Roland Barthes - Steak and Chips

Steak and Chips
Steak is a part of the same sanguine mythology as wine. It is the

heart of meat, it is meat in its pure state; and whoever partakes of it
assimilates a bull-like strength. The prestige of steak evidently
derives from its quasi-rawness. In it, blood is visible, natural,
dense, at once compact and sectile. One can well imagine the
ambrosia of the Ancients as this kind of heavy substance which
dwindles under one's teeth in such a way as to make one keenly
aware at the same time of its original strength and of its aptitude to
flow into the very blood of man. Full-bloodedness is the raison
d'tre of steak; the degrees to which it is cooked are expressed not
in calorific units but in images of blood; rare steak is said to be
saignant (when it recalls the arterial flow from the cut in the
animal's throat), or bleu (and it is now the heavy, plethoric, blood
of the veins which is suggested by the purplish colour - the
superlative of redness). Its cooking, even moderate, cannot openly
find expression; for this unnatural state, a euphemism is needed:
one says that steak is point, 'medium', and this in truth is
understood more as a limit than as a perfection.
To eat steak rare therefore represents both a nature and a morality.

It is supposed to benefit all the temperaments, the sanguine
because it is identical, the nervous and lymphatic because it is
complementary to them. And just as wine becomes for a good
number of intellectuals a mediumistic substance which leads them
towards the original strength of nature, steak is for them a
redeeming food, thanks to which they bring their intellectualism to
the level of prose and exorcize, through blood and soft pulp, the
sterile dryness of which they are constantly accused. The craze for
steak tartare, for instance, is a magic spell against the romantic
association between sensitiveness and sickliness; there are to be
found, in this preparation, all the germinating states of matter: the
blood mash and the glair of eggs, a whole harmony of soft and life-
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giving substances, a sort of meaningful compendium of the images
of pre-parturition.
Like wine, steak is in France a basic element, nationalized even

more than socialized. It figures in all the surroundings of
alimentary life: flat, edged with yellow, like the sole of a shoe, in
cheap restaurants; thick and juicy in the bistros which specialize in
it; cubic, with the core all moist throughout beneath a light charred
crust, in haute cuisine. It is a part of all the rhythms, that of the
comfortable bourgeois meal and that of the bachelor's bohemian
snack. It is a food at once expeditious and dense, it effects the best
possible ratio between economy and efficacy, between mythology
and its multifarious ways of being consumed.
Moreover, it is a French possession (circumscribed today, it is true,

by the invasion of American steaks). As in the case of wine there is
no alimentary constraint which does not make the Frenchman
dream of steak. Hardly abroad, he feels nostalgia for it. Steak is
here adorned with a supplementary virtue of elegance, for among
the apparent complexity of exotic cooking, it is a food which
unites, one feels, succulence and simplicity. Being part of the
nation, it follows the index of patriotic values: it helps them to rise
in wartime, it is the very flesh of the French soldier, the inalienable
property which cannot go over to the enemy except by treason. In
an old film (Deuxime Bureau contre Kommandantur), the maid of
the patriotic cur gives food to the Boche spy disguised as a
French underground fighter: 'Ah, it's you, Laurent! I'll give you
some steak.' And then, when the spy is unmasked: 'And when I
think I gave him some of my steak!' - the supreme breach of trust.
Commonly associated with chips, steak communicates its national

glamour to them: chips are nostalgic and patriotic like steak. Match
told us that after the armistice in Indo-China 'General de Castries,
for his first meal, asked for chips'. And the President of the Indo-
China Veterans, later commenting on this information added: 'The
gesture of General de Castries asking for chips for his first meal
has not always been understood.' What we were meant to
understand is that the General's request was certainly not a vulgar
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materialistic reflex, but an episode in the ritual of appropriating the
regained French community. The General understood well our
national symbolism; he knew that la frite, chips, are the alimentary
sign of Frenchness.
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Roland Barthes - Steak and Chips

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What is the author's view of steak?

How is steak viewed in France?

Steak and Chips

Steak is a part of the same sanguine mythology as wine. It is the

To eat steak rare therefore represents both a nature and a morality.

Like wine, steak is in France a basic element, nationalized even

Moreover, it is a French possession (circumscribed today, it is true,

Commonly associated with chips, steak communicates its national

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