Heritage and Nationalism in Europe, 11.