Haute cuisine
From Free net encyclopedia
Haute cuisine (literally "high cooking" in French) is a cookery style that originated in Napoleonic France under the influence of the chef Antoine Carême and was elaborated by Auguste Escoffier. It was a refinement of traditional French cookery techniques and also included a radical reorganization of the way kitchens were run. Chefs were organized in a series of brigades, with under-chefs, in charge of sauces, fish, and so forth. Haute cuisine is still at the heart of much French and modern European restaurant cookery, which has evolved and diversified, largely under the influence of international cooking styles and changing dietary preferences.
Styles
Haute cuisine is characterized by complex dishes requiring elaborate preparation. Sauces were used extensively. Portions were often small to allow for multiple courses. Characteristically, the food was quite rich, incorporating a generous amount of butter and heavy cream. Desserts were particularly elaborate and rich.
Compared to nouvelle cuisine, which was developed in France in the 1970s in part as an alternative to haute cuisine, haute cuisine placed less emphasis on exotic and seasonal ingredients, less emphasis on presentation and visual appeal, less use of herbs and spices, and a much greater reliance on sauces and traditional dishes.
Nouvelle cuisine has now largely been abandoned and the trend in European restaurants tends towards a sort of fusion of the two schools, along with a return to pre-industrial European cuisine (cuisine du terroir), relying less on heavy sauces or fancy presentation, and focusing on the use of high quality fresh ingredients and authentic traditional preparations.
Nowadays, haute cuisine implies less a particular style of cooking than having reached the pinnacle of the culinary world through critical acclamation. Restaurants that have three Michelin stars, for example, are generally deemed to be the highest cuisine.