16 Essential Ingredients For French Cooking

Let's start by stating the obvious — the French take their food seriously. Beyond mere sustenance, food in France is a reflection of the country's rich history and time-honored traditions. Don't believe us? Just look at France's recent UNESCO accolades. In 2010, the United Nations entity included the French gastronomic meal as an intangible piece of worldwide cultural heritage. And 12 years later, the same organization added the iconic French baguette to the list.

The attention is nice, but the French don't cook to impress to anyone. Rather, they cook to highlight the freshness of their local produce, demonstrate their mastery of complicated culinary techniques, and celebrate the unique flavors each region of the country brings to the table. In this article, we're shining a spotlight on 16 ingredients the French rely on when crafting their edible masterpieces. From specialty salt harvested near the craggy shores of Brittany to wine produced in the rolling vineyards of Bordeaux, you'll discover all of the necessary ingredients needed to emulate the flavors of this culinary juggernaut.

The French divide themselves in all kinds of ways. For instance, Paris Saint-Germain fans pit themselves against Olympique de Marseille supporters. In the summer, you'll find juilletistes (those who vacation in July) arguing with aoûtiens (those who vacation in August) about the best time to get away. As you might expect, these divisions also apply to food. While most of the country refers to chocolate croissants as pains au chocolat, those from the southwest call them chocolatines. 

But nowhere are these culinary differences more visible than when comparing northern and southern styles of cooking. Southern cuisine is distinctly Mediterranean and olive oil-based, whereas northern cuisine relies heavily on butter. In fact, it's probably easier to name northern French dishes that don't contain butter than ones that do. Butter is a key ingredient in pastries, cakes, and baked goods. It's also essential for making sauces like beurre blanc (white butter), béchamel, and Béarnaise. What's more, it plays a leading role in simple sandwiches like jambon-beurre, a lunchtime staple made by slathering a baguette with salted butter and topping it with Jambon de Paris, a wet-cured cooked ham.

If you've been paying attention, then you know that dishes from southern France have a distinctly Mediterranean feel. That means these recipes contain all kinds of fresh vegetables, herbs, and seafood. They also rely heavily on olive oil, both as a standalone ingredient and as a base.

Take salade Niçoise as an example. Originating from Nice, this composed salad combines canned tuna, green beans, hard-boiled eggs, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, and olives. Olive oil is another essential ingredient, figuring prominently in the vinaigrette used to dress the salad (honorable mentions go out to red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, and fresh herbs). Or how about ratatouille, a stewed vegetable dish made with zucchini, tomatoes, and eggplant? Olive oil is used to roast the garlic and cook the veggies to stewy perfection. Then there's bouillabaisse, a fish stew from Marseille. In this recipe, olive oil serves when making the fish broth, the rouille, and the bouillabaisse itself.

While it's far from being the most expensive salt in the world (that distinction belongs to Korean Amethyst Bamboo Salt), fleur de sel doesn't come cheap. At more than $30 per pound, this is a salt you'll want to use sparingly. Thankfully, its primary use is as a finishing salt for fish, steak, vegetables, and chocolate cookies. When sprinkled over finished dishes, fleur de sel (whose name translates to flower of salt) provides an eye-catching dose of richness and a satisfying crunch. The unique flavor comes from the high concentration of calcium and magnesium found in the salt.

There are two reasons why fleur de sel is so expensive. The first reason comes down to basic supply and demand. Plenty of chefs want it, but authentic fleur de sel comes from just a few places on earth, notably Guérande, a region in Brittany, and Camargue in Provence. Not only is the harvesting area limited, but each salt marsh produces just two pounds of salt per day. The second explanation for fleur de sel's high price tag has to do with the harvesting process. Fleur de sel is hand-harvested using a lousse a fleur, a special rake used to remove the top layer of salt from the surface of the water. You'll have to shell out to get your hands on some, but once you taste your dishes, you'll be glad you splurged.

Whether clinking glasses of champagne during an apéro hour, guzzling down a glass of rosé during the dog days of summer, or sipping on a perfectly-paired Bordeaux, there's no end to the wine-drinking occasions in France. In fact, the average French person consumes about 53 bottles of wine per year. While most of those bottles are for drinking, some are reserved for cooking.

Wine is a helpful addition to just about any recipe. However, some dishes, like coq au vin, rely on it. This dish, whose name means chicken in wine, is prepared by dousing chicken, bacon, and mushrooms in a red wine bath, then braising the ingredients for about an hour. Boeuf bourguignon is another French dish that relies on red wine braising to create its complex flavor profile. White wine also makes frequent appearances in French cooking. For instance, chicken chasseur (aka hunter's chicken) combines bone-in chicken with white wine, cognac, and mushrooms. But the ultimate flex is that the French manage to use champagne when cooking. Adding leftover champagne to seafood dishes provides tart, citrusy notes, along with some toastiness.

Your tongue may jumble trying to read the name of this French staple ingredient but fear not. Crème fraîche is essentially just cultured heavy cream. Like yogurt and sour cream, crème fraîche has a slightly tangy flavor profile thanks to the added bacteria cultures. In addition to its tanginess, crème fraîche features nutty notes, something that allows it to pair seamlessly with a wide variety of spices and other condiments.

Aside from its versatility, the French love this handy ingredient because of its high-fat content. Whereas sour cream contains between 18 and 20% fat, crème fraîche clocks in anywhere between 30 and 45% fat. The extra fattiness makes it an ideal addition to hot dishes. Not only does it thicken soups and cream sauces, but it does so without curdling. Besides stirring it into liquidy dishes, the French also use it to fluff up mashed potatoes and decorate desserts.

French cuisine doesn't allow for a lot of shortcuts, but using herbes de Provence is one of the fastest ways to infuse your meat, vegetable, and egg dishes with flavors typical of the southeastern part of France. For many years, French home cooks and professional chefs used the term herbes de Provence pretty loosely. In other words, there wasn't a specific recipe for the herb blend. Rather, it was a general mixture of whatever summery herbs were available in the Provençal region of France. The modern recipe for the multipurpose herb blend appeared in the 1960s, when Julia Child featured Poulet Sauté aux Herbes de Provence in her iconic cooking manual, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

In the 1970s, French spice and herb brand Ducros became one of the first companies to produce the blend for international customers. Since then, Francophile chefs have been enjoying the savory blend of thyme, basil, rosemary, tarragon, savory, marjoram, oregano, and bay leaf. This mixture is incredibly versatile, providing woody and floral notes to dishes as diverse as soups, salads, and eggs.

Relying on eggs isn't exactly limited to the French. After all, Israelis have shakshuka, Italians have frittata, and the Japanese have tamagoyaki. But as with many food-related things, the French have taken this simple ingredient and transformed it into masterpiece after masterpiece.

On the simple end of the spectrum, you'll find quiche, oeufs brouillés (aka loosely scrambled eggs), and oeufs cocotte (aka baked eggs). Moving into more complicated territory, a single fried egg turns a croque monsieur sandwich into a croque madame. Come dinner time, you might be tempted to whip up oeufs en meurette, a refined dish made by poaching eggs in Burgundy pinot noir, but this deceptively simple dish isn't for the faint of heart. That said, the most complicated French egg dishes are those that look the simplest. We're talking about fluffy cheese soufflés and omelets. When they're not the star of the recipe, eggs play a supporting role in pastries, crêpes, and chocolate mousse.

Saying that the French love their garlic would be an understatement. Rather, it's more accurate to describe these humble bulbs as the heart and soul of French cooking. You'll find garlic in all of the typical places — in pasta, alongside chicken, and mixed into sauces — but that's just the beginning. Indeed, the French have elevated the use of garlic into an art form.

Take aïgo bouido as an example. This Provençal soup masterfully blends roasted garlic, herbs, and olive oil to create a comforting broth that pairs beautifully with a sprinkling of gruyère. Then there's aioli, a cold, creamy condiment made by combining finely chopped garlic with olive oil, egg yolks, and fresh lemon juice. Some people may call it garlic mayonnaise, but they're wrong. This heavenly sauce goes way beyond mayonnaise's limitations, serving as the perfect complement to fish, seafood, and a number of vegetables. You can even mash it into potatoes, spread it on a sandwich, or drizzle some over a grain bowl. Really, the uses for aioli are endless.