can be divided into the professional cook and the domestic cook. (Some reflection on their role can be found in the entry cook.) Although it is an oversimplification to say that the first were men and the second women, as a broad generalization this remains true. The term ‘professional cook’ here refers to someone working in a high-class private or restaurant kitchen, as opposed to the caterer, producing and purveying mass-produced dishes. While the generalized use of the term ‘chef’ is recent, much of the organization of the professional kitchen and the role of the head cook controlling a team (the brigade) has not changed greatly.
Dalby (2003a) has a useful sketch of cooks in the ancient world: freemen in Greece, but slaves in Rome. The professional cook does not seem to have existed, he says, in archaic Greece, but in classical Athens and other cities the mageiros was an essential officer and organizer of the animal sacrifice. The self-importance of cooks was a theme of comedies in Greece (see Wilkins 2000), and their excesses at grand feasts provided rich material for Petronius' Satyricon. Those cooks who were not slaves worked freelance, cooking feasts for those who could not afford a proper kitchen staff.
By the medieval period, princely establishments recognized the importance of the cook, with his twofold role of enhancing the prince's status by producing spectacular feasts, and safeguarding the prince's health by following the medical rules for diet. The master-cook began his career with apprenticeship at the lowest level, as a child of the kitchen, where he was subject to harsh discipline: as Olivier de la Marche points out, the master-cook's ladle was for hitting the children as well as for tasting sauces. Careers were often slow: in the French royal kitchens, Jean Jart was a child of the kitchen in 1386, and a master-cook only in 1418. In England, Henry VIII's great kitchen had a staff of about 50; another department, the confectionery, has the first mention of a woman cook, the ‘wife who makes the king's puddings’. The confectionery continued sporadically to employ women, the only office to do so.
Beyond the court, cooks worked freelance under the guild system, with a long apprenticeship before the cook could set up on his own, and a hierarchy similar to that in the royal kitchens. Although women were denied access to apprenticeship, and thus excluded from the profession, in the late 18th century many affirmed their credentials by describing themselves as ‘professed’ cooks.
Kitchens had a strict hierarchy. In Rome, after the 3rd century bc, a kitchen would have a full brigade, with the master cook (archimagirus) controlling a second cook and a horde of under-cooks (coci) wielding the pestle and mortar, which was an essential tool. The hierarchy of the kitchens was much the same in medieval France, England, and Burgundy. Only the clerks of the kitchen, who controlled spending, were above the master-cook, who headed a substantial kitchen staff (all men): for instance, the French royal kitchen in 1386 numbered 73.
As the classic system of French cooking developed from the mid-17th century, today's organization of the kitchen began to develop with it. A modular system of cookery meant that several cooks could have a hand in preparing a single dish; furthermore, the best Parisian cooks were no longer those in permanent employment at court, but the freelance practitioners who worked only briefly in any one house. With such mobility, a cook who could take his place in a team at short notice was essential. Today, with the largest kitchen staffs found in restaurants rather than in private houses, the same constraints have ensured that a more advanced system, with its specialized skills and personnel, still prevails.
The cooks who had successful careers reaped rich rewards. Guillaume Tirel, the 14th-century cook better known as Taillevent, finished his 60-year stint with a substantial fortune and a coat of arms. Much later, Voltaire's cook, Antoine du Fay, earned 240 livres a year in 1761, and his successor, the appropriately named Bonnesauce, 180 livres. (The coachman earned 100 livres, the women cook and baker 50 and 60 livres respectively.) Once the prestige of French cuisine was established, French cooks were de rigueur in grand establishments everywhere until the 20th century. High salaries were the norm for these expatriates, who earned double the salaries of their English counterparts. The cook was one of the upper servants; the man-cook ranked equal to the bailiff and above the butler, while the woman cook came below the lady's maid and the housekeeper.
Gilly Lehmann teaches in a French University and is a leading authority on the history of English cookery books, especially of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Dalby, Andrew (2003b), Flavours of Byzantium, Totnes: Prospect.
