Haute cuisine (French:[otkɥizin];lit. 'high cooking') orgrande cuisine is a style of cooking characterised by meticulous preparation, elaborate presentation, and the use of high quality ingredients. Typically prepared by highly skilledgourmet chefs, haute cuisine dishes are renowned for their high quality and are often offered at premium prices.
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 thebourgeoisie 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 ofhaute cuisine in France, which was organized at the turn of the 20th century byAugust Escoffier into thebrigade de cuisine. The extravagant presentations and complex techniques that came from these kitchens required ingredients, time, equipment, and therefore money. For this reason, earlyhaute cuisine was accessible to a small demographic of rich and powerful individuals. Not only were professional chefs responsible for building and shapinghaute cuisine, but their role in the cuisine was what differentiated it from regular French cuisine.[3]
Haute cuisine is influenced byFrench 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 writerLa Varenne (1615–1678) marked a change from cookery as known in theMiddle Ages, to somewhat lighter dishes, and more modest presentations. Subsequently,Antonin Carême (1784–1833) also published works on cooking, and he simplified and codified an earlier and even more complex cuisine. Nineteenth-century Frenchhaute cuisine interacted with the development offine dining inBritain.[5] French master chef, Jassintour Rozea (1721-1783) wrote several culinary books on haute cuisine (The Gift of Comus, 1752, and The Compleat Cook, Market Woman & Dairy Maid, 1756 - Library of Congress, USA) was also master chef to Charles Seymour, 6th. Duke of Somerset and had subsequent positions at the stately homes of the Duke of Montrose, the Duke of Roxburgh, the Lords Hervey & Edgecombe, and later John Hope, Earl of Hopetoun House, Edinburgh. Jassintour was renowned both in London & Edinburgh for his glorious banquets attended by European aristocrats in the expected French tradition.
Contrary topopular belief,Catherine de' Medici did not introduce Italian food to the French court to create haute cuisine.[6]
Georges Auguste Escoffier is a central figure in the modernisation ofhaute cuisine as of about 1900, which became known ascuisine classique. These were simplifications and refinements of the early work of Carême,Jules Gouffé andUrbain 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 replaceserviceà la française (serving all dishes at once) withserviceà la russe (serving meals in courses) and to develop a system of cookery, based on Escoffier'sLe Guide Culinaire, which formalized the preparation of sauces and dishes. In its time, it was considered the pinnacle ofhaute cuisine, and was a style distinct fromcuisine bourgeoise (the cuisine of affluent city dwellers), the working-class cuisine ofbistros and homes, and cuisines of the French provinces.
The 1960s were marked by the appearance ofnouvelle cuisine, as chefs rebelled from Escoffier's "orthodoxy" and complexity. Although the termnouvelle cuisine had been used in the past, the modern usage can be attributed to authorsAndré Gayot,[7]Henri Gault, andChristian Millau, who usednouvelle cuisine to describe the cooking ofPaul Bocuse,Alain Chapel, Jean andPierre Troisgros,Michel Guérard,Roger Vergé andRaymond Oliver, many of whom were once students ofFernand 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 towardsconceptualism andminimalism and was a direct juxtaposition to earlierhaute 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 ofhaute cuisine, although many of the new techniques remained.[8]
The dictionary definition ofhaute cuisine at WiktionaryThe Reform Club's stellar culinary reputation reveals the profound interconnection between fine dining and French haute cuisine that consolidated in Britain during the 1800s.
