Nouvelle cuisine (French:[nuvɛlkɥizin]ⓘ; 'new cuisine') is an approach to cooking and food presentation inFrench cuisine. In contrast tocuisine classique, an older form ofhaute cuisine, nouvelle cuisine is characterized by lighter, more delicate dishes and an increased emphasis onpresentation. It was popularized in the 1960s by the food criticHenri Gault, who coined the phrase, and his colleaguesAndré Gayot andChristian Millau in a new restaurant guide, theGault Millau, orLe Nouveau Guide.
The termnouvelle cuisine has been used several times in the history of French cuisine, to mark a clean break with the past.
In the 1730s and 1740s, several French writers emphasized their break with tradition, calling their cooking "modern" or "new".Vincent La Chapelle published hisCuisinier moderne in 1733–1735. The first volumes ofMenon'sNouveau traité de la cuisine was published in 1739. It was in 1742 that Menon introduced the termnouvelle cuisine as the title of the third volume of hisNouveau traité.[1]François Marin worked in the same tradition.[citation needed]
In the 1880s and 1890s, the cooking ofGeorges Auguste Escoffier was sometimes described with the term.[2]
The modern usage is variously attributed to authorsHenri Gault,Christian Millau, andAndré Gayot,[3][4] who used nouvelle cuisine to describe the cooking ofPaul Bocuse,[5]Alain Chapel,Jean andPierre Troisgros,Michel Guérard,Roger Vergé, andRaymond Oliver, many of whom were once students ofFernand Point.[6] Paul Bocuse claimed that Gault first used the term to describe food prepared by Bocuse and other top chefs for the maiden flight of theConcorde airliner in 1969.[7]
The style Gault and Millau wrote about was a reaction to the Frenchcuisine classique placed into "orthodoxy" by Escoffier. Calling for greater simplicity and elegance in creating dishes, nouvelle cuisine is notcuisine minceur ('thin cooking'), which was created by Michel Guérard as spa food. It has been speculated that the outbreak ofWorld War II was a significant contributor to nouvelle cuisine's creation—the short supply of animal protein during the German occupation made it a natural development.[8]
Gault and Millau discovered the "formula" contained in ten characteristics of this new style of cooking. The ten characteristics identified were:[9]
There is a standing debate as to whether nouvelle cuisine has been abandoned. Much of what it stood for—particularly its preference for lightly presented, fresh flavours—has been assimilated into mainstream restaurant cooking. By the mid-1980s, some food writers stated that the style of cuisine had reached exhaustion and many chefs began returning to thecuisine classique style of cooking, although much of the lighter presentations and new techniques remained.[6]
