What makes something haute cuisine?

[Steve Plotnicki]

It was a joke.

Fat Guy - You are coorect about saucing having been reduced to a minimum or even being non-existent. Now the trend is to have the sauces be a natural jus that comes directly from the ingredient being cooked. And possibly that is mixed with a natural sauce extracted from a vegetable (shades of Bernatd Loisseau.) Yet there is a great disctinction between the French mthod of extracting natural juice and the Italian way of getting some natural gravy out of a pan roasted piece of meat. Why is that and what distinguishes one from the other?

[Toby]

Yet there is a great disctinction between the French mthod of extracting natural juice and the Italian way of getting some natural gravy out of a pan roasted piece of meat. Why is that and what distinguishes one from the other?

In the end, all threads will converge?

I used to make an Italian pan-roasted breast of veal (from Marcella Hazen), in which whole garlic cloves were heated with a little olive oil, and then the meat was deeply browned in the oil, and then seasoned with salt, pepper and rosemary. A small amount of wine was added, brought to bubbling, and then the pan was covered, with lid a little ajar, and cooked slowlyfor a long time, turning the meat a few times until it was very tender and browned. Small amounts of water were added if the meat started to stick. After the meat was removed from the pan, some of the fat was skimmed off, and a little water was added and boiled away while stirring any cooking residues into it. The pan juices were then poured over the veal.

In Hazen's recipes, if something was being sauteed (like veal scaloppini), the liquid (wine, lemon) would be swirled into the pan, along with some additional fat (butter, cream) and any juices exuded from the cooked meat (in the pan and on the serving plate) after the meat was cooked and removed from the pan. The meat was then returned to the pan to coat with the sauce.

What do the French do?

[Tonyfinch]

What do the French do?

Maybe not now but all the old haute cuisine restaurants employed a sauce chef and all the sauces would be separately made. What you have described is not a classic h-c technique. There would be a basic array of fonds de cuisine and the sauce cuisinier would tinker around and develop sauces from them.

In all the top old restaurants the sauce chef was the one who had access to all the cooking alcohol and they often had to keep a close eye on how much he was tippling in case he ended up face down in the demi-glace.

[Fat Guy]

Haute cuisine is expensive.

That's like saying bespoke suits are expensive, or handmade, artisan furniture is expensive; it has to be, unless the owner/chef is a philathropist and a very rich eccentric.

You are correct, sir.

[Sandra Levine]

Toby, French cooking also uses the de-clazing technique you have described, but not in haute cuisne.

[Suzanne F]

I've been trying to look objectively at the original question (silly me). Interestingly enough, I haven't been able to find a definition of the phrase haute cuisine -- not even in Patric Kuh's book, The Last Days of Haute Cuisine. Nor in either English translations of Larousse Gastonomique.

The only somewhat consistent references -- still without definitions -- are in works by or about Escoffier. In Escoffier's autobiography, he describes the Café-Restaurant du Casino in Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he was chef de cuisine as

...on a par with the finest restaurants in Paris.  The service was so perfect, the cuisine so fine and delicate, the wine so exquisite, that customers might have imagined that they were in Paris on the boulevard Haussmann...

Immediately following, he mentions meeting César Ritz:

When we first met in Monte Carlo, Ritz was looking for someone to help him extend his expertise in the hotel management industry.  He himself was not a cook, and he needed a chef who knew all the secrets of the art of haute cuisine, who knew everything about restaurant service and the intricacies of à la cartedining.

Sometime later, he mentions the Prince of Wales as loving French food, "whether it was Parisian-style haute cuisine or ...."

Finally, after a trip to the United States, upon his return to work at the Carlton Hotel in London:

I therefore turned my attention to the art of haute cuisine and the invention of the new and spectacular dishes that encourged my clients to come back time and again.

So much for Escoffier himself. H. L. Cracknell and R. J. Kaufman, translators of the fourth (and final) edition of Escoffier's Guide Culinaire, say in their Translators' Preface:

This book is a repository (not a mausoleum) of all that is best in Classical French and International cookery consisting as it does of more than 5,000 recipes with a great deal of theory on the principles of cookery.  The recipes themselves are not necessarily complicated and protracted, in fact many are beautifully simple; thus we think that this book will also be of great value to the young who aspire to achieve high standards and to students on catering courses who need to understand something of the intricacies of Haute Cuisine.

It would seem then that haute cuisine is a Parisian style of cooking as defined and practiced by Auguste Escoffier, and continued by his spiritual and practical descendants. What does that do with all the subjective comments made here??

[Toby]

Fat Guy - You are coorect about saucing having been reduced to a minimum or even being non-existent. Now the trend is to have the sauces be a natural jus that comes directly from the ingredient being cooked. And possibly that is mixed with a natural sauce extracted from a vegetable (shades of Bernatd Loisseau.) Yet there is a great disctinction between the French mthod of extracting natural juice and the Italian way of getting some natural gravy out of a pan roasted piece of meat. Why is that and what distinguishes one from the other?

I gave the Italian method for pan sauces in reference to a discussion about modern French haute cuisine dispensing with the older, heavier sauces, and in particular to the above quote "Now the trend is to have the sauces be a natural jus that comes directly from the ingredient being cooked." I wanted to know the difference between the way the French "extracted natural juice" and the "Italian way of getting some natural gravy out of a pan roasted piece of meat." Anyone know the modern haute cuisine French way and how it differs from the Italian?

[Fat Guy]

Suzanne, did you look in Barron's? The definition offered there is: Food that is prepared in an elegant or elaborate manner; the very finest food, prepared perfectly. The French word haute translates as "high" or "superior," cuisine as "cooking" (in general).

[Steve Plotnicki]

Toby - I essentially asked the same question and it hasn't been answered yet (and maybe never will.) Maybe there is no difference although something tells me there is.

Suzanne's research on the phrase haute cuisine leads one to conclude that it means the "practice of an art." That's why it would be similar to a designer's role in haute couture. It seems to be a phrase the French constructed to describe an artist who does things for a commercial purpose. The French were very good at inventing phrases that inferred that whomever was being described would have special status. Like a maitre boucher. It's sounds artisanal but in contains a commercial inferrence that is intended to communicate quality to customers.

Jaybee - Bespoke really just means custom. It doesn't have to be expensive to be bespoke. It just needs to be "made-to-measure." It can be bespoke of inexpensive cloth. And the connotation of bespoke is more of made for indurance then made for fashion. Couture has a connotation to it that means fashionable. It implies stylish and the latest in fashion. Add the word "haute" and it just means it is the most stylish and the most fashionable. Same with cuisine. But I do find it ironic that the Brits marketed things by focusing on the fact that things were well made and enduring, and the French focused on what would be fashinable, i.e., change with the times. equivelent of "haute bespoke"

[Suzanne F]

Suzanne, did you look in Barron's? The definition offered there is: Food that is prepared in an elegant or elaborate manner; the very finest food, prepared perfectly. The French word haute translates as "high" or "superior," cuisine  as "cooking" (in general).

Yeah, but that seems kind of post hoc ergo propter hoc to me. Not a definition, but a general description of what has come to be seen as such.

Fwiw, Fernand Point seems to use the term grande cuisine for his cooking.

[Wilfrid]

Just had time to catch up on this thread. Picking up on Suzanne's last point, one thing I did notice last week was that Webster's (online) dates the first usage of "haute cuisine" from 1928. Unfortunately, I can't see whether that's the first use in French or in English. If French, it rather postdates Escoffier's glory years, let alone Careme's. I can't find a source for the French etymology, but it may be revealing to check this in a library. What we may well discover is that the cooking of well-known French chefs over many years was known by a bunch of different phrases,

Where would that get us? Well, it might suggest the conclusion that "haute cuisine" is really not much more than a marketing label which chefs and restaurants apply to their cuisine in order to attract certain kinds of customers. Because all the possible common factors we've adduced so far - including mine back on page one - fail to delineate any one particular style of cooking.

[g.johnson]

Picking up on Suzanne's last point, one thing I did notice last week was that Webster's (online) dates the first usage of "haute cuisine" from 1928.  Unfortunately, I can't see whether that's the first use in French or in English.

OED:

High-class (French) cooking.

1926 Time 5 July 12 In France, perhaps in France alone, the traditions of la haute cuisine survive from the days of the great gastronomes. 1928 S. BROWNE tr. T. H. Varo de Velde's Ideal Marriage xv. 277 The most effective dish in the haute cuisine is supposed to be crayfish soup. 1930 A. BENNETT Imperial Palace xxxvi. 246 La Haute cuisine. Not fifty people in the world were equipped by education and natural taste to comprehend it. 1935 Time 11 Mar. 22/1 If only English landladies spoke French, and if only their English cooks knew something of haute cuisine, Frenchmen with gold francs would be tempted across the Channel. 1951 E. DAVID French Country Cooking 172 Their use in what was regarded as Haute Cuisine became ridiculously excessive, and no dish was considered really refined without a garnish of sliced truffle. 1959 Listener 30 Apr. 776/3 The miracles of haute cuisine often arrive from a kitchen where the scales are faulty! 1962 AUDEN Dyer's Hand 75 It is difficult to imagine a haute cuisine based on algae and chemically treated grass. 1966 Observer 25 Sept. 46/2 An egg-based haute cuisine dinner for 6.

So one would guess English, though Webster is wrong (about so many things, like spelling).

[Wilfrid]

It would be amusing if it turned out to be an English coinage.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Wilfrid - We are having a similar discussion to your point about haute cuisine being a marketing label in the Italy/relevance thread. It doesn't surprise me that the first use of the phrase coincides with the era when the French applied arts started to really boom. In fact the famous exhibition of art deco furniture organized by Levy was 1929 I believe. As we have discussed on threads about British cuisine, the French seemed to prosper between the wars. Others had a harder time of it.

[baphie]

There is one element of "haute cusine," like most artistic practices, that is being overlooked: the inherent and intentional inefficiency of the practice.

Assuming the ultimate goal is to provide nourishment, haute cuisine can be characterized by the deliberate inefficiency of means. Complex recipes, extreme selectivity within a particular ingredient, intensive labor and other criteria mentioned before are all part of this broader category which is directly opposed to traditional, home or even bistro cuisine.

There are some other points that also need to be confronted if a definition of "haute cuisine" is to be obtained:

- Luxury of ingredients is relative. White truffles, if not commonplace, are highlight of rustic regional Italian cuisine during the season. Foie gras is almost a staple of Gascon cooking. Caviar has been eaten by the pound in areas of Russia. This makes our luxurious ingredients problematic as a defintion of haute cuisine.

-There has to be an allowance for a timeline. To my mind, something like the Troisgros' salmon with sorrel sauce is no longer haute cuisine. It has become a cliche or staple of cooking in numerous locations. In addition to inclusion, we must look at the process of removal from the canon of haute cuisine.

-I think the actual praxis ought to be a component of any definition. The attainment or even pursuit of "arete" is too often lacking in the world of cuisine. I recall all too vividly a hideous dinner at the Grill Room in the Windsor Court in New Orlean (a ***** Mobil) where a lobster ravioli absolutely drowned in truffle oil was nearly inedible. Calling this haute cuisine is a travesty.

-What can be made of someone like Adria? I think any definition of haute cuisine must include him, but nearly all of the posted criteria fail. The food is so challenging, both in theory and praxis, that any definition of haute cuisine is going to be challenged.

-Finally I am somewhat troubled, but maybe accepting by the fact that we are assuming restaurant cuisine. Does this mean when I cook from a Bras or Trotter cookbook that I am not practicing haute cuisine? Or if I create orginal dishes in that style? Is haute cuisine defined by the context in which it is eaten?

A.

[Peter B Wolf]

After, what is four page postings, I agree with many, disagree with others', and am confused by others' yet.

Will the term ever really be defined, and then sink into obscurity, or worse into common use, like "gourmet" or 'Gourmand'.

I am referring to the "Gourmet" isles in Supermarkets with their "Brisling" Sardines, imported "Red Cabbage", "Pastene Anchovies", "Toblerone", black vinegar called "Balsamico" and powdered soups from "Knorr"?

I think the term needs a common definition (acceptable but defining).

Not like the term "Haute Couture", just because a blouse was bought in Paris.

[haunted_chef]

So would resturants like the French Laundry or Les Halles be considered "Haute cusine?

[Jinmyo]

My take: FL, yes. Les Halles, no.