The French are renowned for their culinary expertise. France is the country of delicious soft cheeses, freshly baked crusty bread, and full-bodied wines. Classic French dishes often feature rich, flavourful sauces, tender meats that are slow-cooked to perfection, and soft, stewed vegetables.
Pull up a chair and get ready for our Top 10 Classic French Dishes. They’re mouth-wateringly good to read about and even more scrumptious to sample!
Why is it that so many things sound better in French? The literal translation of ‘Coq au vin’ in English is ‘cockerel with wine’. This classic French dish features chicken that has been braised with butter and red wine, which is customarily from the Burgundy region of France. Added mushrooms, bacon lardons and pearl onions add essential flavours to the sauce whilst it cooks.
Stories say that this dish can be traced back to the times of Julius Caesar, though the recipe wasn’t documented until the early twentieth century. Traditionally, cockerel, which was tougher than ordinary chicken, would have been used in coq au vin. However, later recipes specify that any chicken can be added. The historic way to thicken the sauce in coq au vin was to add animal blood, as it was the least expensive method.
We recently caught up with Renaissance master chef, Hannah Dunleavy, to find out why Burgundian Coq au Vin is her favourite dish to make on board.
Boeuf bourguignon is French comfort food at its best. Made in a similar way to coq au vin, boeuf bourguignon is stewed until the beef is tender and melts in the mouth as it is eaten. Slow cooked in a casserole dish for hours, the meat softens and falls apart, thickening the rich, red wine sauce it is made in.
Though often described as a traditional French dish, beef bourguignon seems to have appeared in the past two hundred years. Popping up on menus in fashionable Parisian bistros, the dish quickly became a hit and was adopted as a regional dish in Burgundy. Most recipes suggest using a Burgundy wine to make the sauce that the beef, mushrooms, onions and bacon is cooked in.
Another classic French dish is moules marinière. Readily available throughout the country, depending on the season, fresh mussels are consumed by the dozen. The salty mussels are served with a rich, white wine sauce that is made from butter, shallots, white wine and parsley.
The traditional dish of moules marinière originates from Belgium and northern France. The mussels are cooked in the seawater juices they are sold in by mariners and served with French fries. The dish is therefore often known as ‘moules et frites’. Moules marinière was previously voted the second favourite dish in France! Why not taste it when you visit, to see if you agree?
Quick and easy to prepare is the traditional French dish of steak tartare. Raw fillet of beef is finely chopped and seasoned, served with nothing but a raw egg yolk on top. Best paired with French bread or Melba toast, it’s a delicacy that’s not for the faint-hearted.
Steak tartare soared to popularity in the 1920s but fell out of favour in the late twentieth century. More recently, the classic French dish has been experiencing a comeback in France. Steak tartare was popularised in Rick Stein’s ‘French Odyssey’; a documentary that featured the famous chef barging with European Waterways as he created classic French dishes.
Named after the cooking pot it is made in, cassoulet is a classic French dish from Languedoc, in southwest France. With humble origins as a stew that was made in provincial French farmhouses, cassoulet combines white beans with meat, like pork sausages, and duck or goose confit.
It is rumoured in French folklore that the simple origins of cassoulet meant that the pot needed to be ‘deglazed’ before each stew was made. This required the ‘scraping’ of previous residue from the casserole dish. It is therefore said that some cassoulets lasted for years, or even decades!
The classic French dish, confit de canard, consists of duck that is cooked in its own fat. Duck meat, often leg, is rubbed with salt and baked. The result is a tender meat that easily falls off the bone, making for a delightful meal when it is served with fried potatoes.
Confit de canard originates from Gascony in southwest France. In the French language, ‘confire’ literally translates as ‘to preserve’. As the name suggests, this French dish was invented by the Romans to better preserve meat.
A classic French stew dish, Bouillabaisse is made by boiling together a variety of types of fish like red rascasse, sea robin and conger, though sometimes hake, monkfish, bream and shellfish are also used. Bouillabaisse is often served with a mayonnaise-like sauce called ‘rouille’ that is made by combining garlic, saffron and cayenne pepper with olive oil and an egg yolk.
With origins that can be traced back to Ancient Greece, this traditional French stew was eaten by fishermen in Marseille, made with rockfish that they caught in their nets. Unable to sell this spiny variety of fish to restaurants, the fishermen invented a method to boil leftovers into a delicious fish stew.
Escargots is possibly the best-known French dish of all-time. A prized French cuisine, escargots is the essential French dish to try when you visit France! Also known as Burgundy escargots, snails are shelled and prepared with garlic butter. Served back in their shells, they are considered a French delicacy.
It might surprise you to hear that humans have been eating snails for at least 12,000 years. The earliest traces of broken snail shells and human activity can be traced back to Greece. The Ancient Romans popularised eating snails as a food for the Roman elite, and the tradition has been upheld by many cultures. Now escargots is a classic French dish that is promoted by haute cuisine chefs.
This French dish from Nice makes it into our top ten famous French dishes for its popularity around the world. Salad Niçoise consists of crunchy lettuce and tomatoes that are usually topped with tuna steak and boiled eggs. Served with a vinaigrette dressing containing anchovies, mustard and vinegar, this salad really packs a punch.
Salad Niçoise has a surprisingly controversial history. The French dish seems to have originated in the nineteenth century and was made by peasants with simple ingredients; olive oil, anchovies and tomatoes. According to many people in Nice who consider themselves Salad Niçoise ‘purists’, the French dish should not include boiled vegetables like potatoes and green beans.
Another famous French favourite is quiche Lorraine. A shortcrust pastry tart is filled with an omelette-like mixture consisting of eggs, cream and bacon lardons, to create a delectable savoury meal. Quiche Lorraine is an incredibly versatile French dish that can be served hot or cold, with a range of accompaniments.
A traditional quiche Lorraine omits cheese, which seems to have been an ingredient that was added in the twentieth century to lower the price of the dish. Unsurprisingly, the dish originates from the region of Lorraine, in the northeast of France.
Guests who cruise with us in France will have the opportunity to try some of the dishes listed above, all freshly prepared by our master chef using the finest local ingredients.
For more information on our itineraries, and the rest of our collection of luxury hotel barge cruises, why not order a free copy of our brochure today, or speak to a member of our team directly using our handy Contact Form.
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