• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W
• X
• Y
• Z

Nouvelle Cuisine

a recurring term in the history of French cookery. As explained in France: national and regional cuisines, it first came to prominence in the 18th century, when Vincent La Chapelle described the simplified style of cooking recommended in his Cuisine moderne (1733) as a ‘nouvelle cuisine’. This remained in vogue until the early 19th century. It was in the 1970s that the next ‘rebellion’ took place, producing the nouvelle cuisine which has, for better or for worse, altered the evolution of professional cooking in the western world during the closing decades of the century.

This latest nouvelle cuisine has its admirers and its critics, plus a lot of people who have mixed feelings about it, especially since it started to develop its own clichés, and a few aspects which look, perhaps, more like food for rebellion than rebels' food. Nonetheless, it is an important phenomenon and deserves to be defined here in an authoritative manner, by Henri Gault (1996), on the lines of a paper which he prepared for presentation at Oxford University in 1995.

Gault believes that he ‘in all innocence produced a veritable manifesto’ for the movement in the form of an article he wrote in 1973. At that time he felt that traditional French cuisine was in a rotten state. Yet there were grounds for hope. The kitchen floor tiles were beginning, just perceptibly, to crack and buckle under the influence of movements of the tectonic plates underneath; and Gault could foresee that these exciting tremors would soon shake up the whole culinary scene, thanks to some brilliant young chefs with new ideas.

Gault suggested that the revolutionary movement could be defined in ten points, here summarized:

• Cooking time reduced for most fish, for all shellfish, for poultry with brown meat and game, for roasts, veal, some green vegetables, pasta.
• New utilization of products. Our epoch of overproduction and bastardized technology had been poisoning or eliminating many valuable products. Instead of masking, with aggressive sauces, these asepticized and rigorously insipid foods, the new chefs were getting up early and going to the market in search of genuine material.
• Reduction of choice on menus. ‘In Paris one is beginning to see less of those gigantic menus with a ridiculously varied choice, which necessitate huge stocks and a regrettable amount of cold storage.’
• Less use of refrigeration, which had been abused by the old school.
• Use of advanced technology. The young chefs, despite being cautious about refrigeration, would not ‘let out cries like violated virgins at the sight of all the processes and machinery of cooking, conservation, cleaning and comfort’ that are now available.
• A ban on obsolete and boring principles, such as rules about marinating game. ‘The new chefs serve game hung but fresh and the spices that covered up the shameful fermentations have disappeared from their arsenal.’
• Banishment of terrible brown sauces and white sauces, ‘these espagnoles, périgueux, financières, grand-veneur, béchamel, mornay that have assassinated so many livers and covered up so many insipid pieces of meat’.
• Application of knowledge about dietetics. ‘Without bowing to the inconsistencies of men in a hurry and women on a diet, they are discovering the pleasures of light dishes, of well made salads, of fresh vegetables simply cooked, of rare meat.’
• Avoiding the danger of deceitful presentations, ‘of which the redoubtable [but now-to-be-reproached] Carême launched the fashion 150 years ago. In contrast, the new chefs like to adorn and embellish, but they understand the limits which must not be passed and the aesthetics of simplicity—as well as the vanity of sonorous nomenclature.’
• Invention. ‘It has been said that for thousands of years and in particular during the 19th century, everything had been tried and established: all the equipment, the cooking methods, the successful combinations. Well, this is false. It is already sixty years since Jules Maincave, farsighted creature of genius, had the idea of replacing vinaigrette with a mixture of pork jus and rum, of marrying chicken with lily of the valley, of veal à l'absinthe …. There are millions of dishes that can be created and certainly hundreds of them that will survive.’

Such, in brief, was the ‘manifesto’. Three decades later, it is interesting to consider which of the planks in the platform are now fully accepted, indeed perhaps taken for granted, and which are not. It is also necessary to take into account three further points which Gault himself made, looking back on his ‘manifesto’ and taking into account what had happened since:

• In addition to his ‘ten commandments’ he should have added an eleventh, the spirit of friendship and cooperation which animated the new chefs.
• He had forgotten to say anything about the need to preserve the achievements of the past and to keep alive traditional country cuisines. Alas, much had been lost, irrevocably.
• ‘This nouvelle cuisine, wishing to be without roots and open to every influence, was the band wagon on to which jumped, along with the authentic cooks, a crowd of mountebanks, antiquarians, society women, fantasists and tricksters who did not give the developing movement a good reputation. Furthermore fashions, mannerisms and trickery attached themselves to this new culinary philosophy: minuscule portions; systematic under-cooking; abuses of techniques in themselves interesting (mousses, turned vegetables, coulis); inopportune marriages of sugar, salt and exotic spices; excessive homage paid to the decoration of dishes and “painting on the plate”; and ridiculous or dishonest names of dishes.’

Contributors

Reading