Many food aficionados venerate French cuisine as the finest form of the culinary arts. While people in other countries were making the simplest, most cost-effective dishes they could, only so that they might receive proper nutrition, the French have long placed taste above all else. Contemporary society still knows the names of French chefs from long ago, such as Guillaume Tirel, sometimes referred to as Taillevent—and he cooked in the 14th century. Today chefs classify French cooking into different categories: the age of haute cuisine, the age of the mother sauces, modern haute cuisine, and modern nouvelle cuisine.
The Age of Haute Cuisine
Haute cuisine began in the 17th century by a man named La Varenne. Also known as grande cuisine (high cooking), haute cuisine comprised of many small dishes both prepared and presented elaborately. He prepared lighter dishes than his predecessors in the Middle Ages, and the roux—a thickening agent for soups and sauces made today of flour and butter—was first listed in his cookbooks. Many consider his first cookbook, Cvisinier François (“French Cooking”), to be the first true French cookbook. He was the first to define marinades and to treat ragout—a traditional stew—as a dish instead of a garnish. Like his contemporaries, he belonged to a guild that determined when, where, and what he could cook. La Varenne made countless refinements to French cuisine, many of which still exist today.
The Age of the Mother Sauces
At the end of the 18th century, French cooking evolved further. With the French Revolution, guilds were more or less abolished, meaning that chefs had much more freedom to cook as they pleased. Marie-Antoine Carême, born in 1784, was originally a pastry chef, but eventually was cooking for Napoleon Bonaparte. He is credited with the creation of the “mother sauces,” the three base sauces from which most others are derived. These were called espagnole, a concoction of a roux, water or veal stock, vegetables, bones, and beef; velouté, a light stock thickened with a light roux; and béchamel, hot milk mixed with a light roux. Cooks continue to employ these sauces every day. Soufflés first appear in Carême’s recipes—dishes prepared with eggs which rise significantly when baked. He employed variations of the roux which La Varenne created. He also continued the tradition of haute cuisine.
Modern Haute Cuisine
Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, a man named George Auguste Escoffier revolutionized French cuisine. Working in many hotels, he invented the brigade system. In it, cooks are organized into different groups to prepare different parts of the meal, rather than a single chef working on one dish at a time. Instead, he organized his cooks into five groups: the garde manger who made all the cold dishes, the saucier who cooked the sauces and soups, the entremettier who prepared all the vegetables and the starches, the pâtissier who made the desserts and pastries, and the rôtisseur who grilled, roasted, and fried ingredients. In this manner, dishes could be prepared far more rapidly and presented to the customer in less time. Escoffier continued the tradition of many elegant dishes, but made them lighter and sought to focus on the flavor of ingredients rather than masking unpleasant ones with heavy sauces. He used roux as well, though with less frequency.
Modern Nouvelle Cuisine
Nouvelle cuisine was coined as early as the 18th century, but the current style of cooking is referred to by the same name. In the 1960s, with increased immigration from Portugal, French cuisine changed tremendously. Nouvelle cuisine was a rebellion against the traditions of French cooking. Throwing away the idea of many, elaborate dishes, chefs began to serve fewer, simpler plates. They looked toward the flavor of each ingredient even more than Escoffier, and began to omit the use of the béchamel and espagnole sauces, deeming them too heavy. Some think that meat shortages in the Second World War contributed to the development of nouvelle cuisine. Regardless, it was a drastic change. Ingredients were cooked very lightly to preserve the original flavors they possessed, and steaming became very popular to help accomplish this. Freshness of ingredients was essential. Herbs, lemon juice, vinegar, and butter became more popular instead of thick roux. Regional dishes gained more importance, too, and modern equipment—including microwaves—became popular. Also, rather than the traditional concept of the chef cooking as he wanted, chefs paid much more attention to the wants and needs of the customers. Finally, cooking became more inventive and playful, and chefs tried to present new, unheard of combinations of ingredients. Though in the 1980s nouvelle cuisine fell out of favor with some and there was a return to modern haute cuisine, the two forms of cooking are both used extensively throughout the world.
Haute cuisine enjoys a rebirth today, though the foundations laid by all the essential chefs remain, both in French cooking and in other types of cuisine. Each step of old haute cuisine, mother sauces, modernization of haute cuisine, and nouvelle cuisine have been crucial to the evolution of the fine art of French cooking.
No comments:
Post a Comment