Final answer:
The first French cookbooks were written during the Middle Ages, but the exact date is uncertain due to the oral transmission of recipes.
Step-by-step explanation:
The first French cookbooks were written during the Middle Ages. In France, mass secular free education happened in 1882 under the prime minister of the Third Republic, Jules Ferry. Free, public primary school did more to bind together the French in a shared national culture than anything before or since.
However, it is difficult to provide an exact date for the first French cookbooks as recipes were passed down orally for centuries before they were written down. The first French cookbooks were written during the Middle Ages, but the exact date is uncertain due to the oral transmission of recipes.