I made a total of seven charlottes prior to Christmas (so now I’m thoroughly sick of them for the coming 10 years), toyed with 3 base recipes, and eventually came up with my own mango-passion-fruit-Cointreau combination. I agonised as to which colour of roses to decorate it with (red). As the French say (not really, but that’s the spirit): ‘It’s Christmas, merde! "Tis the season to fuss a bit!"’ When the charlotte’s big moment came close, I turned it upside on its plate, praying it would hold itself up, and put the fresh roses on top. I don’t want to brag, but frankly it was gorgeous. That’s when Dutch practicality really got in the way of French panache. My host insisted on putting a blue plastic cutting board under my precious cake as she feared for her tablecloth when I would serve it. I was floored. I felt not just disappointed but deeply insulted too. After so much care and work, the tablecloth took precedence over the beauty of my cake. I was far too polite to say anything so the matter was not taken further, but it was hard to digest. To me, it was a vivid example of how food and the rituals around it are highly culturally sensitive matters – something you hear a lot studying here, though I’d never felt it so personally before. I’ve now realised how differently the French and the Dutch see things.
Emilie Cole from France, MSc Organic Agriculture