{"id":18714,"date":"2019-11-26T02:23:58","date_gmt":"2019-11-26T02:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=18714"},"modified":"2019-11-27T07:45:33","modified_gmt":"2019-11-27T07:45:33","slug":"what-to-do-with-those-thanksgiving-leftovers-look-to-the-french","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/what-to-do-with-those-thanksgiving-leftovers-look-to-the-french\/","title":{"rendered":"What to do with those Thanksgiving leftovers? Look to the French"},"content":{"rendered":"

Samantha Presnal<\/a>, Amherst College<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the day after Thanksgiving, the tryptophan<\/a> has worn off, and there are towers of Tupperware<\/a> filled with turkey, stuffing and potatoes in your fridge.<\/p>\n

If you rely on your microwave, you might simply resign yourself to eating the same meal, over and over again, until the leftovers run out.<\/p>\n

But you don\u2019t have to get stuck in a cycle of nuke and repeat. This Thanksgiving, take inspiration from the French, who saw leftovers as an outlet for creativity.<\/p>\n

My research on the history of French home cooking reveals how restyling dinner scraps first became fashionable more than a century ago. <\/p>\n

Reheating \u2018with art and discernment\u2019<\/h2>\n

In 19th-century France, leftovers were a way of life for the lower classes<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In the countryside, the broth from the evening beef stew<\/a> would become the basis of breakfast the next morning. In cities, street hawkers known as \u201carlequins<\/a>\u201d purchased dinner scraps from restaurants and rich households to resell them to the poor. For these Frenchmen and -women, repurposing previous meals wasn\u2019t about style but survival. Because of their association with poverty, leftovers were stigmatized up until the late 19th century. <\/p>\n

But by the turn of the 20th century, it had become hip to whip something up with the remains from last night\u2019s meal.<\/p>\n

In 1892, French chef Alfred Suzanne wrote that \u201cthere are dishes which, when reheated with art and discernment, transformed with taste and presented in an appetizing manner\u2026 can be as good as, if not better than, the first time they are served.\u201d In the preface to his encyclopedic cookbook, \u201c150 Ways to Accommodate Leftovers<\/a>,\u201d the former chef to British royalty declared that the \u201cdeep-seated prejudice that many people have\u201d against leftovers was \u201can error.\u201d <\/p>\n

Suzanne\u2019s colleagues and culinary connoisseurs concurred. French food critic Fulbert-Dumonteil<\/a> praised<\/a> the chef for explaining \u201call the ingenious and charming ways to restore mutilated bits and pieces from epic feasts\u201d and turn \u201ccumbersome remains\u201d into something that delights the palate. <\/p>\n

Marketing to the masses<\/h2>\n

Why did \u201cleftovers\u201d make the leap from insipid plates peddled by \u201carlequins\u201d to inspired dishes perfected by culinary artists? <\/p>\n

In 1882, France\u2019s new republican government passed legislation mandating education<\/a> for all children ages 6 to 13. Many public schoolchildren came from the lower and lower-middle classes, and educators designed home economics lessons with this in mind<\/a>. Girls learned how to preserve and prepare their leftovers safely, nutritiously and economically. They were also taught that their talent for accommodating leftovers was a reflection of their thrift and resourcefulness \u2013 the markers of middle-class French femininity<\/a>. <\/p>\n

As the percentage of literate females spiked in France, the publishing industry pounced on this potential market. The late 19th century saw more and more domestic manuals aimed at \u201cm\u00e9nag\u00e8res\u201d \u2013 wives and mothers from the working and lower-middle classes. Many guides featured a chapter on fixing leftovers, while some, such as \u201c100 Ways to Accommodate Leftovers<\/a>\u201d and \u201cThe Art of Accommodating Leftovers, Dedicated to Those of Meager Means<\/a>,\u201d made revamping remains their central focus.<\/p>\n

France\u2019s top chefs join in<\/h2>\n

In the 1890s top chefs also started to contribute recipes to domestic cooking magazines. This genre of culinary literature proliferated<\/a> in the late 19th century during a period of rapid growth for the popular press. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n William Orpen\u2019s \u2018Le Chef de l’H\u00f4tel Chatham, Paris\u2019 (1921).<\/span>
\n Royal Academy of Arts<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chefs wanted to appeal to a wide audience, and their contributions ranged from columns on economical cooking to instructions for assembling \u201cpi\u00e8ces mont\u00e9es<\/a>,\u201d which are elaborate edifices made of confections. Many of these journals designated a special section for accommodating leftovers, with titles like \u201cUtilizing Leftovers\u201d and \u201cDelicious Ways to Accommodate the Scraps.\u201d<\/p>\n

The repetitive nomenclature belies the range of the recipes printed under these rubrics. Some were simple and modest and reflected the original rationale for leftovers, which was economical. <\/p>\n

For example, a July 1907 recipe for \u201cLisette\u2019s Cake\u201d in the magazine Family Cooking<\/a> offered a sweet solution for yesterday\u2019s bread. The cook needed only to soak the loaf in sweetened milk, strain the mixture through a fine sieve, add two eggs and bake in the oven for 20 minutes. <\/p>\n

But some recipes got complicated and costly. Family Cooking also published a leftovers recipe for \u201cVeal \u00e0 la Russe,\u201d which required, in addition to veal chops, a quarter pound of butter, anchovies, tomato coulis, jus and truffles for garnish. The Cordon Bleu Magazine<\/a> suggested repurposing leftover pheasant in a way that required an hour of boiling in fine demi-glace<\/a> and two hours of cooling on ice, before being pureed by hand, seasoned, molded and fried. <\/p>\n

Such recipes would hardly qualify as time- or cost-saving. But practicality wasn\u2019t the only point anymore. Scholars have shown how women at the turn of the century read popular and prescriptive literature as a \u201cform of escapism<\/a>\u201d that encouraged them to \u201cfantasize<\/a>\u201d about what modern domestic life could be. <\/p>\n

By turning leftovers into an art form, early home cooking magazines inspired a modern generation of home cooks to be creative and think critically about cooking. And they left their legacy to us and our leftovers. <\/p>\n

So this year, instead of scraping together another tiresome turkey sandwich, try a turkey recipe<\/a> adapted from Alfred Suzanne\u2019s \u201c150 Ways to Accommodate Leftovers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n A leftover turkey recipe adapted from Alfred Suzanne\u2019s \u2018150 Ways to Accommodate Leftovers.\u2019<\/span>
\n Samantha Presnal<\/span>, Author provided<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

[ You\u2019re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation\u2019s authors and editors.<\/em> You can get our highlights each weekend<\/a>. ]\"The<\/p>\n

Samantha Presnal<\/a>, Fellow, Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Amherst College<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Samantha Presnal, Amherst College It\u2019s the day after Thanksgiving, the tryptophan has worn off, and there are towers of Tupperware filled with turkey, stuffing and potatoes in your fridge. If you rely on your microwave, you might simply resign yourself to eating the same meal, over and over again, until the leftovers run out. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":18710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[7201,4021,582,1743,7295,6116,386],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18714"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18715,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18714\/revisions\/18715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}