What are Burgundian dishes, actually? Uh… not what you think
Burgundian meat salad, ham, bread, baby potatoes and what else: Burgundian products are taking over the supermarket. What does it actually mean? Aren’t we being completely ripped off with that word? Keuringsdienst van Waarde investigated.
The producers themselves don’t really know what Burgundian actually means. Is it about specific spices? Is it a way of cooking or baking? Or simply about quantity—is eating a lot Burgundian? According to the owner of restaurant De Bourgondiër, it’s a synonym for tastier, and also with a little more fat.
Atmosphere
To really get to the bottom of it, they contact Bart van Loo. He wrote the book De Bourgondiërs, after all, so surely he knows. ‘The Burgundians were dukes who organised unbelievable banquets. They were a kind of medieval show-offs, like: look at us,’ says the expert. The innkeeper of a Burgundian-themed dinner underlines this too: the atmosphere, the abundance—that’s truly Burgundian.
Burgundian from the supermarket
But what makes that meat salad, bread, mashed potatoes and apple pie Burgundian? According to television chef Alain Caron, Burgundian is mainly a lifestyle; he calls it ‘mega cosy’. But he doesn’t like the meal with Burgundian products that Marijn serves him. It’s about products made in an artisanal way, he says, so a supermarket salad can never be Burgundian, even if it says so on the label.
Hundreds of kilos
Bart van Loo gets the final word: ‘We borrow the image of those Burgundians from the late Middle Ages to embellish everyday products with it. If you really want to have a Burgundian dinner at home, you’d need hundreds of kilos of those Burgundian baby potatoes.’
