“Consommé, glacé, fricassé”

French terms in the culinary book of João da Matta

Abstract

After contextualizing French cuisine importance and dominance in the international panorama, brief considerations are made about its influence in 19th and 20th centuries national recipes. It reflects on the ways of introducing culinary “Frenchisms” in Portuguese language, analyzing French terminology in the work “Arte de Cozinha” (1876) by João da Matta. We try to systematize this lexicon in different categories: culinary names; common names metaphorically used in the kitchen; geographical names; surnames; exclusive vocabulary from cookbooks and terms that have fallen into disuse, noting their relevance in the Portuguese culinary literature. This analysis is supported by the bachelor thesis in Romanesque Philology with the title “Francesismos na terminologia da culinária Portuguesa” presented in 1953 by Maria José Osório dos Santos Carvalheira to the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Coimbra. This pioneering work proposes a reflection on the appropriation of these words and the different ways in which they were introduced into Portuguese daily life.