Haute cuisine

An example of french Haute cuisine presentation

Photo of french grands chefs, rewarded by Michelin Guide and Gault et Millau

Caille en sarcophage : Quail in a puff pastry shell with foie gras and truffle sauce

Haute cuisine (French: literally "high food", pronounced: [ot kɥi.zin]) or Grande cuisine refers to the cuisine of "high level" establishments, gourmet restaurants and luxury hotels in France. Haute cuisine is characterized by meticulous preparation and careful presentation of food, at a high price level, accompanied by rare wines.

History

Haute cuisine was characterised by French cuisine in elaborate preparations and presentations served in small and numerous courses that were produced by large and hierarchical staffs at the grand restaurants and hotels of Europe.

The 17th century chef and writer La Varenne marked a change from cookery known in the Middle Ages, to somewhat lighter dishes, and more modest presentations. In the following century, Antonin Carême, born in 1784, also published works on cooking, and although many of his preparations today seem extravagant, he simplified and codified an earlier and even more complex cuisine.

Georges Auguste Escoffier is a central figure in the modernisation of haute cuisine as of about 1900, which became known as cuisine classique. The 1960s were marked by the appearance of nouvelle cuisine, as chefs rebelled from Escoffier's "orthodoxy" and complexity. Within 20 years, however, chefs began returning to the earlier style of haute cuisine, although many of the new techniques remained.

Further reading

• Cooking, Cuisine and Class, A Study in Comparative Sociology, Jack Goody, University of Cambridge, June 1982, ISBN 978-0521286961
• Food and love: a cultural history of East and West By Jack Goody, Verso (April 1999), ISBN 978-1859848296
• Tasting food, tasting freedom: excursions into eating, culture, and the past by Sidney Wilfred Mintz Beacon Press (1997) - ISBN 0-807-04629-9
• Viandier attributed to Guillaume Tiret dit Taillevent, medieval manuscript
• Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession By Amy B. Trubek, University of Pennsylvania Press (December 2000), ISBN 978-0812217766
• Food culture in France By Julia Abramson, Greenwood Press (November 2006), ISBN 978-0313327971