To many people, Italy would first evoke pizza and (the huge amount of Nonna's) pasta :-)
"Gourmet", "Chef", "Cuisine" and dozens of other terms: even in the English culinary vocabulary, the French words have a predominant role. It ruled the world of 'proper' cooking at some point. But I was more thinking about how, from the USA, the French are presented as having a balanced diet, eating a bit of everything but not eating too much of anything, cooking by themselves and not resorting to mostly ready, industrial, over-processed meals, how they would be a sort model in those matters related to food.
What was very fashionable at some point in the discourse on healthy food (10-15 years ago, maybe), was the Greek/Cretan diet; which was often extended to the whole Mediterranean, including Italy indeed, and south of France. Traditionally the butter & cream you mentioned are associated with northern France: the South was supposed to be a land of oil (olive oil in the most Mediterranean part, other oils in other parts) and the North a land of butter.
"Gourmet", "Chef", "Cuisine" and dozens of other terms: even in the English culinary vocabulary, the French words have a predominant role. It ruled the world of 'proper' cooking at some point. But I was more thinking about how, from the USA, the French are presented as having a balanced diet, eating a bit of everything but not eating too much of anything, cooking by themselves and not resorting to mostly ready, industrial, over-processed meals, how they would be a sort model in those matters related to food.
What was very fashionable at some point in the discourse on healthy food (10-15 years ago, maybe), was the Greek/Cretan diet; which was often extended to the whole Mediterranean, including Italy indeed, and south of France. Traditionally the butter & cream you mentioned are associated with northern France: the South was supposed to be a land of oil (olive oil in the most Mediterranean part, other oils in other parts) and the North a land of butter.