French President Jacques Chirac is reported to have cracked jokes about British food at a meeting with the German and Russian leaders on Sunday.
French newspaper Liberation says Gerhard Schroeder and Vladimir Putin laughed and joined in the banter.
"The only thing they (the English) have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow disease," it quotes Mr Chirac as saying, within earshot of reporters.
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"One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad," Mr Chirac went on, according to the newspaper's report.
"After Finland, it is the country with the worst food."
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Mr Chirac is also reported to have reminisced about an occasion when Lord George Robertson, the former Secretary General of Nato, had made him try a Scottish dish.
"That is where our difficulties with Nato come from," he said.