Using French Cuisine to teach French: crème brûlée

Total immersion would be the best way to learn French. In fact, it’s the best way to learn any language. But when total immersion is not a possibility, sometimes teaching French Cuisine is a good substitute.

Why? Because everybody likes to eat, and very many people like to cook. When the recipe for crème brûlée that you hand out to your class is entirely in French, and when they know that they will be expected to prepare crème brûlée as part of their participation in the course, suddenly they will pay attention to the French words in the recipe and to the grammar in which those words are couched in a whole new light. You see, when you actually need to understand something, you pay attention in a completely different way.

Divide your class into groups. Hand the same copy of the recipe to each group. Explain any difficult vocabulary items and any less well known grammatical construction to the class — once! Then let them watch a video of a famous French chef demonstrating in French how to prepare the crème brûlée.

Afterwards, each group will prepare their own crème brûlée, but another group will be asked to judge the resultant confection. That other group’s judgment will then figure into their grade. Teaching French by using French cuisine brings home to students the practical necessity of understanding what they read and hear in French.

For a link to the recipe and the video of how to make crème brûlée, click here.