Foundations & the French Pantry
French Cookery
Chapter 1 · Foundations & the French Pantry
French home cooking rests on a genuinely small set of ideas used with real discipline — good butter, a little wine, a few herbs used the right way, and stock built properly (Chapter 3). This chapter is the no-cooking foundation: the pantry, and the equipment later chapters actually lean on.
Butter: The Backbone of French Cooking
| Type | What it is | Best used for |
|---|---|---|
| Unsalted butter | No added salt — the default choice in almost every French recipe | Cooking and baking generally, since it lets you control salt precisely rather than guessing how much a "salted" brand already added |
| Salted butter | Butter with salt added, mainly for table use and shelf life historically | Spreading on bread — rarely used for actual cooking in this course |
| European-style butter | A higher butterfat content (roughly 82–84%, against a standard 80%) and less water, often cultured for a slightly tangier flavour | Worth seeking out for pastry (Chapter 9) and emulsified sauces (Chapter 5), where its lower water content genuinely changes the result |
Unsalted by default, for a real reason
Recipes across this course assume unsalted butter and season separately — a French kitchen's own habit of
controlling salt at the very end of a dish, once every other salty ingredient (stock, cheese, cured meat)
has already had its say, rather than guessing at the start.
Cooking with Wine
Wine shows up constantly in French cooking — deglazing a pan (Chapter 6), braising (Chapter 7), building a sauce (Chapters 4 and 5). A few real distinctions are worth knowing before you start.
- Skip bottles labelled "cooking wine." These are often salted and lower quality specifically so they can be sold outside normal alcohol regulations — the added salt makes seasoning a dish harder to control, not easier. A modest, genuinely drinkable bottle works better and rarely costs much more.
- Dry white wine is the default for deglazing a pan or building a lighter sauce — its acidity balances rich butter and cream-based sauces.
- A medium-bodied red wine is the classic choice for a real braise like coq au vin or boeuf bourguignon (Chapter 7), where it simmers for hours and needs real character to still taste like something at the end.
The Herb Basics: Herbes de Provence & Bouquet Garni
Two genuinely different things, often confused by name alone.
- Herbes de Provence is a dried herb blend — typically thyme, rosemary, oregano, marjoram, and savory, sometimes with a little lavender — sprinkled directly into a dish, most often something roasted or grilled.
- Bouquet garni is a small bundle of fresh herbs — classically thyme, bay leaf, and parsley stems — tied together with kitchen string or wrapped in a leek leaf, dropped whole into a simmering stock or braise, and fished back out before serving. It flavours the liquid without leaving stray leaves and stems behind in the final dish.
You'll meet the bouquet garni again soon
Chapter 3's stock and Chapter 7's braise both lean on a bouquet garni directly — it's worth tying one
together once here, in a low-pressure setting, before you need to build one quickly alongside a real dish.
Essential Equipment
Genuinely essential
- A heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven (for stocks and braises)
- A fine-mesh sieve, for straining stock
- A whisk (essential for Chapter 5's hollandaise)
- A good paring knife
- Kitchen string, for tying a bouquet garni
Nice to have, not urgent
- A dedicated stockpot
- A mandoline, for fine, even vegetable cuts
Skip for now
- A copper sauté pan
- A proper conical chinois strainer — the fine-mesh sieve above does the job for now
Kitchen Practice
No cooking yet — this chapter's practice is about stocking, tasting, and one small piece of prep.
Kitchen Practice 1
Audit your own pantry against this chapter's own list. Check off what you already
have, and note which missing items are needed soonest — good unsalted butter and a dry white wine
for the earliest chapters.
→ Solution
Kitchen Practice 2
Taste a small piece of unsalted butter plain, at room temperature, then a piece of
salted butter the same way. Note the real difference, so you have a reference point for why this
course seasons separately rather than relying on salted butter to do it.
→ Solution
Kitchen Practice 3
Tie a bouquet garni from fresh thyme, a bay leaf, and a few parsley stems, using
kitchen string — practising the bundle once now, before Chapter 3 needs one built quickly alongside
a real stock.
→ Solution
Quick Reference — The French Pantry
- Unsalted butter by default — season separately rather than relying on salted butter
- Skip bottles labelled "cooking wine" — a modest drinkable bottle works better
- Herbes de Provence: a dried blend sprinkled directly into a dish
- Bouquet garni: fresh herbs tied together, simmered in liquid, then removed before serving
- Equipment: a heavy-bottomed pot, a fine-mesh sieve, a whisk, and kitchen string