A goûter is what the French call an afternoon snack. Snacking in general is uncommon among the French. If, after you’ve force-marched yourself through one more goddam museum and plop yourself down in a café around 4 pm you will have a restorative coffee or glass of wine or even a fizzy soda but snacks will probably be hard to find. There’s only one exception to this: schoolchildren are allowed a goûter at home, if they haven’t already swung by the local McDonald’s (pronounced “Mac-Doe”) at the conclusion of their busy academic day.
Goûter now encompasses a whole range of afterschool snacks (not a bag of potato chips but like an apple or a homemade or bakery-bought fruit tart or something) but the classic goûter is:
Slice off a chunk of baguette about 4 inches (10.16 cm) long, slice in half lengthwise, and butter one half lightly with rich, salted butter. Then, lay on either an amount of a good chocolate bar equal to about 1/2 the area of the baguette half, or a generous slice(s) of a creamy cheese like camembert or brie. Fold over and eat while on your phone texting your “potes” (buddies) when you’re really supposed to be reading up on la gloire de la patrie for next’s day class.
I am very skeptical of eating any food that requires diacritical marks, especially the circumflex, to spell. But I will eat this because Matty says it’s OK and for me that’s a gastronomical green light.
When I was learning my various languages I loved the diacriticals most of all, and was disappointed to learn that while Italian has still retained a few they got rid of loads of them. If you can find a book written in Italian in the nineteenth century you’ll see what I mean. This is not quite the same thing but the Germans (much to the shock of many) have officially replaced the ß, the “scharfes S” in many cases with the more pedestrian “ss.” The French would no sooner do something like this than they would ban their cheese industry and substitute Kraft “cheese product.”
Whoops! I just read my intro excerpt. I rescheduled this post so I am back from my road trip, very much fun as it was. To spare my relatives from my time-consuming bathing and dressing routine and inability to easily climb stairs I put my foot down (metaphorically) and booked a dog-friendly suite at a local suburban mid-priced hotel chain and set up court there. For the ever-indulgent Better Half I’m sure this was hell on earth, but the Faithful Hound seemed to enjoy being surrounded by Crawley friends and family arrayed all over the place. One of the good things about post-pandemic life is the continued proliferation of the previously unthinkable, like decent restaurants and the local wine shop/liquor store offering delivery, and we took full advantage of that. Being Crawleys we left the suite pretty much as we found it, my guests carting all the carefully sorted detritus off with them.
I should try to pitch a story: How to host a dinner party for 20 when your main seating area is a California King bed and your workspace is a built-in desk approximately 4 feet by 1 foot and the mini-fridge is, well, mini. But as always, every good party depends on the company, first and foremost.
This is what Nutella was made for.
I like the fancy diacritical marks. I also get a kick out of names that start with a double consonant when one would do, and superfluous ending e’s (like Jasper Fforde). I’m going to make gougeres as an Easter appetizer, and think that a few of those would serve as a Goûter.
If you mix a little white wine with sparkling water or Orangina and serve it and the gougères to a fourteen-year-old it certainly would!