Abstract
The large contemporary French migrant population - currently estimated by the French Consulate at around 300-400, 000 in the UK, the majority living in London and the South-East - remains 'absent' from studies on migration, and these apparently 'a-typical' migrants are considered in a study of migrant food history in Britain not to have left traces as a migrant community. Over the centuries, the presence of various French communities in London has varied significantly as far as as numbers are concerned, but what does not change is their simultaneous 'visibility' and 'invisibility' in accounts of the history of the capital: even when relatively 'visible' at certain historical moments, they still often remain hidden in its histories. At times the French in London are described as a 'sober, well-behaved... and law-abiding community' at others, they appeared as a 'foreign body in the city'. This article reflects on the dynamics at play between a migrant community associated with high cultural capital (so much so that it is often emluated by those who are not French) and the host culture perception of and relationship to it in order to consider what this may 'mean' for the French (and Francophone) migrant experience. French gastronomy and culinary knowledge is taken as an example of material culture and of cultural capital 'on display' specifically in the activity of dining out, especially in French restaurants, or those influenced by French gastronomy. The social activity of dining out is replete with displays of knowledge (linguistic, culinary, cultural literacy), of modes of behaviour, of public identity, and of rituals strictly codified in both migrant and host culture. Dining out is also an emotional and politicallly-charged activity, fraught with feelings of suspicion (what is in the food? what does the chef get up to in the kitchen?), of status, of class and gender distinctions. This article considers the ways in which the migrant French citizen of London may be considered as occupying an ambiguous position at different times in history, at once in possession of knowledge and of the need to negotiate complex cultural encounters in the connections between identity and the symbolic status of food (in food production, food purveying and food consumption).
Highlights
Que se passe-t-il dans une assiette? Que retrouve-t-on qui exprime des idées, fasse sens et permette un message? Quelle est la nature de cette matière à réflexion? Quelle emblématique pour l’empire des signes culinaires? (Onfray 156)1
Stephen Mennell, in his comprehensive comparative analysis of food, eating and society in France and England, writes that ‘an important consequence of the prestige of French cookery in the higher social circles seems to have been the “decapitation” of English cookery’ (206). He argues, was a pattern of ‘culinary “cultural dependency” – the co-existence of native and foreign styles of food with different social connotations’ (204). Both Burnett and Mennell chart the complex historical processes of the development of the status of French gastronomy and its reception in England, avoiding the over-simplifications that give any impression of a history in which is inscribed the perception of British cuisine ‘as an empty space waiting to be “colonised” by influences from abroad – and especially from France, where food is treated with seriousness, even reverence, at both domestic and professional levels and by producers and consumers alike’ (Ashley et al 77, 78)
As Mennell writes, ‘French and English cookery are not entirely separate things. They have been in mutual contact and influenced each other over a very long period’ (Mennell 18). What was it about the evolution of London society and culture that made it so receptive to French gastronomy, and to what French migrants there had to offer? What was it about French gastronomy that led it to become prized by certain social groups in London, and when? Why food
Summary
Madame Prunier, you give us fishes which we wouldn’t dream of eating anywhere; you call them by a funny French name, and we all adore them! (Prunier 2011, x–xi). Despite Britain’s long-established links with India, there was only one short-lived Indian-run eating place in London in the nineteenth century (Ehrman 78) This ‘sidelining’ of the French is all the more surprising since the French were historically – and remain today – highly visible in terms of a material culture exemplified in gastronomy, in cooking, in restaurants and the food business, and in food culture.. The cookery book became important in the cultural transmission of French food knowledge and practice into English culture, alongside the rise of French haute cuisine in London clubs and restaurants, and the cult of the celebrity chef, the ‘face’ of a certain type of French migration and very much representative of French gastronomic knowledge on display: Three major changes occurred in the nineteenth century that altered the experience of eating out in London. The experiences of French gastronomy and of the French migrant in London have necessarily evolved with these changes
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