July 11: Gateau Américain

I was gap year, when gap year wasn't cool.

My senior year of high school was marked by: the heartbreak of first college visits, the only migraine headaches of my life, and the pressure to maintain good grades while working part-time at a couture fabric store called Sew Magnifique.  My college counselor, at my usually low-key, hippie high school, screamed at me across the commons for embarrassing her by not applying to all of the Ivies, and for not attending the information sessions she had arranged for "her seniors" with Ivy League admissions officers.

After choosing Dartmouth, I applied Early Decision, then was deferred to Regular Decision.  I was finally offered admission to Dartmouth Class of 1990 and I accepted with much celebration whereupon my father, stated "I think it would be a good experience for you to pay for college yourself."

Whoa.  Slow down.  What did you say?  Pay for college?  Myself?

I realized that I was too burnt-out and broke to approach my life-changing college opportunity with any hope of success.  I wrote to my admissions officer and requested to take a year off before matriculation.  I needed a chance to save as much money as possible and save my sanity by getting my priorities in order.  The college responded that they would save me a spot with the Class of 1991 if I would write to them every couple of months to let them know how I was spending my year.

For high school graduation, I received a solo, round-trip ticket to France as a gift from my parents.  I had made friends with a French au pair, Sabine, here in Atlanta the previous year.  She hosted me on a brief visit to Paris during Christmas break, and I wanted to go back to France for a more "thorough" experience.  I worked at the fabric store, taking as many hours as I could for that entire month of June.  When I wasn't working, I was sewing to build a wardrobe of Paris-worthy clothes for my trip.

A view from the apartment

I spent almost all of July and August in France; six weeks in Paris and two weeks with Sabine's family at their vacation home in the south of France.  Sabine's family hosted me for my entire trip.  My weeks in Paris were spent at the apartment of Sabine's uncle who worked a correspondent for Le Monde and was never home.  It was as if I had my own apartment!  His apartment was located near the Place de la Bastille, the site of the former prison.

Sabine at Les Lacets

I spent most of my days walking around Paris alone, visiting museums, taking pictures (sticking to a strict film budget) and riding the Metro.  On rainy days, I stayed in the apartment re-reading Agatha Christie novels and Gone With The Wind.  I ate cheaply, and walked-off all of the calories from fattening pain au chocolat and rillettes du porc sandwiches.  I met Sabine most evenings to go to movies, art exhibits or discothèques.  I saw Top Gun for the first time there, in English with french subtitles.

Like most French families, Sabine's spent eleven months out the year in a modest apartment and spent the entire month August on vacation.  Her family had restored an old shoelace factory in Uzés, near Avignon to use as a vacation home.  They named it Les Lacets (Shoelaces) and during renovations had discovered Nazi helmets and other German paraphernalia from the occupation.  I got my recipe for tabouleh from Sabine who prepared it for me at Uzés.  Sabine's grandmother made homemade yogurt in glass jars which she topped with a sprinkle of sugar before serving it.

In honor of Bastille Day, July 14th, I have prepared a cake from a truly French cookbook, Je Sais Cuisiner (translated, I Know How To Cook), copyright 1932.  Mom bought the cookbook from Bonnie Slotnick's Cookbooks in New York and gave it to me for Christmas a couple of years ago.  The pages are very fragile, and the recipe instructions, like many in vintage cookbooks, are gloriously vague for a modern chef.  Faire cuire 20 minutes a four vif - cook for 20 minutes in a quick oven.

Gateau Américain is the only "American" recipe in the book in the section on foreign recipes, Recettes Etrangeres.  

I am not certain what makes it so "American."  It contains corn flour, wheat flour, caster sugar, lemon zest and cinnamon.  Only the corn flour is truly American. Which presented a quandary to me, since the French word, farine, refers to flour or meal, and English recipes from the UK use the term "corn flour" to refer to corn starch.  To double check my rusty French, I consulted the most contemporary source I have, a Larousse's French-English dictionary, copyright 1942.  It backed-up my translation of the word farine, which assisted none in deciding which flour to use.


I ended up making two cakes; one using corn flour and one using corn starch.  The recipe called for serving the cake warm with "une sauce a l'abricot," but the book contained no such recipe.  Instead I made a compote of lovely, organic apricots to accompany my dueling cakes.  Lacking the "compotier" called-for in the compote recipe, I used a simple glass bowl to serve.  I hope that the authors, Mademoiselles Delange and Mathiot can forgive me.

Neither cake was c'est magnifique.  The required zest from an entire lemon made the single layer cake taste too astringent.  The corn flour version had an interesting flavor dimension, but the corn starch version was more cake-like and provided a less assertive accompaniment to the delicious apricots.


I returned from France that summer of '86 with rolls of photos to be developed (when my budget allowed) and a renewed sense of possibilities and my own potential.  I went back to work at Sew Magnifique and took a second job for a Swiss chocolatier.  The rest of the gap year, I saved as much money as I could and wrote to the admissions office, as I had promised.

In addition to the recent gift of the cookbook, my mother gave me my college degree.  It was through her pursuit of financial aid and scads of loans that I was able to graduate from Dartmouth and have retained enough French to be able to prepare this simple recipe.

Merci, ma mere!

Happy Bastille Day!

Next Saturday: Lane Cake