THE FOOD OF FRANCE discusses in detail, region by fascinating region, the endlessly various dishes that have made France the gourmet's native home. This book is the savory product of a gastronome's inquisitive journey, lasting many years, through all of France. A compendium of good eating, it is also larded throughout with fascinating digressions about history, nomenclature, language, architecture, and local customs. Offering the pleasures of good reading and the usefulness of a reference book, it is without parallel both among books about food and among books about France.

Guaranteed to delight all lovers of good eating and all Francophiles, THE FOOD OF FRANCE will fill even the most sedentary reader with a desire to set off at once for Paris and the provinces. It will make the most fumble-handed itch to try their skill at cooking (though it is not a book of recipes). Lighted always by Waverley Root's long-time love for the land of France and what its people eat and drink, the book is most engagingly written, often highly amusing, and always thoroughly informed. Mr. Root has himself tried most French foods in the regions to which they are native; he writes of what he has tasted, tested, and judged. From peasant fare to haute cuisine, all of it is here.

Having demonstrated that most French cooking may be divided into the domains of butter, of animal fat, and of olive oil, Waverley Root conducts his reminiscent tour under these rubrics:

The Domain of Butter covers the Touraine, the "Golden Crescent" (Poitou, Anjou, Berry, Orleanais, Ile-de-France), the Flatlands (Picardy, Artois, Flanders) Champagne), Normandy, Brittany, the Bordeaux country, Burgundy, and the Mountains (Jura, France-Comte, Savoy, Dauphine).

The Domain of Fat (pork fat and goose fat) reveals the treasures of Alsace-Lorraine, the Central Plateau (Perigord, Auvergne, Marche, Limousin, Guienne) and Languedoc.

Under The Domain of Oil come the pleasures of Provence, the Cote d'Azur and the County of Nice, and Corsica.
The Pyrenees completes the picture with regions that do not fall into any particular category: Gascony and the Basque country, Beam and the County of Foix, and Roussillon.

SAMUEL CHAMBERLAIN IN HIS INTRODUCTION TO THE FOOD OF FRANCE WRITES:

"One can't help but marvel at the patience, the erudition, and the study that have gone into the preparation of this book, not to speak of the countless kilometers on the road and the convivial meals that Waverley Root has enjoyed in the process. . . . His long career as a much-traveled newspaper correspondent has made possible this revealing by-product. He knows France intimately, thoroughly, and affectionately, not only her cooking, but her history and geography as well. As a result, the attentive reader of The Food of France will be enriched by a wealth of background information to his gastronomic adventures. This is indeed basic reading on the good things of France and how they came about. . . . "This is a work for posterity. It will be entirely reliable decades from now. Present and future generations will rejoice in this definitive treatise, the first written in English on an absorbing and heart-warming subject."