What does “maison” mean after a food word in French?

Visite d’un marché paysan à Sofia

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A2 French listening practice · Swiss French · Picked for people who know a little

💡 Did you know?
maison (homemade)
Everyday food word · standard French, market & menu use
sauce tomate maison“ = homemade tomato sauce — here maison means ”homemade,“ not ”house.

You already know maison means “house.” But put it right after a food word and it changes meaning: it now says the food is homemade. So sauce tomate maison is homemade tomato sauce, and confiture maison is homemade jam. One useful detail: in this use, maison never changes form. It stays maison for one jar or many, masculine or feminine. You will see it on market stalls and menus all the time.

In the clip the speaker walks past the home-cooked goods: “Il y a des produits maison, des cornichons, des sauces tomates maison.” — “There are homemade products, pickles, homemade tomato sauces.” Normally maison is a noun (“house”) and une maison is feminine. But placed after a food noun, maison works like an adjective meaning “made at home, not factory-made.” It is invariable here: des sauces maison, une tarte maison, des plats maison — the word never adds an -s or an -e. On a restaurant menu you may also see la spécialité maison (the house special) and the longer form fait maison (“made in-house”), which France even regulates as an official label. Related market words from this clip: un produit local (a local product), un producteur / un paysan / un agriculteur (a farm producer / farmer), and un marché paysan (a farmers' market).

How common are the words?

How common are the words in this A2 French listening practice video?

87.1%
of words are in the top 2,000 most common French words
Most of the words in this video are common French words.

How common in written French

83.3%
Top 1,000
87.1%
Top 2,000
96.6%
Top 5,000

How common in spoken French

74.5%
Top 1,000
86.1%
Top 2,000
100%
Top 5,000

Harder words in this video

These words are harder than A2. Here is what they mean.

sauces
2×
Not in top 5,000
plural of sauce

Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · Lexique 3.83 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.

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