#57 - The story of French Haute Cuisine

Discover the story of haute cuisine! It’s not just about fancy food—it’s about artistry, precision, and a true celebration of ingredients and technique and appreciating the finest things in life. It’s a tale that goes back centuries, and the history of haute cuisine includes the French Revolution, obsessive chefs and edible art.

As the great American cook Julia Child once said – in France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport… 

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• 0:00 Intro
• 2:57 The story of French Haute Cuisine
• 26:40 Where to find Janine

Transcript

Janine: Bonjour tout le monde - a very warm welcome to the Good Life France podcast in which we talk about everything you want to know about France and more. I’m your host, Janine Marsh, I was born in London, but I feel a bit French, certainly in my heart, as I have had a home in the north of France for more than 20 years. I’m the editor of The Good Life France Magazine which is totally free to read online at magazine.thegoodlifefrance.com and I’m also the editor of a website about France, www.thegoodlifefrance.com, I write books and explore France year-round from the north to the south, the east to the west - and everywhere in between! And next year I’ll be hosting exclusive tours of Paris, the authentic, beautiful Paris I have discovered over decades of exploration and research, and if you’re interested in joining me, you’ll find details on the website and in the magazine or just email me! You could say that France, my adopted country, is my obsession. When I’m not travelling, writing or looking after my many animals (I have a lot of animals 4 dogs and 7 cats, chickens, ducks, geese and a rescue dove called Doris), I love to chat to you on this podcast alongside my podcast partner Olivier.

Oli: Bonjour tout le monde, bonjour and bienvenue, welcome. I’m Oli and I live in Lyon in the south of France, the gastronomic capital of France. And if I sound a little bit British, I think I do, that’s because I lived in the UK for 20 years! So, let’s get going and get stuck into our podcast topic! Janine tell us about the theme for today’s episode…

Janine: Well Oli, it’s funny you should mention that Lyon is the gastronomic capital of France because today is a foodie episode. A little while ago I was lucky enough to go a very famous restaurant in France. I was in Lyon – in fact I’d been for a beer with you and your partner Cristel in the afternoon and I had walked my socks off in Lyon, climbing up hills, exploring Roman ruins, hidden passageways and popping into museums but I’d saved a very special experience until the last – the restaurant of the late great Paul Bocuse, one of the most famous chefs of France who was nicknamed the “pope of gastronomy.” And before I met you in Lyon, I’d been to cookery school near Lyon, the Ecole Ducasse – and Chef Ducasse is the most Michelin starred chef in the world. 

And it made me think – who started the whole haute cuisine thing in the first place? And why? So this episode is dedicated to the history and creators of haute cuisine… 

Oli: It’s a fascinating topic, haute cuisine has a long and incredible history and there are some truly incredible events that helped to shape French cuisine including the French Revolution, plus some famous characters who made haute cuisine a thing, it’s all about obsessive chefs and edible art! 

Oli: Let’s start with what exactly is haute cuisine? Literally it means ‘high cooking.’ When we say haute cuisine, we mean dishes that are high quality, grande cuisine, the very best ingredients prepared by the most skilled chefs and of course that means we are talking about expensive food, premium prices. It’s fine dining at its most elevated.

Janine: Haute cuisine is considered to be culinary art, very refined and elaborate preparation is involved and like you say, very high quality ingredients. A few years ago, if you went to an haute-cuisine restaurant in France, you would probably find ingredients came from all around the world but these day there is a real movement going on that focuses on local and seasonal ingredients. I’ve noticed on my travels over the last few years that chefs really want to make sure that they use local and create partnerships with local producers, and they are very much into sustainable production too and that is changing the whole haute-cuisine outlook in France – in a good way. Top level food doesn’t have to involve products from all around the world, some yes, vanilla for instance isn’t easy to grow in France. 

But – where did it all start? I mean you can get fancy food in every country but nowhere has the equivalent of haute-cuisine – it’s a very French expression, even though it’s known and used globally.

Oli:  We have to go back to the 17th century to see where it started, to a chef named François Pierre de la Varenne. He moved French cooking away from its medieval roots, and published a cookbook in 1651 called Le Cuisinier François. This was revolutionary. Instead of massive, hearty feasts that relied on spices to cover up less-than-fresh ingredients (no I’m not kidding!), he introduced lighter sauces, fresh herbs, and more refined, seasonal ingredients. His work is often seen as the foundation of modern French cooking and haute cuisine as we know it. Of course this was all about the preparation and presentation of food for the nobility, not for the peasants! And this is generally seen as the start of it all. 

Janine: But the nobility of course always had better food than anyone else. William the Conqueror was said to really love good food and he bought the art of French cooking to England when he conquered it in 1066. The culture of French dishes of the time was strictly for the rich, us peasants continued to eat whatever was affordable as usual – which included a lot of cabbage soup. In the royal kitchens of England though, from the time of William, French chefs ruled, and French cuisine remained popular – and still is. In fact, an advert posted for a sous chef based in Buckingham Palace in 2021 required that applicants be “thoroughly trained in classical French cuisine.” 

Oli:  By the mid 1600s, having a great chef was a sign of your wealth and power and under King Louis XIV one man in particular made the finessing of fine food very famous. Ooh that was hard to say!  François Vatel, maître d’hôtel and right-hand man to two of the most powerful men in France, was responsible for organizing wonderful and sumptuous feasts and banquets for the court of King Louis XIV.

Janine: In April 1771 Vatel was working for the Prince de Condé who held a party at his Chateau de Chantilly for King Louis and his court – 600 nobles and their staff (around 2000 people in total) who for three days and nights had to be fed, entertained and have somewhere to sleep. And not only that, Vatel only had 15 days to prepare the lavish feasts. It was a massive job to look after all this and though Vatel didn’t cook the food, he oversaw the supplies for the food and the running of the kitchen – everything had to be absolutely perfect. He organised housing for everyone, firework displays, orchestras, entertainers, the wine and food deliveries, extra staff – everything was done just in the nick of time, but it meant poor Vatel hardly slept a wink, working all day and all night to sort it out. 

Oli: The guests arrived, it was all going fairly well but not everything went to plan. Apparently not enough cream was delivered so Vatel whipped it up with some added sugar and vanilla and allegedly created Chantilly cream (probably not true but the French do love a good story).  Disaster averted.

Janine: Ok – that’s probably a made up story, no one actually knows who invented Chantilly cream but it could be true! Another problem cropped up when an extra 75 guests turned up, can you imagine that?!  - anyway there wasn’t enough meat to go round, but no one appeared to notice and the banquet continued. Phew. Another problem solved.

Oli: But on the second day of the festivities, the delivery man arrived with fresh fish for that day’s main dish. But oh no, horror. There wasn’t enough fish to go round, Vatel asked the cart driver “is that all there is?” The man thought he meant is that all there is on your cart and said yes, he didn’t mention that more carts were on the way. 

Janine: Vatel was absolutely horrified. Not enough food for the important guests, his reputation would be ruined, he couldn’t take it. He went to his room and fell on his sword. Literally. 

Oli: And you know the fish turned up, the chefs cooked it, no one knew that there had been a problem at all. Vatel’s staff thought he’d gone up to his room for a rest, and when they went up to tell him the rest of the fish arrived, they found his poor lifeless body. Some may say he was being over dramatic, but the man was exhausted, and likely having a major breakdown. 

Janine: By his final act, Vatel, in his own strange way had set a very high bar for those who followed in his footsteps, his proof of his level of devotion to producing the very best, made him much more famous than the food that was served ever did. 

Oli: Chefs didn’t really become famous until after the French Revolution in 1789. When all the nobles were knocked off their perches, all of their chefs were out of a job. 

Janine: Before that it you wanted to open a dining establishment, you had to join a guild run by the government which of course demanded a tax payment for the pleasure of it which put a lot of people off. Generally there was just one meal a day served at 1pm and it was whatever the cook gave you, no choice. The quality was not always good – people who went to these places went just to eat to survive, not to enjoy the taste of a dish. Roasters and caterers who were also around ten could only sell whole pieces and not individual portions.

But soup was one thing you could get quite easily as there wasn’t a soup guild, so clever cooks called the soup a restorative, like a health food, and that eventually morphed into the word restaurant. They served only one dish, a slowly simmered bone broth called bouillon. There is an engraved stone plaque on the wall of a building which was one of the first soup restaurants in Paris in what is now Rue du Louvre, it’s in Latin but translates as “Come to me, those whose stomachs ache, and I will restore you.”

Oli: After the French Revolution, the chefs were like, what are we going to do? We have no jobs. And since no one was really taking much notice of the pre-Revolution restaurant taxes, they headed to the cities where they could hopefully find customers, and set up their own restaurants. Within a year, 50 lavish restaurants had opened in Paris alone.

Janine: And this really kick-started the whole French cuisine thing, though not haute-cuisine itself, but it’s an important part of the history of gastronomy in France – it brought the art of French cooking into the public arena, making it a respected profession and even more important, a very French profession. French cooks transformed themselves from household servants to masters of the art of fine dining.

Oli: Haute cuisine as we know it really began in the 1800s and there were two chefs who were really fundamental to its invention. The first was Marie-Antoine Careme. It is said that he was one of 25 children born into a poor Parisian family around 1784. He was abandoned during the French Revolution. At 10 years old he started work as a kitchen boy – no wages, but he had a room and food. His talent was evident right from the start, and by the time he was 15 years old, just as the French Revolution came to an end after 10 years of upheaval, Careme was working in a patisserie.

Janine: Careme was lucky. His boss at the cake shop encouraged him to learn to read and write and the young boy spent all of his spare time studying books about art and architecture in the National Library which thanks to the French Revolution was now open to all. What he read influenced him to design masterpieces in the kitchen using pastry, marzipan and sugar. 

Oli: Careme became famous for his creations, and by the age of 19, he set up his own bakery in rue de la Paix and daily, people began queuing to look in the windows at the latest creation of the young baker.

Janine: He made replicas of famous buildings sometimes as large as 4 feet tall, and that’s what people liked to see in the windows of the patisserie – they’d never seen anything like it before. And these grand concoctions are still a thing to this day in France, I’ve seen a replica of the Chateau of Valencay made from sugar at a bakery in Valencay  in the Loire Valley, and  Cathedral of Notre Dame from 58 kilogrammes of chocolate just recently - in a chocolate shop in Montmartre in Paris! 

Oli: Careme worked for the great and the good including Napoleon – he was commissioned to create the wedding cake for Napoleon’s marriage to his second bride, Marie Louise of Austria. And he worked in Valencay, at the chateau in the kitchens of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (Talleyrand), Napoleon's chief diplomat – and here he learned the savoury side of the kitchen.

Janine: In 1815, aged around 30, Careme went to England to be head chef for the prince regent who became king George IV. George was known to be a man who liked to indulge himself – his favourite. Breakfast consisted of two pigeons, three beef steaks, almost a whole bottle of white wine, a glass of champagne, two glasses of port and a glass of brandy. 

In 1817 Careme created a menu for a dinner for George to welcome the Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia to Brighton. On the menu were a whopping 120 dishes – including 8 different soups, 40 entrees, and 3 desserts. I don’t even know if I can name 32 desserts! Ok maybe I could. But it’s still very impressive. Careme then went on to cook for Alexander 1st Tsar of Russia – and the feasts got even more elaborate – up to 200 dishes! Careme made an absolute fortune, the first chef to become rich and famous. He was the world’s first celebrity chef! 

Oli: Carême refined what he called his "mother sauces." These sauces — béchamel, velouté, espagnole and allemande that are the cornerstone of modern French cuisine. Did you know that Sauce Espagnole, Spanish sauce, has nothing to do with Spain. The legend is that the bride of King Louis XIII had Spanish cooks who put tomatoes in the basic brown gravy the French were used to – and everyone loved it, so it was called Spanish sauce! It’s the basic sauce for things like boeuf bourgignon. These sauces are used as a base for hundreds of other sauces – and if you speak to any French chef, they’ll all tell you that without a good sauce, a dish is nothing, the sauces are an essential element of haute cuisine today.

Janine: Careme also perfected the soufflé, became the first chef to pipe his meringue through a pastry bag and introduced the standard chef's uniform — the same double-breasted white coat and toque (tall white hat) still worn by chefs today. And he is credited with creating the first ever menu. He went on to write best-selling cook books – often including a portrait of himself so that people would recognise him – he liked the adoration. And his books sold all over Europe – spreading the ethos of haute cuisine. 

Oli: The second important chef was Auguste Escoffier who, like Vatel and Careme before him, made attention to detail and top quality ingredients the signature of his work. 

Born in 1846, Auguste was thrown into the world of professional kitchens when he was just 12 years old when he started an apprenticeship at his uncle’s restaurant in Nice. 

Janine: Working in a restaurant then was not a pleasant experience, everyone drunk alcohol, a lot, so they were fairly crazy a lot of the time. Poor 13 year old Auguste couldn’t reach the stove as he was quite short and everyone laughed at him. Later he would wear platform shoes to make himself taller. 

Oli: But little Auguste had huge talent – it was clear almost immediately that he would be a brilliant chef. He later wrote, “I said to myself, ‘Although I had not originally intended to enter this profession, since I am in it, I will work in such a fashion that I will rise above the ordinary, and I will do my best to raise again the prestige of the chef de cuisine’.”

Janine: When he was 19 Escoffier left Nice and went to Paris to work in a fashionable restaurant, then he joined the army as a chef and there he learned about making the most of every scrap and even studied canning so that he could reduce waste, he later started a canning business selling tinned tomatoes! 

Oli: At 34 he got married to a woman he hardly saw for the next 30 years because by now, he had a reputation for being a great chef and he moved to Monte Carlo to work at the Grand hotel where he introduced a fixed price menu and refashioned how food was served. It had been traditional for everything to arrive at once and be plonked on the table, he introduced courses to French dining. 

Janine: In Monte Carlo he met a man called Caesar Ritz. Yes that Ritz, though he didn’t have a hotel then. Escoffier and Ritz worked at the Savoy Hotel in London and here Escoffier became a legend. The hotel became THE most fashionable restaurant in London. Diners sighed over his Cuisses de Nymphes à l’Aurore (‘Nymph Thighs at Dawn’) – frogs’ legs on a glassy pool of champagne jelly. Yes he got the British to eat frogs legs! 

Oli: Royalty and the nouveau riche were his clients. He was so famous that he even influenced British society. It wasn’t the done thing for respectable women to dine at a restaurant in the 19th century but – the temptations of Escoffier at the Savoy proved impossible to resist – it became fashionable for rich women to wear their finest clothes and jewellery and be seen and admired.  

Janine: Over the years Escoffier worked at the best restaurants, and created the system of a la carte menus, and he simplified the very complicated recipes of the earlier centuries whilst making dishes taste even better. Cooking for the very rich, the very famous and royalty, he was nicknamed King of Chefs, Chef of Kings. He went on to collaborate with Caesar Ritz to set up the Ritz Hotel Development Company, with the first hotel opened in Paris in 1898, the first hotel in the world to have electricity on every floor and rooms with private bathrooms! 

Oli: Escoffier collected celebrity fans along the way naming some of his dishes for them such as Peach Melba, dedicated to the famous Australian opera singer Nellie Melba. He wrote books too. And he introduced the ‘brigade de cuisine’ approach to the kitchen. 

This meant that duties were delegated depending on the station. He created numerous roles – a pâtissier, saucier, rotissier, and a garde manger who organised the pantry. He banned alcohol and instead served a refreshing malt drink to keep his chefs hydrated. He was the first chef to be awarded Legion d’Honneur and his work hugely influenced haute cuisine. 

Janine: And what about haute cuisine today? Well it’s a thriving industry in France and around the world. And though some things are changed from those early days, much is the same. It’s still about elegant and artistic dishes, meticulous preparation and great presentation. It’s also about small or moderate sizes of dishes. They are so special that generous sized portions just aren’t necessary, you are to savour every single morsel. Unlike in those early days, now haute cuisine is accessible to everyone not just the very rich and though it can be very expensive – it isn’t always. I’ve been to Michelin starred restaurants were two courses cost the same as two courses in my local restaurant which is definitely not haute cuisine. 

Oli: Haute cuisine is less about feeding your hunger and more about feeding your senses. The flavours and the presentation are so elevated that it feels like an experience, rather than just a meal.

Janine: Absolutely. There’s a real difference between your neighbourhood bistro – which don’t’ get me wrong, I love, and an haute cuisine restaurant. Imagine you go to a bistro, and you order a steak-frites. You get a perfectly cooked steak, a pile of golden fries, and maybe a little salad on the side. Delicious, right? That’s your classic restaurant dish—hearty, tasty, but relatively simple. The focus is on flavour and comfort.
 
 Now, haute cuisine is a different ball game. The focus shifts from volume to precision. Instead of a big steak and fries, you might get a smaller portion of the finest cut of beef, served with a tiny mound of finely mashed potatoes infused with truffle, and a single carrot slice that’s been roasted to caramelized perfection. Every component on the plate has been thought through, tested, and executed with the utmost care. There’s often a theatrical element as well—the dish might be finished at your table or served under a glass dome filled with aromatic smoke.

Oli: Haute cuisine isn’t just in the kitchen either – it features in tv shows – all those MasterChef programmes, books and of course film.  Who can forget the image of a tiny rat, Remy, whipping up haute cuisine in a Parisian restaurant kitchen? 

Janine: The film Ratatouille showcases not just the artistry of cooking, but the passion and precision that goes into haute cuisine. Sure, it’s a kids’ movie, but any foodie watching it can’t help but get emotional during the final scenes where the dish of ratatouille—a humble vegetable dish—is elevated to haute cuisine status – or is that just me?! 

Oli: One of the most famous haute cuisine dishes in France – at the Bocuse restaurant you mentioned earlier, is the soupe aux truffes noires Elysee, black truffle soup of the Elysee. Paul Bocuse was a famous chef with 3 Michelin stars – which is itself an indication of haute cuisine - by the mid 1970s when he received a letter from the Elysee Palace stating he was to be awarded with the medal of the Legion d’honneur. But it was a hoax.

Janine: That’s so mean. 

Oli: Yes very. But the President got to hear about this horrible hoax and he decided to make it come true! 

Janine: And so Paul Bocuse made in his honour, what would become the most famous mushroom soup in France, perhaps in history. It is on the menu of the Bocuse restaurant, at a slightly panic-inducing price but it is the epitome of haute cuisine - art, perfectionism and a dash of flair.  It is made with vegetables, beef, foie gras, black truffles.

Oli: Then you add Noilly prat, a liqueur, and truffle juice and beef consommé. 

Janine: then you cover the dish with puff pastry and cook it. So that when you break through the pasty the aroma of the soup wafts up to your quivering nostrils! 

Oli: I can smell it now just thinking about it. Yes, my nostrils are quivering.

Janine: And that my friends, is haute cuisine! It’s not just about fancy food—it’s about artistry, precision, and a true celebration of ingredients and technique. Whether you’re indulging in a multi-course tasting menu in Paris, or watching a rat cook up a storm in an animated film, haute cuisine is about appreciating the finest things in life.

Oli: We hope you’ve enjoyed this foodie episode of The Good Life France Podcast! 

We just want to say a huge thank you to all of you listening to our podcast and to everyone for sharing it too. We really love sharing the France we know and love with you, the authentic and real France with its wonderful history, culture, gastronomy, wine and more. It always amazes us that people are listening in about 150 countries around the world!

Janine: A great big thank you so much everyone, wherever you are, we really appreciate it. You can find me and a ton of information about France – where to visit, culture, history, recipes – everything France - at thegoodlifefrance.com where you can subscribe to the podcast, a weekly newsletter about France and my totally brilliant, completely free magazine which you can read at magazine.thegoodlifefrance.com.

But for now, it’s au revoir from me.

Olivier: And goodbye from me.

Janine: Speak to you soon!