Mireille Gayet

Mireille Gayet has three main passions: palaeontology, drawing and cooking. Her career at the CNRS, where she is now an honorary research director, took her in search of fossil fish from Asia to South America by way of the Middle East and both North and equatorial Africa, where she learned the use of exotic products from local people. Alongside her scientific articles she has published a biography of Alexander von Humboldt and three books popularising palaeontology, among them Les poissons fossiles, written with Anne Belouze and Pierre Abi Saad (Desiris, 2003). For Éditions Le Sureau she has written, alone or with her children Valérie, Nathalie and Olivier Gaudant, six Je vous aime…, four Petits traités and five Grands traités. Her Grand traité du café won the Grand Prix of the Académie nationale de cuisine, and her Grand traité des épices a Gourmand World Cookbook Award for its illustrations. She illustrates all her culinary books herself, in pencil, ink and watercolour.