French cuisine is only valued so highly because of colonialism

The argument

This argument holds that French cuisine's exalted reputation is not a verdict on the food but a legacy of power: France's imperial and cultural dominance installed its cooking as the global standard, and that inherited prestige — not intrinsic superiority — is why it is ranked so highly. The history is central to the claim. During the centuries when France was a leading imperial and cultural power, its elites exported their tastes as the measure of civilisation itself. French became the language of diplomacy and of the menu; French chefs codified their own practice into the official grammar of 'haute cuisine'; and the institutions that crown culinary excellence — the grand hotels, the cooking academies, the influential guides and their stars — were French institutions applying French criteria. Cuisines of colonised and non-European peoples, however sophisticated, were graded against a French yardstick and inevitably found wanting, dismissed as street food or 'ethnic' cooking while French dishes were elevated as fine dining. Proponents argue that this is circular prestige, not honest evaluation. Indian, Chinese, Persian, Mexican and West African traditions developed techniques, flavour systems and bodies of knowledge at least as deep as France's, but they lacked the empires of taste to globalise their standards. What looks like the objective supremacy of French cuisine is the residue of a colonial hierarchy in which European refinement was defined as the peak of human achievement. From this standpoint, judging French cooking 'the best' simply repeats the bias of the institutions that built its pedestal. Because French cuisine is only valued so highly because of colonialism and cultural dominance, this argument holds, French cuisine is not the best cuisine.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The word carrying the argument is 'only', and it is the part least supported. Imperial reach plausibly explains how French culinary institutions were distributed and why their vocabulary became the trade's common language. It does not explain why techniques were adopted by cooks with no reason to defer to France — the mother sauces, the brigade system, the pastry and stock foundations spread through professional kitchens because they solved organisational and technical problems, and they were taken up in kitchens across Asia and the Americas that had no colonial relationship with France at all. The comparative case tells against a pure power explanation. Britain, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands held empires of comparable or greater reach across the same centuries, and none of their national cooking became the professional grammar of fine dining. If prestige simply followed power, that outcome is unexplained. The institutions named have also visibly revised the hierarchy. The influential guides now award their highest ratings in large numbers to Japanese, Chinese, Peruvian, Nordic and Indian kitchens, and Tokyo has for years rivalled or exceeded Paris in top-rated restaurants — which is difficult to reconcile with the claim that these bodies merely reproduce a colonial ranking. Finally, even granting the case, it establishes that French cuisine's standing is not demonstrated rather than that it is not the best. That conclusion belongs to the sibling position holding there is no best cuisine at all.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Other imperial powers of comparable reach did not see their cooking become the professional standard, and French technique was adopted in kitchens with no colonial relationship to France, so power does not by itself account for the diffusion. [Rejecting P3] The guides and institutions named now award their highest ratings across Japanese, Chinese, Peruvian, Nordic and Indian kitchens, which indicates a revised hierarchy rather than a circular reproduction of the old one.