Paper Palate

When I arrived in France in 1990, learning to cook à la française was a priority. My husband had a (very) few cookbooks, and my American favorites which had crossed the Atlantic didn’t speak the lingo.

Although I have amassed quite a collection of French livres de cuisine over the years, my first cooking teachers were magazines.

In fact, the periodicals that guided my initial experiences have become an official triad for marketing purposes: “Le Trio Gourmand.” Guide Cuisine, Cuisine Actuelle and Cuisine Gourmande are the members of this cooking magazine trio.

These three culinary musketeers may not be the most glamorous French cooking mags, but they certainly are the most practical for French working women — and, more occasionally, men.

Guide Cuisine provided me with plenty of culinary inspiration back in the days when I had time to purchase cooking magazines every month, cut out all of the most interesting recipes and try some of them each week. A recipe that I lovingly saved from an issue of Guide Cuisine circa 1990, carrot flan, has become a family favorite and is one of those dishes which lends itself to infinite variations. Seventeen years later, the April 2007 issue inspired me, this very day, to whip up a quick chocolate cake. The “Biscuit Chocolat-Cannelle” looks like a basic gâteau and was truly simple to bake, yet the recipe spiced it up with cinnamon, making it an original treat.

Despite numerous facelifts, Guide Cuisine has remained the least gourmet publication in the gourmet trio. According to press material from publishers Prisma Presse, its core audience is “working women who have interests outside of the kitchen and search for various ideas with short preparation times.”

Sounds like me! I’d better start buying Guide Cuisine again…