Ginette Mathiot

Who was Ginette Mathiot?

Ginette Mathiot, Officier de la Légion d'Honneur, was a French food writer and home economist.

Mathiot wrote over 30 books including the famous Je sais cuisiner which sold over 6 million copies; she also wrote the famous *Je sais faire la pâtisserie, which has been updated and published by Phaidon in 2011. She never married and used traditional cooking methods to design cookbooks which the young wife caring for a young family could read and understand with ease. She is well known in France and her recipes are still used today by some of the most celebrated chefs, and millions of copies of her recipe books have been sold.

She pursued a long career in education, first as a home economics teacher, and later as the Inspectrice générale de l'enseignement ménager de la Ville de Paris then finally as the Inspector General overseeing the teaching of Home Economics in France.