History of the French kitchen

To eat is a vital need to balance our Métabolisme which brings to the need for seeking food, the man must be organized in social group to carry out this search. To eat is also a pleasure and the man invents preparations which gather the most pleasant feelings from its five direction. The man shares his meal with others, which invites between two mouthfuls, with the additional pleasure of the exchange and the Parole.

In the Antiquity, the man spoke about banquet and it was also the occasion of the exercise of a Culte. One honors there the gods by Offrande S and ritual ceremonies, it is the same for the Celtes and their ascending which built Dolmen S on which dishes intended for the gods were drawn up.

With the the Middle Ages, this practice remains long-lived in particular by thanking God for food that it gives them, with this is added the occasion for the noble ones and middle-class man to make watch of their richness by the ritual protocolar ones. The mets are laid out in bowls, each guest brings his knife to prick the precut meat, the guests are used for it with the fingers. The whole of the dishes were laid out on the table, no need thus to write a menu.

The medieval era

The treaties of kitchen enable us to apprehend the history under the angle of human knowledge and sociétale. Two large books perpetuate the tradition and thus the knowledge of the medieval era, it acts of the Ménagier of Paris or Treaty of morals and economy domesticates, made up about 1393 by a Parisian middle-class man introduced by the baron Jerome Pichon. And the viandier of Guillaume Tirel, known as Taillevent, it is the first celebrity of the gastronomy which precedes long series of chiefs who associate the theory with the practice. Viandier is interested much in sauces but the medieval man was satisfied with an extremely spiced kitchen which denatures the tastes. Guillaume Tirel was born in Pont-Audemer in the Eure in 1310, it is rider of kitchen of Charles V then of Charles VI, which it anoblit in 1392 to become the Maistre of the garrisons of kitchen of the king . He is buried with Saint-Germain-in-Bush hammer. François Villon written: “ If gone to veoir in Taillevent In the chapter of fricassure. ”

Service with the Frenchwoman

From the fifteenth century, under the influence of the Court of Burgundy, the meal substitutes the exercise of a worship for the spectacle of a king devoting himself to it. At the XVIième century, the meal can include/understand between three and twelve maltreatment. The dishes are posed in advance, withdrawn all together and replaced by another series. The guests make use of what is laid out with range of arm. Between the services, drawn up desserts in a grandiloquent way, it is the service with the Frenchwoman. In 1532, in the Gargantua of Rabelais, not to forget the wine, a saying: “To raise morning is not happiness; Boire morning is much better. ”

At the end of the sixteenth century, under the influence of Byzance and of Italy by Catherine de Médicis, the fork is introduced at the court of France. The queen by the arrival of Italian cooks brings refinement in the art of the French table. In addition to the spectacle, delicate savors and moderate odors are pétalent then.

François Vatel

How not to evoke for the seventeenth century the character become mythical thanks to film of Roland Joffé interpreted by Gerard Depardieu in the year 2000, François Vatel. Between rumor and reality, Madam de Sévigné in a letter with his/her daughter Madam de Grignan, locates it in its historical truth: “ But here what I learn while entering here, of which I then to recover, and who makes that I do not know any more but I you mande: It is that finally Vatel, large Vatel, Master of hotel of Mr Fouquet, who was it at present of Mister the Prince, was stabbed. ”

Fouquet invites Louis XIV with Vaux it Vicomte, François Vatel organizes a sumptuous festival of 80 tables, 30 dressers, 5 pheasant services, ruails, ortolan buntings partridge with massive gold plate, 84 violins play the music of Lully, Molière plays “the Annoying” on this occasion. For the dessert, Vatel invents a surprise: the Whipped cream.
Louis XIV in prey with financial problems and not yet with Versailles is piqué with sharp in his pride, the king makes stop Fouquet, François Vatel flees in England. He is engaged then by the Prince de Condé, a famous slinger in his Château of Chantilly.

To enter in grace close to Louis XIV, the Prince of Condé asks the king and his court in his castle. 3000 guests penetrated with the castle of Chantilly. At the second day of the reception, Vatel under pressure does not see arriving the ordering of fish for the very same day, feeling dishonoured not to provide any more its hosts, it commits suicide while being transpierced of three blows of sword. François Vatel is also broken by his dream of love for Miss. of Montausier, favorite of the king, more especially as the Prince of Condé plays it charts and loses it for Louis XIV.

François Vatel is badly considered by the cooks because in addition to its gifts of organization, it puts the shoulder to the wheel into exceptionally gifted gastronomie.
Its life is surrounded by jealousy and abandonment. It could have been at least twice the large organizer of the festivities of Louis XIV and it is not it by love and fidelity. It becomes by its selected death the Archétype of the large cook , the myth which inaugurates French gastronomy.

End of the old mode

This tradition remains then until the end of the eighteenth century and reached its apogee in the kitchen of Antonin Lent, the king of the cooks, and his Pâtisserie of extraordinary wedding cakes.

End of the Old Mode sign still appearance of the restaurant which meant then Bouillon containing juice of viande.
With the Revolution, the chiefs left without work by the exodus of their Masters open restaurants where they serve these bubbles. Gradually, the restaurants find their dedication to the place of the tables of Masters, and a new corporation occurs: criticisms.
The middle-class of the nineteenth century tested the need to put at the poster the meals by the menu ornamented by famous painters, engravers or draftsmen. Also appears the service “with the Russian”, the dishes of small number are presented progressively to the exit of the kitchen. And, finally, the greedy Literature with in particular the Physiology of the taste, by the professor Brillat-Savarin.

the emperor of the cooks , quoted thus by Guillaume Two, emperor of Germany, Georges-Auguste Escoffier modernized and codified the high-class cooking refined creates by Antonin Lent and developed the concept of brigade by rationalizing the allocation of the functions: “ the cook must be clean, meticulous person, not drinking, not smoking, not shouting ”.
He was the collaborator of César Ritz and will be the Chef Large Hotel of Monte Carlo, Large National of Lucerne, Savoy, Carlton of London and Ritz Hotels in Paris and New York. He is the creator inter alia Peach Melba, Poire Beautiful-Helene and crepes suzette.

Molecular gastronomy

The molecular Gastronomie appears in 1988 like scientific discipline thanks to Nicholas Kurti and Herve This. A molecular kitchen will take as a starting point its work. Already Lavoisier had explored the culinary transformations. The molecular gastronomy scientifically studies the culinary phenomena and either the study of food. Herve This, in died of Nicholas Kurti, will define three objectives:

To explore the technical component of the kitchen.
To explore the artistic component of the kitchen.
To explore the relational component of the kitchen.

Many chiefs take as a starting point the molecular gastronomy: Pierre Gagnaire, Shoed Adria, Heston Blummenthal and Thierry Marx. If Michel Roth is the perpetuation of the art of Georges-Auguste Escoffier and thus of the French tradition, a philosopher of the art nouveau, Thierry Marx is connected with the kitchen of the “initiates” of molecular alchemy. The concept of ox carrots or lemon tart destructurés evokes the déconstruction derriderienne or heideggerienne which Néant goes back to a new knowledge on the To be.

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