In my opinion, the best source material for French recipes is written in French. Whether from books, magazines, or newspapers, or even downloaded from the Internet, when it comes to recipes describing the preparation of French food, those written by French sources tend to be best in the original French. There are exceptions, of course. Some native English speakers have worked and studied in France and then written exceptional recipes in English to describe what they have learned. (Linda Dannenberg’s two books on Paris bistros and bakeries come to mind.) And then there are others whose recipes would be barely recognizable to a French reader. (I’d like to think that I’m part of the first group rather than the second.)

     Unfortunately, many French-language recipes are translated by translators who have a limited knowledge of French cooking, or by translators who allow their own cooking style to dominate

the translation. I find most common errors are related to the conversion of measurements from metric to English. Others relate to the names of cooking tools and descriptions of their use. Open up the English and French versions of the new edition of the Larousse Gastronomique and do a side-by-side comparison; you’ll find whole paragraphs of descriptions in the English version that have a different meaning or don’t exist in the French version. You’ll also find pieces of the French version missing from the English. And you’ll find lots of mistakes in converting measurements. The Larousse Gastronomique is not unique; this problem is quite common. And, the fault may not lie solely with the translator. The editor of the English-language version may also have made changes to recipes for his or her own unfathomable reasons. (This happens even when a translation is not involved.)