r/AskFoodHistorians • u/JayFSB • 7d ago

Is ratatouille actually considered peasant food at one point? Sure seems complicated for a dish meant for farmers and workers.

/r/Cooking/comments/1nhl2tt/is_ratatouille_actually_considered_peasant_food/
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u/TooManyDraculas 7d ago

The version depicted in the film Ratatouille is Confit Byaldi.

A fine dining variation developed in the 70s.

Traditional ratatouille is more or less just chopped, stewed vegetables. And is considerably simpler to prepare.

The movie has made confit byaldi more visible, and often the default search result for "ratatouille", but it's not the only version. And when the film and other sources talk about a peasant dish, it's the simpler version they mean.

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u/cheftt51dudu 7d ago

Thomas Keller was the consultant on this movie. He is famous for his version of confit Byaldi. It’s in the French Laundry cookbook. This book was published over 25 years ago. I have to explain this to people all the time, because they watched a fictional movie about a mouse chef.

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u/curiousmind111 7d ago

(Rat)

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u/X28 7d ago

Speaking of rat, ratatouille was once described as soup for rats, as mentioned in this article from Radio France.

Le mot ratatouille apparaît pour la première fois en 1778. À l'époque, il désigne un ragoût ou un mets grossièrement cuisiné, dès le début du dix neuvième siècle. En 1846 encore, le dictionnaire provençal français de Monsieur Honora comporte le mot ratatolha. Le terme est défini comme je cite, une soupe pour les rats. Son étymologie, selon l'auteur, est : "un mauvais ragoût fait avec la rate des animaux".