Episodes

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 […]

Cancoillotte is gloopy, smelly, difficult to pronounce (CON-KWAH-YOWT), and suddenly all over French TikTok. The centuries-old cheese from Franche-Comté has been reinvented as a low-fat, high-protein fitness food, becoming France’s unlikely answer to America’s cottage-cheese obsession. But its rise reveals something much bigger, the way French attitudes toward food may be changing. Caroline and Emily […]

Mayonnaise is the world’s most popular sauce, but nobody agrees on who invented it. This episode traces the history of mayonnaise from a Spanish port battle to a Paris pharmacist’s ointment. Caroline and Emily examine the competing French origin stories, the codification of the sauce by Antonin Careme’s critics, and how mustard, eggs, and oil […]

Record heat and historic drought are forcing France’s most protected cheeses to break their own rules. Caroline and Emily unpack how the AOP charters for Comté, Beaufort, and Abondance have been temporarily loosened after historic drought hit the Alps and Jura. They explain what changes when cows eat grain and hay instead of mountain grass, […]

French people rarely bake elaborate pastries at home, and Versaille-based pastry chef Molly Wilkinson says that is by design. Caroline and Emily talk with Wilkinson, an American pastry chef trained at Le Cordon Bleu, about why French home bakers stick to simple recipes like mousse au chocolat and yogurt cake while buying croissants and tarts […]

Macarons may be one of France’s most recognizable culinary exports, but their history is much messier than the pastel boxes suggest. In this episode, Caroline and Emily dig into the Italian origins of the macaron and the role Catherine de’ Medici supposedly played in bringing almond cookies to the French court. They explore the roughly […]