Stephenson:Neal:The Confusion:153:Dead things...sauced (Neal Stephenson)

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

A cynical way to think about French cooking is that, early on, it was all about masking the flavors of bad meat with elaborate sauces. I hope it's not true but I have repeated the canard here because it's thematically appropriate. It is historically true that the previous winter was a bad one and consequently the vegetables were nothing to shout about. French soil of that time was very poor and very rocky. The grass was not very good or very plentiful. Consequently the cattle never got really fat and healthy. Thus the meat was tough and flavorless. To cover this and try to tenderize the meat the French invented the sauces. Interestingly, the same poor soil makes great wine grapes.