Type of French cuisine
Haute cuisine
(
French:
[ot
k?izin]
;
lit.
'
high cooking
'
) or
grande cuisine
is a style of cooking characterised by meticulous preparation, elaborate presentation, and the use of high quality ingredients. Typically prepared by highly skilled
gourmet
chefs, haute cuisine dishes are renowned for their high quality and are often offered at premium prices.
Early history
[
edit
]
Haute cuisine
represents the cooking and eating of carefully prepared food from regular and premium ingredients, prepared by specialized chefs, and commissioned by those with the financial wherewithal to do so.
[1]
It has had a long evolution through the monarchy and the
bourgeoisie
and their ability to explore and afford prepared dishes with exotic and varied flavors and looking like architectural wonders.
Haute cuisine
distinguished itself from regular French cuisine by what was cooked and served, by obtaining premium ingredients such as fruit out of season, and by using ingredients not typically found in France.
[2]
Trained kitchen staff was essential to the birth of
haute cuisine
in France, which was organized at the turn of the 20th century by
August Escoffier
into the
brigade de cuisine
. The extravagant presentations and complex techniques that came from these kitchens required ingredients, time, equipment, and therefore money. For this reason, early
haute cuisine
was accessible to a small demographic of rich and powerful individuals. Not only were professional chefs responsible for building and shaping
haute cuisine
, but their role in the cuisine was what differentiated it from regular French cuisine.
[3]
Haute cuisine
is influenced by
French cuisine
with elaborate preparations and presentations that serves small, multiple courses prepared by a hierarchical kitchen staff, historically at the grand restaurants and hotels of Europe. The cuisine was very rich and opulent, with decadent sauces made out of butter, cream, and flour, the basis for many typical French sauces still in use today.
[4]
The 17th-century chef and writer
La Varenne
(1615-1678) marked a change from cookery as known in the
Middle Ages
, to somewhat lighter dishes, and more modest presentations. Subsequently,
Antonin Careme
(1784-1833) also published works on cooking, and he simplified and codified an earlier and even more complex cuisine. Nineteenth-century French
haute cuisine
interacted with the development of
fine dining
in
Britain
.
[5]
Contrary to
popular belief
,
Catherine de' Medici
did not introduce Italian food to the French court to create haute cuisine.
[6]
Cuisine classique
[
edit
]
Georges Auguste Escoffier
is a central figure in the modernisation of
haute cuisine
as of about 1900, which became known as
cuisine classique
. These were simplifications and refinements of the early work of Careme,
Jules Gouffe
and
Urbain Dubois
. It was practised in the grand restaurants and hotels of Europe and elsewhere for much of the 20th century. The major developments were to replace
service
a la francaise
(serving all dishes at once) with
service
a la russe
(serving meals in courses) and to develop a system of cookery, based on Escoffier's
Le Guide Culinaire
, which formalized the preparation of sauces and dishes. In its time, it was considered the pinnacle of
haute cuisine
, and was a style distinct from
cuisine bourgeoise
(the cuisine of affluent city dwellers), the working-class cuisine of
bistros
and homes, and cuisines of the French provinces.
Nouvelle cuisine
[
edit
]
The 1960s were marked by the appearance of
nouvelle cuisine
, as chefs rebelled from Escoffier's "orthodoxy" and complexity. Although the term
nouvelle cuisine
had been used in the past, the modern usage can be attributed to authors
Andre Gayot
,
[7]
Henri Gault
, and
Christian Millau
, who used
nouvelle cuisine
to describe the cooking of
Paul Bocuse
,
Alain Chapel
, Jean and
Pierre Troisgros
,
Michel Guerard
,
Roger Verge
and
Raymond Oliver
, many of whom were once students of
Fernand Point
.
[8]
In general,
nouvelle cuisine
puts an emphasis on natural flavours, so the freshest possible ingredients are used, preparation is simplified, heavy sauces are less common, as are strong marinades for meat, and cooking times are often reduced.
Nouvelle cuisine
was a movement towards
conceptualism
and
minimalism
and was a direct juxtaposition to earlier
haute cuisine
styles of cooking, which were much more extravagant. While menus were increasingly short, dishes used more inventive pairings and relied on inspiration from regional dishes.
[8]
Within 20 years, however, chefs began returning to the earlier style of
haute cuisine
, although many of the new techniques remained.
[8]
See also
[
edit
]
The dictionary definition of
haute cuisine
at Wiktionary
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"What is Haute Cuisine?"
. 6 December 2021.
- ^
Sidney W. Mintz (1996). "Cuisine: High, Low, and Not at All".
Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past
. Boston: Beacon Press. pp. 92?134.
ISBN
978-0807046296
.
- ^
Amy B. Trubek (2000).
Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession
. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
ISBN
978-0812217766
.
- ^
Allen S. Weiss (2001). "Tractatus Logico-Gastronomicus". In Lawrence R. Schehr; Allen S. Weiss (eds.).
French Food: On the Table, on the Page, and in French Culture
. New York: Routledge. pp. 229?241.
ISBN
978-0415936286
.
- ^
Trubek, Amy B. (4 December 2000). "The British".
Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession
(reprint ed.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (published 2000). p. 46.
ISBN
9780812217766
. Retrieved
9 August
2021
.
The Reform Club's stellar culinary reputation reveals the profound interconnection between fine dining and French haute cuisine that consolidated in Britain during the 1800s.
- ^
Wheaton, Barbara.
Savoring the Past: The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to 1789
. Simon and Schuster. pp. 43?51.
- ^
Andre Gayot, "Of Stars and
Tripes
: The True Story of Nouvelle Cuisine"
- ^
a
b
c
Mennel, Stephan. All Manners of Food: eating and taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the present. 2nd ed., (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 163-164.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Cooking, Cuisine and Class, A Study in Comparative Sociology, Jack Goody, University of Cambridge, June 1982,
ISBN
978-0-521-28696-1
- Food and love: a cultural history of East and West By Jack Goody, Verso (April 1999),
ISBN
978-1-859-84829-6
- Tasting food, tasting freedom: excursions into eating, culture, and the past by Sidney Wilfred Mintz Beacon Press (1997) -
ISBN
0-8070-4629-9
- Viandier
attributed to Guillaume Tirel dit
Taillevent
, medieval manuscript
- Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession By Amy B. Trubek,
University of Pennsylvania
Press (December 2000),
ISBN
978-0-8122-1776-6
- Food culture in France By Julia Abramson, Greenwood Press (November 2006),
ISBN
978-0-313-32797-1
- Patrick Rambourg,
Histoire de la cuisine et de la gastronomie francaises
, Paris, Ed. Perrin (coll. tempus n° 359), 2010, 381 pages.
ISBN
978-2-262-03318-7