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French Cooking in Ten Minutes: Adapting to the Rhythm of Modern Life
A beautiful reprint of Edouard de Pomiane's classic collection of recipes for simply prepared meals is more useful now than ever before. Illustrated with period pen and ink drawings, French Cooking in Ten Minutes offers an array of recipes for quick soups, extemporaneous sauces, egg and noodle dishes, preparing fish and meats, as well as vegetables, salads, and deserts.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1930
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About the author
Edouard de Pomiane
38 books2 followersAs a dietician and a professor at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, Edouard de Pomiane acquired a profound knowledge of the nutritive and medical values of food, and of its history. He made a study of the chemistry of cooking and explained the reasons behind the methods, enabling his followers to understand just why certain ingredients behaved as they did, to avoid culinary mistakes, wherever humanly possible, and to put things right where, in spite of care, they had gone wrong. Yet his attitude was light-hearted, his delight in good food infectious, and his approach to cookery charmingly carefree.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
July 4, 2021
I found an original hardback copy of this in my grandfather's library. My grandmother had gone to Paris for her trousseau. I still have her beautiful, monogrammed crepe de chine French knickers in pale lemon, trimmed with handmade lace and matching nightie, shaped and seductive like a Hollywood gown from the 30s. Maybe she picked the book up then?
Years later, I used to chat on ICQ messenger service, and was talking about this book to a longtime friend from, afair Cincinatti. He said he was going to Paris on his honeymoon and he would look for this book for me! He found it, this is it! I never met him and ICQ kind of died and we lost touch.
The book is all about creating the best possible island of pleasure in a stress-filled day. Home for lunch for an hour? Put a pan of water on the stove to boil, and then get to it! By carefully buying and planning, the author says, you can have soup, a main course and dessert and coffee before you return to work.
The author was a very hard-working man who grew up in Poland, in a poor, but aristocratic family where both parents were patriots and worked against the Russians. Which didn't help his father who was deported to Siberia, causing his mother to flee to France with young Edouard. The author had worked as a doctor at the Institute Pasteur and was a French scientist, radio broadcaster and, in his day, a very famous food writer.
He wasn't Jewish, but was very sympathetic to the plight of Jews - Poland like Germany had terrible Pogroms looting Jewish businesses and homes, beating up and killing them all with State approval. France also discriminated racially against Jews, reversing Napoleon's emancipation of them and many of the French Revolution's ideas of freedom of the individual. The author was a vocal supporter of the Dreyfus cause. de Pomiane really liked Jewish food, and wrote, The Jews of Poland: Recollections and Recipes a bestseller in its day.
French Cooking in Ten Minutes: Adapting to the Rhythm of Modern Life is all about the saucepan and frying pan - microwaves didn't exist and the oven was too slow. There are 300 recipes, soups, sauces (it is French cooking after all), lots of fast pasta, egg and fish dishes as well as small cuts of meat, and always something sweet to finish with. All illustrated with the author's own pen and ink drawings.
In this day and age of fast food, if the book was re-entitled 'French dinner party cooking in under half an hour' it would probably sell out
Years later, I used to chat on ICQ messenger service, and was talking about this book to a longtime friend from, afair Cincinatti. He said he was going to Paris on his honeymoon and he would look for this book for me! He found it, this is it! I never met him and ICQ kind of died and we lost touch.
The book is all about creating the best possible island of pleasure in a stress-filled day. Home for lunch for an hour? Put a pan of water on the stove to boil, and then get to it! By carefully buying and planning, the author says, you can have soup, a main course and dessert and coffee before you return to work.
The author was a very hard-working man who grew up in Poland, in a poor, but aristocratic family where both parents were patriots and worked against the Russians. Which didn't help his father who was deported to Siberia, causing his mother to flee to France with young Edouard. The author had worked as a doctor at the Institute Pasteur and was a French scientist, radio broadcaster and, in his day, a very famous food writer.
He wasn't Jewish, but was very sympathetic to the plight of Jews - Poland like Germany had terrible Pogroms looting Jewish businesses and homes, beating up and killing them all with State approval. France also discriminated racially against Jews, reversing Napoleon's emancipation of them and many of the French Revolution's ideas of freedom of the individual. The author was a vocal supporter of the Dreyfus cause. de Pomiane really liked Jewish food, and wrote, The Jews of Poland: Recollections and Recipes a bestseller in its day.
French Cooking in Ten Minutes: Adapting to the Rhythm of Modern Life is all about the saucepan and frying pan - microwaves didn't exist and the oven was too slow. There are 300 recipes, soups, sauces (it is French cooking after all), lots of fast pasta, egg and fish dishes as well as small cuts of meat, and always something sweet to finish with. All illustrated with the author's own pen and ink drawings.
In this day and age of fast food, if the book was re-entitled 'French dinner party cooking in under half an hour' it would probably sell out
December 31, 2020
This is probably the best cookbook ever written.
July 2, 2014
Ten minutes to cook a French meal? Sacre bleu is what some purists might scream, and a few of them did just that in 1930s’ Paris. Edouard de Pomiane’s little book, with its very practical advice about cooking and eating well with the least amount of fuss, was a big hit, as were his other books and radio programs. He was not a trained cook or chef, but a scientist at the Louis Pasteur Institute in Paris, with cooking as a hobby and a second-act career. De Pomiane was born in Paris, a first generation Frenchman with familial and culinary ties to Poland, very much like Chef Ali-Bab (Hénri Babinski), whose encyclopedic work on French cooking Julia Child found to be fascinating. He was no fool, so do not expect him to pull a cassoulet out in ten minutes. Instead he presents everyday good food, most of it very elegant, for “. . . students, dressmakers, secretaries, artists, lazy people, poets, men of action, dreamers, scientists, and everyone else who has only an hour for lunch or dinner, but still wants thirty minutes of peace to enjoy a cup of coffee.”
The ten-minute meal is possible because de Pomiane will tell you how to be prepared with a small number of cooking utensils, an ordinary stove, and an understanding of basic cooking techniques that he explains very clearly. Some of his method depends on buying prepared foods, such as a roasted chicken, or having a selection of cooked foods always on hand.
Pages 23-25 will be a revelation for some modern foodies who think it is necessary to have a professional stove with a gazillion BTUs of power, a huge amount of cooking equipment, and unassailable techniques before even thinking about cooking for others, let alone for oneself. Edouard de Pomiane's way of cooking debunks that sort of nonsense and gives everyone the confidence and methods to derive pleasure and satisfaction from the process and the final product--a good meal and the time to enjoy it, with others or alone.
In small ways this book and Cooking with Pomiane speak of their time regarding certain ingredients, such as recommending canned vegetables when frozen were not available. The introduction to this edition points out other differences and provides advice. However his basic methodology still applies, perhaps now more than ever, with calls for slow cooking and eating, de Pomiane's sage advice, practicality, candor and passion answer those calls. In the two introductions to Cooking with Pomiane, Ruth Reichl and Elizabeth David validate his contributions and influence.
Here is Elizabeth David on the man and his work:
http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/1970s...
Reviewed by Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Central Library
The ten-minute meal is possible because de Pomiane will tell you how to be prepared with a small number of cooking utensils, an ordinary stove, and an understanding of basic cooking techniques that he explains very clearly. Some of his method depends on buying prepared foods, such as a roasted chicken, or having a selection of cooked foods always on hand.
Pages 23-25 will be a revelation for some modern foodies who think it is necessary to have a professional stove with a gazillion BTUs of power, a huge amount of cooking equipment, and unassailable techniques before even thinking about cooking for others, let alone for oneself. Edouard de Pomiane's way of cooking debunks that sort of nonsense and gives everyone the confidence and methods to derive pleasure and satisfaction from the process and the final product--a good meal and the time to enjoy it, with others or alone.
In small ways this book and Cooking with Pomiane speak of their time regarding certain ingredients, such as recommending canned vegetables when frozen were not available. The introduction to this edition points out other differences and provides advice. However his basic methodology still applies, perhaps now more than ever, with calls for slow cooking and eating, de Pomiane's sage advice, practicality, candor and passion answer those calls. In the two introductions to Cooking with Pomiane, Ruth Reichl and Elizabeth David validate his contributions and influence.
Here is Elizabeth David on the man and his work:
http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/1970s...
Reviewed by Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Central Library
October 20, 2016
This is not a cookbook, this is some hors d'oeuvre you taste with your imagination before starting cooking. It is more of a culinary habits book, some are good habits, some are bad habits but all would make Dionysus troupe of hedonists very happy.
Don't expect extraordinary advice and recipes, the best recipe in it is in fact boiling water, but the basic tricks will spark in you a ton of ideas for your own recipes, especially if you don't like to follow a book when it comes to cooking.
Nothing else to say about it, I'm going now to the kitchen to experiment with some of the ideas.
January 15, 2025
3.75 ✨
Cute and fun little book. I loved the illustrations and I learned some new things and simple ways of cooking. However, anyone who is eating tripe in this year of our lord is sick in the head.
Cute and fun little book. I loved the illustrations and I learned some new things and simple ways of cooking. However, anyone who is eating tripe in this year of our lord is sick in the head.
April 18, 2020
What a treasure! Short, sweet and simple to improve your cooking tastefully. Small enough to be a permanent fixture in the kitchen.
September 24, 2020
When I was in my twenties my grandmother gave me this brilliant little book, written in the 1930's by a French chemist. Classic.
February 1, 2024
Found this on a curb in Carmel by the Sea on my honeymoon. A delightful little book that makes cooking feel elemental in its simplicity and its elegance. Highly recommend, if you can get your hands on it.
October 10, 2018
Except for his weird assertion that canned asparagus is really good and that fresh asparagus takes too long to cook, this is an excellent read and I aim to try these recipes soon.
June 1, 2008
THis is a really fun reading cookbook. It reads with a sense of humor and is the very basics of cooking in a french style without getting too crazy. The recipes can really be done in 10 minutes if you already have the ingredients and gear you need in the house. It reads a little clumsey in places, since it was written in 1930, and some modern availability of food would be unfathomable to Mr. de Pomaine. Fresh aparagus for instance, is available to us year round. When he speaks of asparagus he recommends getting quality asparagus not from a can but in a glass jar. Frozen ANYTHING is simply beyond his ken. If you like to cook this may be a book for you.
May 18, 2020
If you like something a little bit quirky, then Edouard de Pomiane's French Cooking in Ten Minutes is for you.
Written in 1930 when women were in the kitchen (!) this tome is at times hilarious and his turn of phrase often brings a laugh and a smile.
I could only buy it in hard copy but it was well worth it as there are quite a few handy recipes inside that are simple to prepare, although I don't think our supermakets will be stocking larks anytime soon!
This book is probably not on your radar, but I highly recommend it as a quick, fun read that reflects life almost 100 years ago.
Written in 1930 when women were in the kitchen (!) this tome is at times hilarious and his turn of phrase often brings a laugh and a smile.
I could only buy it in hard copy but it was well worth it as there are quite a few handy recipes inside that are simple to prepare, although I don't think our supermakets will be stocking larks anytime soon!
This book is probably not on your radar, but I highly recommend it as a quick, fun read that reflects life almost 100 years ago.
April 1, 2016
Apparently the trick to being fast is to leave your hat on. Huge timesaver.
August 22, 2020
Fascinating glimpse into French cooking circa the 1930s with some recipes I will actually try.
March 6, 2022
My friend read about Elizabeth David in a book by Marita van der Vyver, and suggested we read “An omelet and a glass of wine” by Elizabeth. Who can resist a book with such a stunning title in any case! In “An omelet” is a charming collection of articles published by Elizabeth in a wide variety of magazines and newspapers on an even bigger variety of topics. In one of those articles she writes about the significant influence Edouard de Pomaine’s thinking and approach to eating had on the menu’s of the 1930’s.
And besides she enticed me with some brilliant recipes by Edouard. I had to see if I could find this book. I found it and it did not disappoint in the least! What a gem.
As Elizabeth refers to him as the “unsacrosanct” she summarizes him in a word! His take on toasted sandwiches and tomato soup is precious. And all of it really fast. I can see myself eat in 4 or 5 courses his way.
He took home cooked fast food to another level n a time when it was not even something! The fact that he was neither French nor a cook but wrote 22 books on cooking is only a drop in the bucket of his uniqueness. He will remain a hero of mine just because he considers cooking an art as well as science.
And besides she enticed me with some brilliant recipes by Edouard. I had to see if I could find this book. I found it and it did not disappoint in the least! What a gem.
As Elizabeth refers to him as the “unsacrosanct” she summarizes him in a word! His take on toasted sandwiches and tomato soup is precious. And all of it really fast. I can see myself eat in 4 or 5 courses his way.
He took home cooked fast food to another level n a time when it was not even something! The fact that he was neither French nor a cook but wrote 22 books on cooking is only a drop in the bucket of his uniqueness. He will remain a hero of mine just because he considers cooking an art as well as science.
November 6, 2022
First of all, let me tell you that this is a beautiful book - the author says in the opening statement, and he's not wrong. This is as much a work of philosophy as it is a cookbook. Today it reads like any recipe site, but back in the 1930s it caused quite a stir, for it was the first of its kind. This work gave rise to convenience cooking by having the French cuisine stripped of all the steps that aren't absolutely crucial. And it did so with great humour.
March 16, 2018
This is an old 1930 cookbook that does what it says. Of course, there are no fancy meals here. Lots of plain and simple dinner and lunches, though. In accordance with "modern" times, there are plenty of cans of vegetables, as these take next to no time to heat.
Some recipes are definitely worth trying and the others are just fun to read and speculate.
Some recipes are definitely worth trying and the others are just fun to read and speculate.
February 7, 2021
This is a fun book with a conversational tone that lays out the the basics of French cooking. Edouard de Pomiane is a very entertaining author who educates the reader on French cooking while building more complex recipes upon simpler ones. Easy to read with plenty of good information on cooking the French way. Highly recommended.
October 26, 2023
I loved the illustrations and straight to the point cornucopia of recipe ideas. 4 stars only inasmuch as the extensive use of flours and frying were not to my palate’s liking. The mussel recipe seems brilliant; I look forward to trying. Oysters and a dry white wine for the win!
May 20, 2019
This is an amazing cookbook! The recipes are simple and plainly explained with just the right amount of humour.
November 12, 2019
Brilliant little book. Highly recommended especially for the sauces and meat cooking tips.
July 8, 2021
Finally found my copy, first purchased in 2001/ been AWOL since 2019. I have prepared some of the recipes in this delightful book. Simplicity at its finest.
January 14, 2022
The coldly writing style is kinda cute.
May 5, 2022
Funny and brief but also kinda slow to read straight through because it's a cook book.
March 8, 2023
Charming and amusing short anecdotes about food and easy to follow recipes -- if you're so inclined. This is a wonderful classic. A keeper.
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November 27, 2023
Easy ,practical ,sensible ,no fuss
October 25, 2025
Cute and some good methods!
January 24, 2026
An absolute delight of a book. Read it while soaking in the tub even if it takes you a year to get through it (it won’t).
March 14, 2017
I love this book. I reread it every few months and am inspired every time.
March 8, 2015
I didn't have high expectations; after all French cooking in ten minutes? Nah, impossible! However, as I began skimming through the book I was caught by Edouard de Pomiane's friendly approach and writing style. He is delightfully confiding and encouraging...
pg 5, "Food can be cooked by ... braising. This last technique is virtually useless in ten minute cooking because it is a very long, slow process."
pg 53, "Not very elegant but absolutely delicious.",
pg 72 (for fried frogs' legs) "The frog is not a fish, but since they're neighbors, we'll put them in the same chapter."
pg 78, "You will feel yourself becoming an artist."
His recipes are bare bones and his kitchen equipment is minimal. Occasionally, amounts are give and are small by US standards - a 10 ounce steak for two This is implied to be a cookbook for lunch - when you come home but must return to work in an hour - so he gives you recipes for ten minute cooking then an implied 20 minutes to eat and a leisurely 30 minutes for coffee and conversation. It is also implied that many of the recipes are for two, precede by an earlier course, accompanied by a side and followed by cheese then fruit All in ten minutes - and he explains how to do that as well.
There is quite a bit of frying and lots of butter and sauces (which are amazingly simple and build on an earlier basic sauce) but good butter is the delight of French cooking.
A wonderful little book of 150 pages which moved immediately to my 'keeper' shelf.
pg 5, "Food can be cooked by ... braising. This last technique is virtually useless in ten minute cooking because it is a very long, slow process."
pg 53, "Not very elegant but absolutely delicious.",
pg 72 (for fried frogs' legs) "The frog is not a fish, but since they're neighbors, we'll put them in the same chapter."
pg 78, "You will feel yourself becoming an artist."
His recipes are bare bones and his kitchen equipment is minimal. Occasionally, amounts are give and are small by US standards - a 10 ounce steak for two This is implied to be a cookbook for lunch - when you come home but must return to work in an hour - so he gives you recipes for ten minute cooking then an implied 20 minutes to eat and a leisurely 30 minutes for coffee and conversation. It is also implied that many of the recipes are for two, precede by an earlier course, accompanied by a side and followed by cheese then fruit All in ten minutes - and he explains how to do that as well.
There is quite a bit of frying and lots of butter and sauces (which are amazingly simple and build on an earlier basic sauce) but good butter is the delight of French cooking.
A wonderful little book of 150 pages which moved immediately to my 'keeper' shelf.
January 19, 2012
I was hiking up a canyon in France, to see a waterfall in Vaucluse -- the "Fontane de Vaucluse". Oddly, there were various attractions along the trail and one of them turned about to be the Museum of the Resistance -- Musee de la Resistance -- where aspects of daily life during occupied France were portrayed. For example, a bicycle with, in place of a tire, corks from wine bottles: rubber was a war resource in short supply. Make do with wine corks!
Imagine my surprise to see a slim volume by Edouard de Pomiane, with helpful advice to the war housewife on how to prepare a meal with diminished resources.
The present volume, French Cooking in Ten Minutes, dates from 1930. It is a beauty, a gem, and a resource to the present day. There is a recipe in this book which I make every week, and I love to read the book too. I have given this book away countless times, and yet I manage always to own a copy.
I would be remiss not to bring it to your attention.
Imagine my surprise to see a slim volume by Edouard de Pomiane, with helpful advice to the war housewife on how to prepare a meal with diminished resources.
The present volume, French Cooking in Ten Minutes, dates from 1930. It is a beauty, a gem, and a resource to the present day. There is a recipe in this book which I make every week, and I love to read the book too. I have given this book away countless times, and yet I manage always to own a copy.
I would be remiss not to bring it to your attention.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews