1,511 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

The painter, the restaurant owners and the opera singer

You might well have noticed that there are recipes involving names that have been so overused (often for any old thing) that they have almost become common nouns.

19 K 4.4/5 (20 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Recipe Name Tatin Carpaccio Melba

Last modified on: September 25^th 2012

For this post: Comment Follow Send to a friend

The painter, the restaurant owners and the opera singer

Here are three examples that you can easily find on the menus of certain restaurants.

Carpaccio

carpaccio Normally a dish of raw beef, sliced very, very thinly, seasoned, covered with a light film of olive oil, and often served "on the plate".

le triomphe de st georges It comes from: From the name of Vittore Carpaccio, a Venetian Renaissance painter famous for the reds and browns of his paintings, red as beef. Some even claim that he was inspired by his painting "The Triumph of St. George".

And often it's: Anything thinly sliced, such as: scallop carpaccio, pineapple carpaccio, and so on.

Tatin

Normally it 's: A delicious tart with caramelized apples baked upside down (the pastry is on top) and turned upside down when serving.

Le restaurant des soeurs Tatin It comes from: From the name of the Tatin sisters, restaurateurs in La Motte-Beuvron, France, who invented this dessert in the early 20th century.

And often it's: Anything with pastry on top (or bottom) that vaguely resembles an upside-down tart, such as: tomato tatin, chicken dice tatin, etc.

Melba

Normally it's: A peach melba, a bowl of vanilla ice cream, raspberry coulis, poached peach, praline almond paste and whipped cream.

From: From the name of a famous Australian singer of the late 19th century, Nellie Melba, for whom the great chef Alain Escoffier invented this dessert.

And often it's: Anything served with vanilla ice cream and Chantilly cream, like: Strawberries Melba, Pears Melba, etc.

And?

Well, I've mentioned the most common, it seems, in French, but you'll notice that it's often linked to a proper noun.

Of course, you can have fun combining them all... " Fraises Melba et leur carpaccio de poires Tatin": In a bowl, a base of vanilla ice cream, a layer of thin slices of caramelized pears, a circle of crisp shortcrust pastry, diced strawberries and Chantilly cream.

But... it looks good too!

Lasts posts

Cake moulds

When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25^th 20255945

Thinning out herbs

If you need to add a long-stemmed herb (tarragon, mint, verbena, thyme, etc.) to a recipe, you'll probably only need the leaves and not the stem, so you'll need to remove the leaves. Leaf removal means keeping only the beautiful leaves, and eliminating the ugly stems and leaves, but how do you do...
August 8^th 20251,1725

Add a bay leaf

Bay leaf: small in size, but big in flavor. You'll find it in hundreds of recipes, and it's often added to cooking meat, in a sauce or broth, usually accompanied by other herbs or products. It's a staple of Provençal, Mediterranean and Oriental cuisine, but not the only one. Usually, in a...
July 31^th 20251,2575

Parsley stems

Parsley, whether curly or flat, is a delicious ingredient in many recipes, where it is used both raw and cooked. When used raw, in a salad for example, where it always provides, alone or with other herbs, a remarkable freshness, only the leaves are kept. And when used cooked?
July 28^th 20251,346 13

A drizzle of olive oil

Often in a recipe, you have to "baste" vegetables, for example, before sending them to the oven. What the author means by this is that you need to put oil on top of the vegetables to cook them in the oven. Typically, we just quickly drizzle oil over the vegetables, hoping not to miss any, but...
July 13^th 20251,5405

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Thinning out herbs

The 3 essential knives

You must have heard a chef or cook say: "There’s no good cooking without good ingredients". This is very true, of course, but for any amateur or beginner it is equipment that really counts to start with. What I mean is that you should not skimp on kitchen equipment, good utensils, a food...
May 30^th 201822 K5

Properly cooked! (the taste)

Going out to a restaurant is getting harder at the moment. In France, at least, you have to try and find one that has agreed to pass on the new lower rate of VAT at anything other than a symbolic level, and there aren't many. And then, most importantly, you have to find a good one: one where you...
February 6^th 201116 K 14.6

Tranché, dissociated, failed, in short... missed!

When preparing a sauce or a cream, there's always a (small) risk that the creamy preparation you're working on will suddenly separate into two parts of different textures: a liquid part, for example, and a more or less solid part, or even become lumpy. It's terribly frustrating, but we'll see...
June 19^th 20239,6585

Choosing a chopping board

It's a no-brainer, surely? If you want a chopping board, just find a piece of wood, and Bob's your uncle! You can happily chop away with a knife and not damage the table or worktop. But in reality, it's a bit more complicated than that. You need to be careful what you are buying, in particular the...
May 8^th 201248 K4.6