Catherine de Medici was France’s Medieval Martha Stewart, and a Witch?

Catherine de Medici gets credit for nearly every French culinary innovation, from macarons to the fork.

This episode brings in Florence based food and wine expert Coral Sisk to test those legends one by one. Caroline and Emily trace the real origins of macarons, gelato, choux pastry, duck a l'orange, and table manners, and separate what Catherine de Medici likely brought from Italy from what French pastry chefs invented centuries later.

Podcast Show Notes

In this episode:

• Why a French food podcast is covering a Florentine noblewoman

• The myth that macarons came from Catherine de Medici's Italian court

• The chicken farmer legend behind the invention of Florentine gelato

• How gelato actually reached Paris a century later, via Sicilian immigrant Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli

• The invented pastry chef behind the cream puff legend

• Why the choux pastry technique still points to a real origin roughly 200 years later

• Duck a l'orange and its roots in Persian, Arab, and Florentine cooking

• The artichoke banquet story and the fat shaming Catherine faced as queen