French Recipes

120 French recipes. Page 1 of 5. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Almond Croissant, Charlotte Russe (Ladyfinger Bavarian Cream Chilled Dessert).

Baking Easy

Almond Croissant

Croissants split, filled with almond cream, spread with a little more on top, and pressed with sliced almonds return to the oven for a second bake. Slightly stale croissants work well: French bakeries first made these to rescue day-old stock. Paris bakeries now make them on purpose with freshly baked croissants too. As they bake, the cream melts into a moist, marzipan-like filling, the almonds turn golden and crisp, and the bottoms go a little sticky.

Prep 20min Cook 15min 6 servings

Desserts Medium

Charlotte Russe (Ladyfinger Bavarian Cream Chilled Dessert)

Ladyfingers stand upright around the inside of the mold, sugared side out, so the inner faces soak up moisture from the Bavarian cream while the outside stays dry. Unmolded, the dessert is a neat cylinder of pale biscuit around smooth, ivory vanilla mousse.

Prep 280min Cook 10min 6 servings

Soups Hard

Bouillabaisse (Provencal Saffron Seafood Stew)

Saffron soaks first in a few spoonfuls of warm fish stock until it turns deep gold, then joins the rest of the stock; that is where the color of the stew is set. The seafood goes in by stages: firm white fish, then the softer pieces and shrimp, and mussels last. In the end, the freshness of the fish decides how it tastes.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 30min Cook 40min 4 servings

Salads Easy

Apple Fennel Walnut Salad

Fennel brings a faint anise scent, more fragrant than sweet, and a celery-like snap that plays against thin slices of apple. Toasted walnuts add a slightly tannic crunch, and peppery arugula keeps the plate from leaning sweet. The honey-lemon dressing, just lemon juice, honey, olive oil, and salt, is deliberately plain so each ingredient stays recognizable. Sliced last and tossed straight into the dressing, the apple has no time to brown, and the salad goes to the table as soon as it is plated. In France and Italy this kind of salad turns up in autumn and winter, when apples and fennel are in season together, and it sits well beside roast chicken, where the fennel cuts through the richness.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes 🥗 Lighter Meals

Prep 15min 0 2 servings

Western Hard

Avocado Eggs Benedict

Fanned slices of avocado take the place of Canadian bacon, trading the salty meat layer for something soft and mild under the poached egg and hollandaise. The hollandaise depends on adding melted butter in a thin, slow stream so the emulsion holds. If it thickens too much, a teaspoon of warm water loosens it.

Prep 15min Cook 15min 2 servings

Baking Easy

Apple Turnover

Folded into triangles, these turnovers carry on a medieval European habit of baking fruit in pastry, and by the 17th century they were sold as hand-held snacks at French and English market stalls. The apples are cooked down in a pan first with butter, sugar and cinnamon, so they enter the oven already soft and jammy rather than raw and wet. Heat turns the moisture between the puff pastry layers into steam that pushes them apart, and the egg wash gives the top a lacquered, deep golden finish. The shattering crust is at its best in the first few minutes out of the oven.

Prep 20min Cook 22min 6 servings

Desserts Medium

Chocolate Mousse

A spoonful holds its shape, then collapses into almost nothing on the tongue, leaving a strong dark chocolate taste. Without beaten egg whites, the air comes only from yolks whisked with sugar and from whipped cream, so it is a touch richer and denser than a meringue-based mousse. The higher the cacao percentage, the more bitter and intense it gets.

Prep 20min Cook 5min 4 servings

Soups Easy

Cream of Mushroom Soup

The mushrooms are wiped clean with a paper towel rather than rinsed. Wet slices release water in the pan and struggle to brown, and that deep browning is where most of the soup's flavor comes from.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 15min Cook 25min 2 servings

Salads Medium

Beet and Goat Cheese Salad

Wrapped in foil and roasted, the beets keep their juice and come out sweet and tender, with much of their raw earthiness gone. Tangy goat cheese meets that sweetness, while peppery arugula and toasted walnuts round out a classic French-style starter. A dressing of balsamic, honey, and olive oil brings a sweet-tart edge that pulls the separate parts together. With beets of different sizes, a toothpick sliding easily into the center tells you more than the timer does. Peeled beets should cool fully before slicing for clean edges, and the goat cheese goes on just before serving so it keeps its texture.

🥗 Lighter Meals

Prep 15min Cook 35min 2 servings

Western Easy

Warm Melting Cheese (Whole Oven-Baked Camembert with Garlic and Honey)

Only the top rind is scored, so the whole wheel of Camembert holds its round shape in the oven while the inside turns molten, ready to scoop up with toasted baguette. Cuts that run down the sides let the cheese leak, and baking too long makes the fat separate. When the dish is nudged and the center wobbles, it is done; adding minutes just for color only risks an oily result. Honey and walnuts on top bring sweetness against the garlic, rosemary and salty cheese.

Prep 8min Cook 15min 2 servings

Baking Hard

Baba au Rhum (French Rum-Soaked Yeast Cake)

Rum leads the flavor here rather than hiding in the background: the baked cakes sit in a syrup made with 100ml of it until they are soaked through to the center. A dough rich in butter and eggs bakes into an open, porous crumb, and those pockets are what drink up the syrup. Fully soaked, each cake swells to nearly twice its size. Legend credits the Polish king Stanislaw with soaking a dry kugelhopf in rum; the idea traveled through Naples to Paris, where pastry cooks gave it the small cylindrical shape. Each bite squeezes warm syrup out of the crumb.

Prep 90min Cook 20min 8 servings

Desserts Medium

Creme Brulee

Tap with a spoon and the thin caramel crust breaks like glass over cold, trembling vanilla custard. With little more than yolks, cream, sugar and a vanilla bean in it, the bean goes into the warming cream pod and all, not just the scraped seeds. The sugar is spread thin and torched right before serving.

Prep 15min Cook 40min 4 servings

Soups Medium

French Onion Soup

Most of the cooking time goes into onions stirred over low heat for forty minutes or more, until deep brown. Once beef stock is added and simmered, the soup is ladled into ovenproof bowls, topped with baguette and Gruyere, and set under the grill, and a spoon breaking the cheese brings up broth-soaked bread and sweet onion with it. Emmental melts just as well if there is no Gruyere.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 15min Cook 40min 2 servings

Salads Medium

French Celeriac Remoulade

Celeriac looks like a gnarled root, yet its pale flesh smells gently of celery and stays crisp when cut raw into fine matchsticks. Bound with mayonnaise and Dijon mustard, the French remoulade resembles coleslaw at a glance, but the mustard's sharp tang sits further forward.

🥗 Lighter Meals

Prep 20min 0 2 servings

Western Hard

Beef Bourguignon

Most of the sauce's color and depth is decided when the beef browns in bacon fat, before any wine is added. Crowding the pot drops the temperature and steams the meat, so it browns in two or three batches; a thin, well-shaken dusting of flour keeps the sauce from turning cloudy.

Prep 25min Cook 120min 4 servings

Baking Hard

French Baguette

With only flour, water, yeast and salt in the bowl, nothing but handling decides how a baguette turns out. Two stretch-and-folds during the first rise build strength, and shaping without pressing out all the gas leaves irregular open holes in the crumb. The slashes guide where the loaf bursts in the oven, so they need one quick, confident stroke of the blade. The crust softens as it sits, which makes this a bread for the day it is baked.

Prep 30min Cook 25min 2 servings

Desserts Medium

Crêpe Cake

More than twenty thin crepes, each with a layer of cream, stack into a cake whose cut face shows fine, tight stripes. It needs only a frying pan, no oven, and it tastes of egg, butter and dairy more than the sugar and flour of a sponge. Press a fork in and the layers slide gently apart.

Prep 180min Cook 30min 10 servings

Soups Hard

Lobster Bisque

The lobster meat is boiled and set aside, and the soup itself is made from the shells. They are browned in butter until the bottom of the pot colors, flamed with cognac, then simmered with tomato and fish stock for more than half an hour before being strained out. The meat comes back only at the very end, after the cream.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 30min Cook 60min 4 servings

Salads Easy

Salade Niçoise

Tuna, soft-boiled eggs, green beans, tomatoes, olives and anchovies stay in separate sections of the platter rather than being tossed together, the traditional way it is served in Nice. The runny yolks do half the dressing's work: break them just before eating and they flow over everything alongside the lemon and Dijon vinaigrette. Salty anchovy and olive play against the mild tuna. Eggs left warm after boiling keep cooking from residual heat and lose that liquid center.

🥗 Lighter Meals

Prep 25min Cook 10min 2 servings

Western Medium

Beef Tartare

Hand-chopping the raw tenderloin with a knife keeps each tiny piece distinct, so the tartare has a clean, juicy bite rather than the pasty feel of ground meat. Anchovy and capers bring salt and brine, Dijon and Tabasco sharpen the raw beef, and the egg yolk on top binds everything into a silky mixture once stirred in. A short spell in the freezer firms the surface of the meat for neater knife work.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes

Prep 20min 0 2 servings

Baking Medium

Beignet (New Orleans Square Fried Dough with Powdered Sugar)

In New Orleans the beignet is a doughnut with no hole: yeast dough cut into squares and fried. Milk, egg and butter let it puff up soft and bready in the oil, and the heap of powdered sugar shaken on straight away melts a little into the warm surface and clings.

Prep 30min Cook 15min 4 servings

Desserts Hard

Cronut

Pastry chef Dominique Ansel introduced the cronut in New York in 2013, and Time named it one of the best inventions of that year. Croissant dough is cut into rings and deep-fried, so it tears apart in buttery layers inside a light doughnut crust. The original is filled with cream and glazed; this one is simply rolled in sugar while warm.

Prep 60min Cook 20min 6 servings

Soups Hard

Pot-au-Feu (French Slow-Simmered Beef and Root Vegetable Broth)

One pot yields two courses. The clear broth goes into bowls on its own, while thick slices of brisket with the potatoes and carrots share a plate, with mustard or coarse salt alongside. For a clear broth the first blanching water is thrown out, and the fresh pot is skimmed before it boils and kept at a bare shiver for two hours.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 20min Cook 180min 4 servings

Western Medium

Blanquette de Veau (French Veal Stew in Creamy Egg-Lemon Sauce)

Nothing in this French stew is browned except the mushrooms: the veal is blanched, rinsed and simmered gently with carrot and onion, which keeps both meat and sauce pale and mild. Cream, egg yolks and a little lemon juice finish the sauce, giving it a soft, velvety body with a light tang. The veal needs a long, quiet simmer until a fork slides in easily.

Prep 20min Cook 80min 4 servings