The French have always been excellent at turning what we consider to be the most repulsive parts of an animal into what the French consider delicacies. Foreigners generally find these dishes quite difficult to swallow. However, if you are adventurous, you should try them once. And who knows? You can become a big fan.
Andouille
Andouille is a sausage made from the intestines and stomach of the pig. Sometimes there are additions: neck, chest, head or heart, all packed in a black skin. Two regions claim to make the authentic andouille, smoked and eaten cold: Normandy ( andouille de Vire ) and Brittany ( andouille de Guémené ).
Don’t confuse andouille with Toulouse sausage, which is stronger than a regular sausage. It is sold by weight, so you just ask how much you need and the butcher peels it off the massive spiral you see on the counter.
Andouillette
Sausage made from pig intestines ( chaudins ) often with pork stomach (particularly in Troyes, Champagne, best known for its outlet shopping) and in Burgundy with calf mesentery, a piece of peritoneum that joins part of the small intestine to the posterior wall of the abdomen on the skin. Rouen features a drier version made from pig intestines. Andouillette is traditionally served with mustard and potato puree. You’ll find them on most bistro menus.
Andouillette takes itself so seriously that it has its own association AAAAA (Association Amicale des Amateurs d’Authentiques Andouillettes) is a gastronomic society founded by Francis Amunategui and 4 other delicatessen lovers in the early 1970s to preserve standards.
Brains / Brain
The best brains come from lambs and sheep. Beef brains are firmer and, along with calf brains, cheaper to buy, which is why these two are often used as a filling for cakes. It looks pretty vile in a butcher’s window – a handful of what looks like large, jelly-like, gray veins with red veins that need to be removed before cooking.
They are usually lightly dusted with salt and pepper and flour and deep fried before adding sauteed garlic, parsley, and lemon. It’s called Sautéed Cervaux (fried brains) on French menus.
Frog legs
The traditional frog leg dish is dying out in France, but you’ll see it in old-fashioned bistros across the country. Frogs are now a protected species in France, so they come from Asia, where they are also considered suitable foods. What is quite ironic, given the typical British reaction to them, is that new archaeological evidence discovered in Wiltshire shows a frog cooked in Britain more than 10,000 years ago. The first reference in France is in a cookbook from the 18th century.
They taste more like chicken and are usually seasoned, dusted with flour, and sauteed.
Gizzards
Gésiers, or giblets, come from different parts of chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese. The word gésiers is used loosely and can refer only to the gizzard, the thick-walled part of a bird’s stomach that grinds up sand and small stones. However, gestation can also include the heart, liver, and kidneys, in addition to the outer giblets, head, neck, wingtips, and feet. You can buy the outer giblets of larger birds separately at the butcher for pot-au-feu and stews.
Gésiers are cooked in various ways. They often appear on menus as salads, so watch out for the tastes of salade de gésiers de volaille which will have green leaves, butters, tomatoes, eggs and goat cheese added to the giblets.
Horse
They may be disappearing, but you can still find Boucherie Chevalines or butchers in France. Some horses are still bred for meat, such as the Ardennes and Postier Breton horses. Horse meat was only sanctioned in France in 1811. In 1865 a banquet ( Hippophagique or horse-eating festival) was held in Paris to try to convince the poor to buy a cheap alternative to beef and pork. The menu included horse broth noodles, boiled horse meat, and cabbage and rum with horse bone marrow. The same year the first Boucherie Chevaline was inaugurated in Paris.
You can find horses on the menu, usually as a meat tartare or as a cooked steak.
Res
Ris (or sweet bread) is the culinary name for the thymus gland in the throat and pancreas near the stomach in lambs, pigs, and calves. They are soaked in salt water, blanched and cooled, then fried, braised, broiled, poached, broiled, or cooked on skewers. You mainly find them as ris de veau (beef sweetbreads) or ris d’agneau (lamb sweetbreads).
Gizzards can also refer to the testes (known as Rocky Mountain oysters or prairie oysters in America), but in France, they are generally the thymus gland. Try them; they are delicious, although the texture is too smooth for many people.
Snails
Known and much loved, the best snails come from Burgundy and are beautiful beasts with a colorful striped shell. They are cleaned for 24 hours in a container without food or water to clean their systems, then they are removed from their shells and cooked in a good broth, flavored with thyme, bay leaf and pepper. They are then put back in their shells and stuffed a la Bourguignonne (Burgundy style) with garlic-flavored butter, shallots and parsley. Around Dijon, mustard can be added. Now most people buy them cooked and canned with the shells separated and just assemble them for the table.
They are served piping hot on a plate and eaten with fresh French bread to soak up the sauce which, quite frankly, is the main reason most people order them. They can be a bit rubbery in texture and taste like nothing except the sauce.
Head of veal
The boneless calf’s head is first boiled with spices and then sliced and served with a sauce, either gribiche that has pickles , greens, garlic, oil and vinegar, mustard and eggs, or ravigote , which is more like a vinaigrette with additions from some chefs. like eggs
It was originally made with a pig’s head, which explains why French fans of the dish’s revolutionary arrangement eat on January 21 st , the day in 1793 when Louis XVI was guillotined.
It’s definitely an acquired flavor dish, but if you’re with a group of staunch Republicans on that date, you may have to join.
Tripeau
This is the stomach of the ox (veal), calf and sheep, which is usually sold specially prepared or cleaned and with a very white appearance. It is taken from the first and largest compartment of the stomach. You can get a triperie (tripe butcher). It is a particularly regional dish; the best known is tripes à la mode de Caen , supported by the Confrérie (brotherhood) of Normandy. In Normandy, they add the calves’ feet and cook the batch in cider and Calvados and herbs, then serve it with steamed potatoes.
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