Why Is French Cuisine The Worst In The World?

More I find out about French cuisine, the more disgusted I become.

My younger view of them is they elate refugee food, probably because they were always living in the swamps hiding from the Germans. They eat Snails and Frogs, both plentiful in the swamps, and also horse meat.... in order to get a American to eat horse meat, you would have to starve them for a long time. That's desperation food, best left in the Paleolithic.

Then in my teens I discovered they force fed ducks, Foie Gras, which was very disturbing to find out. But a short while ago I discovered they have a way more inhumane and disturbing dish, Pressed Duck, Canard à la Presse, where you gotta hand strangle a live duck, then scoop out it's intestines, then put it in a hand cranked press till it's blood squirts out, collect the blood up, cook the squished duck meat, and pour the blood all over it. It's supposed to be the height of luxury, but it sounds like some crazy dish invented in the basement of the house from Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Oh yeah, they also throw bolongna and a slice of cheese in some white bread roll and act like that is their original national dish. That's just sad. Someone's mother didn't like their children and the food she made for them caught on.

I'm afraid to learn anymore about French cooking. What a terrible national cuisine.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

Or you could exist on fried discs of "squished" beef wrapped in white bread rolls and served with a few scraps of fried potato called "French Fries" (Fried yes, French probably not) draped in sauce or mayonnaise and a scrap of lettuce to disguise the lack of any flavour in the main ingredients. .....

I take it you have never been to France. You've certainly learnt nothing about the country and its cooking.

Edible snails and frog's-legs (if the latter were ever often eaten in reality) are at most a luxury.

Pate de Foie Gras is made from goose, not duck, liver as its name says. Though I do agree the way it is produced - force-feeding the animals - is very wrong. This too is not a staple food anywhere.

Your lurid description of how to butcher a dead duck is not really that much different from the industrial slaughtering of any other farm animal, including those used to make the beef-burgers. What do you think any meat paste or burgers, and many other highly-processed meat products are, but "squished" meat? The only significant difference is using the blood.

Horse meat is perfectly edible although I have never tried it. Britons, who have always been open to sampling foods from around the world, shun horse meat probably from sentiment or romanticism, but I don't know why Americans do. Is it associated with the early colonisers who might have had to eat their horses and almost any other animals out of desperation and privation on their long treks West?

Oh -and the French were not "always hiding in swamps from Germans". That is a just a childishly cheap slur about a foreign country you don't know. Were you never taught history at school? (Or taught but did not learn...)

justanothername · 51-55, M

Have you ever actually eat food in a decent French restaurant or are you just basing your distaste on a pre conceived conclusion?

4meAndyou · F

I am a mixture of British, Scots, Nordic people, and so on...no French in my ancestry whatsoever, but I do have to defend their cooking. The French cook with wine and butter, and garlic, and even manage to make snails taste tender and good.