Menon was the most prolific cookbook author in
18th-century France. But it appears that nothing is known about his life. The National Library of France (Bibliothèque Nationale de France) lists his name as Joseph Menon. His numerous
works were often reprinted, sometimes
anonymously
Anonymity describes situations where the acting person's identity is unknown. Some writers have argued that namelessness, though technically correct, does not capture what is more centrally at stake in contexts of anonymity. The important idea he ...
.
The best-known of his books is probably ''La Cuisinière bourgeoise'', which was first published in 1746 and every year after for the next century, even during the French Revolution. It was the most reprinted French cookbook and the only one written before the French Revolution to be reprinted after 1800. Before the publication of ''La Cuisinière bourgeoise'', French cookbooks claimed to make a royal and elite cuisine available to all budgets. Menon's book took the opposite approach, presenting a cuisine with "modest origins" that would be sought after by elites. The recipes were simpler and healthier. "Bourgeois" or middle-class cuisine was women's cooking, hence the feminine cook in the book's title.
Principal works
* ''Nouveau Traité de la Cuisine'',
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
, 1739, 3 vol. in-12 ;
* ''La Cuisinière bourgeoise'', Paris, 1746, 2 vol. in-12 ;
* ''La Science du Maître d’Hôtel cuisinier, avec des Observations sur la connaissance et la propriété des aliments'', Paris, 1749, in-12 ;
* ''Les Soupers de la Cour, ou l’art de travailler toutes sortes d’aliments pour servir les meilleures tables'', Paris, 1758, 4 vol. in-12 ;
* ''Traité historique et pratique de la Cuisine'', Paris, 1758, 2 vol. in-12 ;
* ''Le Nouveau Cuisinier français'', 3 vol. in-12 ;
* ''Cuisine et Office de Sante'', Paris, 1758, in-12;
* ''Manuel des Officiers de bouche'', Paris, 1759, in-12 ;
* ''La Science du Maître d’hôtel confiseur'', Paris, 1768, in-12
Bibliography & Further reading
* Hoefer, Ferdinand (1861). ''Nouvelle Biographie générale'', t. 34. Paris: Firmin-Didot, p. 998.
* Rambourg, Patrick (2010). ''Histoire de la cuisine et de la gastronomie françaises.'' Paris: Ed. Perrin (coll. tempus n° 359), 381 pages.
* Takats, Sean (2011). ''The Expert Cook in Enlightenment France''. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Notes
External links
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{{Authority control
French cookbook writers
18th-century French writers
18th-century French male writers
French male non-fiction writers
18th-century pseudonymous writers