This book blends the history of France with the history of gourmet cuisine, mixing it with good food and a good lifestyle. From pheasant paté to pike cooked sturgeon-style, from Loire salmon with sorrel to Diane vol-au-vents, the owners of eighteen châteaux in the Loire Valley have given Bleuzen and Gilles du Pontavice their best family recipes taken from notebooks that are handed down from génération to génération.
Some of the recipes are traditional ; others are exotic. Most of them were previously unknown and all a of them are part and parcel of the glorious or picturesque history of the Loire Valley.