Season 1 : Eating Europe
Episode 7
39 minutes – Burgundy France
Burgundy is best known for its wine, but the food tells an equally compelling story. In this episode I’m back from a recent trip to Beaune, the small town at the heart of the Burgundy wine region, with a full report on what I ate, what surprised me, and the one dish I had never heard of before that turned out to be one of the best things I have ever eaten. We cover the full spread of Burgundy’s food identity: oeufs en meurette, beef bourguignon, escargot de Bourgogne, truffles, Dijon mustard, crème de cassis and the story of how a French Resistance priest became the reason we call it a Kir.
In this episode:
- Oeufs en meurette: the dish that stopped me in my tracks
- The Championnat du Monde de l’Oeuf en Meurette
- Beef bourguignon: what it should be and when it disappoints
- Escargot de Bourgogne: snails, pastry shells and the Tsar of Russia
- Truffles: why I changed my mind in Beaune
- Dijon mustard: the history, the shortage and why it isn’t protected
- Crème de cassis and the story of Canon Kir
Read about the hotel where I stayed in Beaune: Hotel Le Cep, Beaune, Burgundy: An Honest Review
My restaurant recommendation for Burgundy Restaurant: Loiseau des Vignes
If you are thinking of visiting the Burgundy region then check this out: Is Beaune France worth visiting? A Wine Lover’s Guide
Transcript of The European Compass : A Food and Travel Podcast : Episode 7
Episode 7 transcript | The European Compass, Eating Europe series
Welcome to the European Compass Podcast, the podcast where we explore the heart of Europe through its food, its markets and the stories behind every dish. I’m your host Julia Doust, and if you’ve ever planned a trip around a meal then you’re in the right place. Let’s dig in.
So today we are going to be travelling in France. We are going to Burgundy. So I was in Burgundy last week. If you look on my site, you’ll see there’s a hotel review for the Hotel Le Cep, Le Cep that I stayed in, which was excellent, and there’s also some details about Beaune where I stayed. And that’s the town, so a small town in Burgundy, part way between Dijon and Lyon, closest to Dijon, and that’s the sort of centre of the Burgundy wine region. So that’s where I was staying, to put it into context. I’m staying in the centre of the Burgundy wine region and I’m looking for food as well as wine, obviously.
So when we think of Burgundy, almost always what will come up is beef bourguignon. Beef bourguignon is the one dish that everybody knows about, and if everybody hears bourguignon, that’s what comes to mind.
Burgundy is just the name of the area. It’s Burgundy, in French Bourgogne. It’s actually part of the Burgundy-Franche-Comté region. So Burgundy, named after the Dukes of Burgundy who used to rule the area. Beaujolais is what the area is probably best known for internationally.
There are other dishes that are absolutely from the region, of the dishes and food stuffs. So for instance there are escargot de Bourgogne, so snails, specifically Burgundy snails. We have of course mustard, Dijon mustard. We have cassis, so blackcurrant. So the crème de cassis, which is a blackcurrant liqueur, which is from the region. There is some famous chickens. The Poulet de Bresse is from that region as well. And so then there’s obviously coq au vin, which originally comes from the Burgundy region.
I’m probably going to mix up Burgundy and Beaujolais a few times in this episode. I’m used to saying Beaujolais because I’m speaking in French most of the time, but obviously Burgundy is the name that is better known in the English-speaking world, so I’ll try and be consistent but I can’t promise anything.
So when I went to Burgundy, my aim was to find a good beef bourguignon. That was my, the thing that I was looking for. It’s a dish that we make at home. It was actually the first thing my husband ever cooked for me. We’ve been going out, well, going out, I think it was our second date, and he cooked beef bourguignon for me. So I knew I was onto a good thing there. So that’s what I was looking for, and that’s what I was expecting when I was going and looking for the traditional menus.
Oeufs en Meurette: The Dish That Stopped Me in My Tracks
Now one thing I wasn’t expecting, which ended up being the best thing I ate, was something called oeufs en meurette. Now I’ve never heard of these. I live in the west of France and this is a traditional Burgundy dish. So whilst it’s well known in that part of France, and it’s well known generally as a classic French dish, this is actually something that I have never eaten before, and I’d never even heard of it before.
So when we were looking at menus, this was coming up. It was on almost every menu. I found my head, I thought, well, it’s alright as a starter portion, so I said, well, obviously I’m going to have to try this because that’s my job. That’s what I’m there for.
So we went and the first place we ate the oeufs en meurette was at the Loiseau des Vignes, which is the bistro that is part of the Hôtel Le Cep where we were staying. And this is part of the Bernard Loiseau group. Bernard Loiseau was a very famous French chef, had three Michelin stars, died in 2003, but his group continues, and so they run this bistro within the hotel.
So we went there. It was quite late and I wasn’t very hungry, and so I thought, actually, do you know, I’m just going to have this starter dish, this oeufs en meurette, and then save space for pudding.
And it came.
And I have to say this is now up in one of the best things I have ever eaten. And I don’t say that lightly, because I’ve eaten a lot of dishes. I seek out food wherever I go. I cook very well as does my husband. But this was something else. How eggs can be elevated to this, I have no idea.
Now the version that they serve at the Loiseau des Vignes is, the eggs themselves have the Burgundy colour of the wine. So the poached eggs, but they are violet. That purple, that vivid, with this deep colour. And they were served in a kind of cream, a creamy colour, not creamy white sauce, with little bits of onions and mushrooms and total goodness, and the eggs are on a sort of crouton, a garlic crouton. And this is out of this world. Out of this world.
So I’m now obviously going to have to find out more about this oeufs en meurette, and where does it come from, what’s the history of it, etcetera etcetera.
So meurette itself in French just means in a sauce. It means fried or in a sauce. And you can have other things en meurette. You can have fish en meurette. So that itself is just the sauce, and then you put eggs on it. So it’s just eggs in a sauce, is what this dish is.
And it seems to be that this isn’t, traditionally wasn’t, a restaurant type dish. This is a dish that people would make because they had made beef bourguignon and they had some leftover sauce. Now if you ever made beef bourguignon you know that this does happen, that you’ve got a lot of beef and you’ve got all this beautiful sauce, and at the end you’ve got you’ve eaten all the beef, but there’s some of the sauce, the gravy, leftover, and you don’t want to waste it because it’s delicious. And so what people did was they would poach eggs and put that into the sauce, or they’d even poach the eggs in the sauce. And that was what this oeufs en meurette originally was.
The Château du Clos de Vougeot and the World Championship
It seems to have been elevated to the sort of restaurant quality by a particular château in the Burgundy region, the Château du Clos de Vougeot, which has had oeufs en meurette on their menu since 1953. And they hold receptions and big meals at this château, and the menu changes, the menu changes every time except for the eggs. And they put the eggs on the menu and it has been on the menu ever since.
And at this château they have meals for 600 people, and they make poached eggs and each person gets two, so this is 1,200 perfectly poached eggs in the red wine sauce that they serve up for these receptions. And this became exceptional. People were just mind blown. This is absolutely amazing.
And so obviously all the restaurants in the region started serving oeufs en meurette. And this became so much of a thing that the Château du Clos de Vougeot in 2018, now 2018, decided to start a competition to see who could make the best oeufs en meurette. And this has now taken on momentum, and they’re now in their, I think it’s their eighth edition this year, and it’s international. This is an international competition. Takes place over three days. It’s got some of the best chefs in France judging the competition as to who can make the best oeufs en meurette.
And they even have a pool of competition in North America, so it’s actually in Montreal. And they, on the website, makes me laugh, they said pool but they’re using the French poule, as in chicken, which I think is quite funny. So they have a North American part of this competition to see who is going to represent North America in the International Oeufs en Meurette Competition in October.
People, obviously there is a base recipe to this. This is a Burgundy sauce. Now the one I first had was white. It wasn’t red. Which confused me when I started looking up, and then I’ve delved deeper, and now you can make it with white wine. It’s supposed to be Burgundy wine, but it doesn’t have to be red.
So this is a wine sauce with then mushrooms and onions, and it can have carrots in it, and it can have herbs in it. What you can’t do, if you’re going for the competition, you can’t add luxury ingredients. You can’t put morel mushrooms or truffles into this. It needs to stay within its roots. I think it’s absolutely amazing.
So I had another version at the Bistro de Beaune, and that was more a classic version, the white eggs on a beef Burgundy type sauce. I do wonder whether it’s vegetarian now. I’m thinking about this. I think if you are vegetarian and you are planning to eat this, it would be good to check that they hadn’t just taken the sauce from the stew and were reusing it. It wouldn’t surprise me if that were the case in France. So that might be worth checking as an aside.
So I had this one in the Bistro de Beaune, and we were sitting outside. It was April, it was warm enough to sit outside. Lovely. Get served this, eggs, and just, it’s the eggs are poached, so it’s a perfectly poached egg, but the egg then goes into the wine sauce, and you have the flavours of the mushroom and all the richness from the sauce, and then you get the crouton that’s got a bit of garlic in it as well. And it just makes the most amazing meal.
And clearly I’m not the only person to think this, because the Food and Wine magazine, the North American Food and Wine magazine, did a, in 2018 did a list of the best meals ever. Now if you look on the website for the competition, the former competition, they’re claiming that it was named as the fifth best meal ever. Now, so, quite strictly speaking true. What actually happened was the magazine did a special 40th anniversary edition, and they were showcasing the best recipes that they had ever produced, and amongst them was a recipe for oeufs en meurette. So it did get classed as one of the best meals by Food and Wine magazine. Calling it the fifth best in the world might be stretching what they actually said. But clearly this is something that I’m not the only person to think is good.
So the classic version with the red wine sauce was very good, no doubt about it, it was excellent. But it still didn’t beat this version I had at Loiseau des Vignes with the white wine sauce and these eggs. And at the same time my daughter had beef cheeks with a Burgundy sauce with chips, with French fries, and I was stealing her French fries and dipping them in this egg. And I think the benation, I’m sure that there’s some French classicists out there who would be absolutely offended by the idea of me dipping fries in an oeufs en meurette. I don’t care. They were absolutely stunning. It’s like egg and chips but gone mad. Gone totally mad.
So if you’re in Burgundy you will see this. I know you’ll see it, it’ll be on every menu. Try it. Don’t hesitate to try it. It is such a good meal.
Beef Bourguignon: What It Should Be
So back to beef bourguignon. The same meal at the Bistro de Beaune, where I had a filet mignonnette, it was part of a Burgundy classic menu, so the starter was a filet mignonnette and the main course was beef bourguignon.
And I was actually disappointed in it. And I wish I had time to go elsewhere and find a proper beef bourguignon.
The issue I had is that to me the classic beef bourguignon has, it’s a rich sauce with carrots and onions, that’s the beef, should be a tough cut of beef, that then cooked for a long time in this sauce, such that the beef itself becomes tender, such that you could cut it with a spoon if you needed to. And then you add in the mushrooms and the little onions and things as a garnish.
And the one I had wasn’t like that. The one I had, there were two bits of beef that I needed a knife to cut. The sauce was rich with mushrooms, but then the carrots had been added on top and they clearly hadn’t been cooked in the sauce. They were clearly steamed or boiled carrots that were just put on top. As well as some boiled potatoes again that hadn’t been cooked in the sauce, that were just put on top.
And it was a disappointment. Not because the flavours weren’t there, the flavours, the richness of the sauce was there. But the beef wasn’t the tender beef that I was looking for, and the vegetables, normally the carrots soak up some of that juice and that’s some of the best part of the meal, the carrots in there, and this didn’t have it.
So whilst I would say Bistro de Beaune, go there for their eggs, but beef bourguignon, we need to find something better. So if you’ve had a good beef bourguignon in Burgundy, let me know, because I’d really like to go back and find that.
Escargot de Bourgogne: Snails in Pastry Shells
So what else is Burgundy famous for? We talked about snails.
Snails are not something that I eat on a regular basis, but they are something that is eaten in French households, and quite often it’s eaten as a celebration meal. So my son-in-law, he’s from the east of France, he’s from near Strasbourg, and they will have it as a starter for an Easter Sunday, for example. Snails will be the starter. I’ve seen it on New Year’s menus and things like that. That is on the starter. That’s sort of elsewhere in France. In Burgundy it’s more on every menu. There’s snails everywhere.
But actually they didn’t, the popularity of the snails as a dish didn’t come from Burgundy, it came from Paris. It came from Paris back in, I think, 1814, where a Parisian restaurateur served them to Tsar Alexander the First. And he loved it so much that they then put it on the menu, and that’s where eating snails as a tradition has come from. The reason it got linked with Burgundy is because the type of snail that they were using was the Burgundy snail.
Now, as it happens, that snail is now a kind of protected species, because people were collecting them and they collected them so much that they got a bit rare. And they’re not that easy to farm. So they do farm snails in Burgundy, but they farm two types of snails. They farm a petit gris and a gros gris, so a little grey and a big grey snail. But they’re not the Burgundy snails. They do actually farm Burgundy snails, but elsewhere. They farm them in the Balkans and they farm them in Central Eastern Europe and then ship them into France. But they’re not actually farmed in the Burgundy area, apparently.
There is a difference between the different snails, and you can taste the difference. I am not an expert on snails, I cannot tell you whether there is a difference. I don’t dislike them, I don’t dislike snails. They just, it’s all about the sauce. The sauce is generally butter and parsley and garlic, and you get some nice fresh French bread and you dip it into the sauce, and that’s the best bit of it. It isn’t the snails themselves. The snails, they’re just protein. It’s just an extra protein source. They’re nothing amazing.
So this time in Burgundy I had a little bit something a bit different. I had snails, but I had snails because we were having an aperitif with the owner of the Hôtel Le Cep, who very kindly agreed to sit down with me and talk over his hotel and Beaune in general and Burgundy in general. And as an aperitif he served, it was served to us, a plate of snails. And he said to me, don’t worry, you don’t, because obviously we’re sitting there, we know, we don’t have little pincers and forks and things, we’re just sitting around the table at a low table chatting. And he says, oh, don’t worry, you can eat the shells. I was like, really? He says, oh yes, they, these are pastry shells.
I’ve never seen anything like this. So they made pastry shells in the shape of the snails, and then put the snail inside it. So then you pick it up and you have this perfect little, perfect size for an aperitif, snail inside a shell that then you eat.
Now I had to be polite because I’m having this interview and I’m talking it over with them. So I tried one, and then tried another, and yet another. They’re absolutely delicious. Superb. Again I’m not sure that you can actually taste the snail. This is a protein in a little pastry case with garlic and butter and, delicious.
So if I’m given a choice about snails in the future, that’s how I will eat them. Because the pastry really did add something and it really made it something worth eating. But it did mean that I didn’t have the sauce to dip the bread in, which was a disappointment.
Truffles in Beaune: A Convert’s Account
So snails, what else? Truffles.
Truffles. I have not had a great relationship with truffles in the past. I find they can be overpowering. I find that when people use truffles, they use way too much of it, so that you can’t actually taste anything. And so I tend to avoid it. You also get some of that truffle oil, which isn’t really truffle. It’s like a fake truffle. It’s like essence of truffle, which gives a kind of chemical flavour that leaves a nasty taste on the tongue afterwards. So generally I just avoid anything with truffles in.
Now that changed last year when we were in the Périgord and my husband had a truffle linguine, which I tasted, because whenever anyone’s eating anything near me, I’m tasting it. And this truffle linguine was delicious. And you could see the shavings of truffle. This was not lightly truffled, you could see the shavings of truffle on it. But somehow they got the balance of the fat and the sauce with the truffle just right. And it was real truffle, not fake truffle. You could see it. And this made me then go, hang on a minute, I need to investigate truffles a little bit more, because this is really good.
So when we were in Beaune, we were walking down one of the high streets, it’s got pedestrian high streets, and there was a lady standing outside a shop with some things to taste. And she said, here, would you like to taste some of these? OK, what is it? It’s always truffle, I say. So you’re walking down the street, someone’s offering you truffle. Here, eat some truffle. And so these were little toasts with a, I mean it didn’t look appetising. I have to say it was like a black jelly saucy kind of thing on top of it. But I have to, tried it, delicious.
You get the truffle flavour came through, but again not too strong, and you could really tell the difference. This isn’t a truffle, like sometimes when you think of truffle you think of mushroom. This is definitely not mushroom. This is truffle. There’s a difference in the flavour. It’s got almost a level of sweetness about it. It’s a bit of spice about it. It’s different. The aroma’s different. Lovely.
And this turned out to be a truffle shop. So the entire shop is dedicated to truffles. And we went in to see what else they had, because this was so good. And they kept giving us things to eat. They kept giving us, oh, try this, this is a different way of eating this. This is a cheese sauce. They do a truffle cheese sauce that you can buy in a jar. Absolutely mind blowing, absolutely delicious. They had some other bits of truffle oil and various different types of truffle terrines and things that you could taste.
And then they had one. She says, oh, just put your hand out. And she sprinkled something on my hand and she said, just taste that. And it was a truffle seasoning. It’s basically little bits of truffle that they’ve put into, I think it’s in salt but it wasn’t too salty. I need to look at it to see what it was really. And it’s absolutely, it’s like essence of truffle, but in this seasoning. She said, just put that on the table and sprinkle it on anything. Sprinkle it on your steak, sprinkle it on your eggs, sprinkle it on your pasta. And you get this truffle flavour without having to go to any great effort of keeping your truffles, of grating truffles, of any of that. But it has this real truffle flavour. It’s not a fake. You don’t get that aftertaste, that fake truffle aftertaste. You get the nice truffle aftertaste where it still sits on your tongue and you keep going. It’s absolutely lovely.
So that’s what I got. I got some truffle seasoning. We haven’t had chance to taste it out because we then went away to the Loire Valley. But I will be definitely tasting it next time I have poached eggs. I’m having poached eggs with some truffle on top. Even if it doesn’t qualify for the oeufs en meurette competition, competition with truffle, I think it’s worth a try.
Dijon Mustard: History, the Shortage, and Why It Isn’t Protected
So now we come on to mustard. Dijon mustard. Everybody knows Dijon because of mustard.
They have made mustard in Dijon since the 13th century. So the Dukes of Burgundy were particular fans of this, and there was written evidence of a gala that the Dukes of Burgundy held where 320 litres of mustard cream was eaten in one sitting, at one meal. This was a big thing in the area. People, it was grown in the area, it’s particularly good for growing mustard in the area, and they ate it a lot in the area.
Now the name moutarde in French. So mustard in French is moutarde. And it is said that the word actually comes from the expression Moult me tarde, which means many await me. So it was a war cry almost. There were a thousand soldiers who went to protect Burgundy, or protect Dijon, and they used the cry Moult me tarde to say that many are waiting back in Dijon. And when they came back, the locals started calling them mutard because of this expression, and the mustard manufacturers wanted to celebrate this, and so they put mutard on their pots, and so the word became mutard.
So that’s for mustard in general. Now the difference between ordinary mustard and Dijon mustard actually came in the 19th century, came in 1856, where someone decided to replace the vinegar that was classically used in mustard with verjus. A verjus is unfermented grape juice. And so this replaced the vinegar, which obviously then changed the flavour of the mustard. And that’s how Dijon mustard started. Now these days Dijon mustard generally, instead of the juice, they use white wine, but it’s essentially comes from that.
Dijon mustard isn’t actually a protected category. So French mustard in general is called Dijon mustard. That doesn’t mean it’s made in Dijon. It doesn’t mean it’s grown in Dijon. In fact most of the mustard eaten in France is grown in Canada. We had a period a few years back where there was a particularly bad harvest in Canada because of various climatic conditions, that meant that we had a shortage of mustard in France. And this was national news. This was a national natural catastrophe, that you couldn’t find mustard on the shelves. And everyone was going mad because everybody has pots of mustard, and we go through mustard a lot in France. So it goes to show this is a real national identity. It’s mustard, but yet it’s not protected.
It isn’t made in Dijon, so what there is, because there were mustard manufacturers traditionally in the area, they have created a new category which is called moutarde de Bourgogne. So that’s Burgundy mustard and that is protected. So Burgundy mustard must be made within Burgundy, and it must be made with mustard grown in Burgundy, and the wine used must be Burgundy white wine. So if you’re looking for properly protected, properly local mustard, that’s where you’re going to find it, in a moutarde de Bourgogne.
And there is a shop and a little museum factory visit, because there’s a factory still in Beaune, and you can go and visit, and they’ve got their own shop and they do all sorts of different flavours of mustard. You can buy mustard from them.
One of the things I particularly like, we make at home and we’ve made for many years, was a recipe that came from a Floyd on France cookbook. Keith Floyd, if you don’t know, the British chef known for drinking while he was cooking. This was a TV chef but was always had a glass of wine on, and would cook some meat. Unfortunately no longer with us. But his book on French cooking is one of the best. It’s a little book but if you ever get hold of a copy, it’s totally out of print, but if you can get hold of a copy, it’s one of the best little French cookbooks.
And in there they have a recipe for escalope de veau, so veal escalope à la dijonnaise, so Dijon-style veal escalope. And we eat this regularly. It’s one of my children’s favourite meals. And the sauce is essentially a lot of Dijon mustard and some cream that you flambé in cognac or Armagnac, and then you add in a lot of mustard and then some cream. Totally delicious. The quantities of sauce have gone up over the years, as every time we have it there’s not enough sauce, so we add more and more sauce.
And I did see a very similar thing on a menu in Burgundy, that rather than veal escalope, they were using pork fillet, but it was exactly the same sauce. It’s the same idea. It’s this mustard sauce as a way of cooking things. And I think I saw a chicken version as well. But the secret with this is don’t skimp on the mustard, and make sure it is, if not moutarde de Bourgogne, then a Dijon mustard. You can’t substitute an English mustard, for example. It wouldn’t work. It needs to be a Dijon mustard because the level of spice is totally different.
Crème de Cassis and the Story Behind Kir
So mustard. The other thing that Dijon is known for, at least on a French scale, is cassis, which is blackcurrant, and particularly crème de cassis. So crème de cassis is a blackcurrant liqueur that’s best known probably for its use in Kir. So the aperitif drink where you get a little bit of blackcurrant liqueur and then some white wine.
Blackcurrants have been grown in the area since the 19th century. They grow very very well in the same vein as the vines do. So quite often the vineyards would have a blackcurrant bush at the end of each of their vines. And then when cassis became popular they started growing more and more of them, so they’re now fields full of blackcurrant bushes.
And the habit of mixing this crème de cassis with the white wine comes from the turn of the century, so the 19th century, where they would call it a blanc cassis. So blanc as in white wine, cassis as in blackcurrant. So it was just a blanc cassis, it was a white with blackcurrant. And this was popular. But it wasn’t called Kir at the time.
Now Kir was the name of a man, was the name of a priest. So he was a canon, and during the Second World War he was a big part of the French Resistance. And he saved something like 5,000 people, did some heroic acts, ended up getting caught by the Gestapo. They did let him go because he was a priest. And then after the war he ended up being mayor of Dijon. And as mayor he used to serve blanc cassis as his aperitif. That’s what he offered his guests as an aperitif.
The manufacturers of crème de cassis decided to do a marketing campaign, and they asked the mayor, this very well known personality by this point, they asked the mayor, can we use your name in this marketing campaign? And he was like, yeah, yeah of course, no problem.
And so that is how the name Kir became to be used for a mixture of crème de cassis and white wine. It’s actually the name of a priest, a French Resistance fighter who was a priest, who became mayor of Dijon.
And blackcurrants aren’t just used for crème de cassis in the area. You’ll find a lot of little tarts with blackcurrants, that tarte de cassis. You’ll find little cakes. There’s a type of little cake that they make that’s got blackcurrants inside. So it’s very much a local ingredient. I had on the menu, my Burgundy menu had a crème brûlée with blackcurrants inside it, which I highly recommend. Very good use of blackcurrants.
Final Thoughts on Burgundy Food
So I think we might be coming to the end of the round-up of what I ate in Burgundy.
Now obviously I didn’t just eat in Burgundy, obviously I drank as well. I think what we’re going to do is we’re going to talk about that in the next episode.
So my takeaway from Burgundy, I think you probably guess, is the oeufs en meurette. I am going to be trying out some recipes. I’m going to see if I can do one with a white wine, because that was the one that I really, really loved. I do need to perfect my poached eggs. I tend to be hit and miss on the whole poached egg business. I’m going to have to get that perfected.
One thing I did see was a method of putting an egg in a teacup, adding vinegar on top of it, leaving it for three minutes, and then putting that into the rolling boil of water, letting it cook, scooping it out, putting it into iced water, into ice, to stop the cooking. And then when you’re ready to serve, you take that already cooked egg and you just put it into boiling water just to heat it up. So that is a trick that I will be trying, to see whether I can make these perfect oeufs en meurette.
Thanks for joining me on the European Compass Podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, share it with a fellow food traveller, and don’t forget to subscribe for more delicious adventures. Until next time, bon appétit and happy travels.