What Older Food Memoirs Teach Us About Real Food

Roger Vergé remembered the food of his boyhood in Allier: sausages, pâtés, beef, fish, pheasants, geese, venison, and chickens. Not too many vegetables. Mostly meat.

I’ve been reading older food memoirs lately. Not ancient history. More like Julia Child, Jacques Pépin, and chefs who grew up in the middle part of the last century.

I enjoy the cooking tips. That part is useful. But that is not really why I keep coming back to these books.

What I’m really looking for is a clearer picture of what people actually ate before industrial food became so normal. I want to understand what was on the table, in what amounts, in what combinations, and where the food came from.

That last part matters to me.

These books are not just about recipes.

They are records of food before it became so disconnected from farms, butchers, animals, seasons, and the people doing the work.

Not Ancient History

One thing I keep reminding myself is that this was not 200 years ago.

In many cases, we are talking about 50, 60, or 70 years ago. That is recent enough that many people still remember it. It was before food became as consolidated, packaged, and industrialized as it is now.

That is what strikes me when I read passages from people like Julia Child or Jacques Pépin. They were writing about a food culture that still had a close connection to place.

Food came from markets, farms, butchers, rivers, forests, gardens, and kitchens. It was not perfect. No time was. But it was far more connected than the food system most of us live with now.

What People Actually Ate

Modern food conversations often start with categories.

Low fat. Low carb. Plant based. High protein. Heart healthy. Fortified. Reduced sodium. Added fiber. No cholesterol. Less sugar.

Older food memoirs usually do something different. They describe food as it was remembered.

Someone remembers what their mother cooked. What the butcher carried. What the family saved from the pig. What birds were eaten. What fish came from nearby water. What was hunted. What was cooked on Sunday. What was served when company came.

Those details tell us something.

They show us what was normal before food became a set of claims on a package.

Roger Vergé’s Boyhood Food

In Julia Child’s My Life in France, she writes about the French chef Roger Vergé and the food he remembered from his boyhood village in Allier, in central France.

What stood out to me was how normal the animal foods were.

He remembered sausages, pâtés, beef, fish, pheasants, geese, venison, and chickens.

Not too many vegetables. Mostly meat.

That line stays with me.

This was not presented as a special diet. It was not a diet at all. It was just the ordinary food of a rural place. Meat, birds, fish, game, organs, fat, and broth were normal parts of eating.

Mostly Meat Was Not Strange

Today, a passage like that can sound almost shocking because many of us have been taught to treat meat as something suspicious. Something to limit. Something that needs an apology.

But in these older accounts, animal foods are not treated that way.

Sausage was normal. Pâté was normal. Beef was normal. Chicken was normal. Goose was normal. Fish was normal. Game was normal.

And using the whole animal was normal too.

Pâté was not just a restaurant item. It was a practical way to use liver and other parts of the animal. Sausage was not just a processed food category. It was a preservation method. Fat was not something to be engineered out of the meal. It was part of cooking.

That does not mean vegetables are bad. It does not mean every old diet was perfect. It does not mean we should pretend the past was easier than it was.

But it does show that animal foods were once treated as a normal part of the table.

The Bigger Change Was the Food System

What changed was not just what people ate.

What changed was the system behind the food.

Before food became so industrialized, food was much more tied to place. You bought from a butcher. You knew which farms raised good animals. You ate what was available. You cooked what you had. You used fat, bones, organs, and tougher cuts because they were part of the animal.

Meals had more structure. Food was prepared. Ingredients were recognizable. People were not eating all day from bags, boxes, and drive-through windows.

That is a very different food system from the one most Americans live in now.

Why I Keep Coming Back to This

I do not read these memoirs because I think we can recreate rural France in central Indiana.

We cannot. And that is not the point.

The point is that food used to be more connected to the land around it. Animals were part of that. Butchers were part of that. Home cooking was part of that. Fat, bones, organs, broth, sausage, and pâté were part of that.

Industrial food has made food more uniform, more transportable, and more profitable for large companies. But it has also made food more separate from land, animals, and responsibility.

That separation matters.

What This Means at Tyner Pond Farm

At Tyner Pond Farm, we are not trying to copy another country’s food culture. We are in central Indiana, and our place is our place.

But the principle still matters.

Good food has to come from somewhere. It has to come from land. It has to come from animals raised in a way that fits that land. It has to come from people who are responsible for the work.

That is why we care about pasture. That is why we care about cattle moving across grass. That is why we care about chickens raised on pasture. That is why we care about using more of the animal, not just the few cuts modern retail has trained people to buy.

When I read these older food memoirs, I do not see a perfect past. I see a reminder that real food was once much more normal than it is now.

Mostly meat. Some vegetables. Animal fat. Broth. Sausage. Pâté. Birds. Fish. Game. Meals cooked at home. Food from a place.

That may sound old-fashioned now.

But maybe it was just normal food before the food system changed.

Good food begins with a place.