History of Nouvelle Cuisine
What is NOUVELLE CUISINE??
a
modern style of French cooking that emphasizes the use of the finest and
freshest ingredients simply and imaginatively prepared, often with fresh herbs,
the artful arrangement and presentation of food, and the use of reduced stocks
in place of flour-thickened sauces.
Nouvelle
Cuisine The expression "nouvelle cuisine" has been used several times
in the course of the history of cooking, particularly in France in the middle
of the eighteenth century. It was introduced to subordinate the practice of
cooking to principles of chemistry that were to be established by Lavoisier
later on. People had mixed feelings about it: for instance, Voltaire wrote
"I must say that my stomach does not at all agree with the 'nouvelle
cuisine.'"
Origin
Today
nouvelle cuisine refers to a trend of opinion that appeared in France in the
1960s. At the time, it caught on rapidly and was a great international success.
Yet, as it got tangled up in its contradiction, it stopped being fashionable,
and nowadays it has a negative connotation. In spite of that, it was an
innovative and quite important movement, which brought about a revolution
within the "grande cuisine" whose lessons are still present in the
grand chefs' minds.
Among
the precursors of the movement were Fernand Point, Alex Humbert (who first made
the petits legumes ), André Guillot, and Jean Delaveyne, former chef at
Buckingham Palace; they were those who questioned Auguste Escoffier's heavy
heritage. They rejected the overused fonds de sauce as well as the
so-called Allemande (German) sauce, a light one, and Espagnole sauce (Spanish),
a dark one, gravies that were the basis of all kinds of rich and little refined
dishes whose taste was almost always the same, since the products lost their
specificity when cooked. They made their sauces less rich, highlighting the
freshness and the quality of the products, thus paving the way for a
revolutionary generation who was to shake up the tradition.
One has
to bear in mind that at the beginning, the chefs of the nouvelle cuisine were
not outsiders to French cooking. On the contrary, they were the brilliant
pupils of the greatest traditional chefs. The revolution in cooking came from
within the Michelin-starred restaurants. Paul Bocuse, Alain Senderens, Jean and
Pierre Troigros, Alain Chapel, Michel Guerard, when very young, all started
studying the traditional way, a painstaking, difficult time of apprenticeship,
moving from one place to another almost in the same way as the students who
graduate from different universities. An important characteristic of the
movement was friendship. Although French chefs are usually individualistic,
even selfish, these young chefs were always in contact, telling one another of
their discoveries, discussing their problems, and so on. Today, they still do
it, although they themselves have become the symbols of a new tradition.
Characteristics
of Nouvelle Cuisine
Nouvelle
cuisine has several characteristics. Most important were the quality and the
freshness of the products chefs used. They went shopping to the market every
morning and looked for the best products, and never used any preservatives,
deep-frozen food, or any product that was not absolutely fresh. They did not
offer a menu card with a long list of dishes that never changed, the reason
being that such a long list required having a great quantity of products
available. As a result the leftovers would necessarily lose their freshness and
thus could not be used. Instead, they offered a reduced number of recipes that
kept changing every day according to their market shopping. At the time, in Paris,
this was made easier thanks to Les Halles, a huge market right in the heart of
the city, within walking distance of every restaurant. Because they were
looking for quality, the chefs became more and more attracted by unusual,
exotic products. Foreign influences prevailed, particularly those of North
Africa (Morocco, especially), Italy, China, and Japan. In 1960 Shizuo Tsujui
opened the first school of French cuisine in Japan, which multiplied the
cultural exchanges between the two countries. So much so that in 2000, Alain
Senderens remarked "the nouvelle cuisine is now Japanese."
In the
new style of preparations, there were no fonds de saucesused in the
dishes any more. Sometimes, short juices, quickly made, were turned into a
small quantity of sauce, which was to be served on fresh, only lightly cooked
products.
The
spices banished from the French cuisine since the seventeenth century were now
back in use; contrary to the Middle Ages, they were no longer used in large
quantities, but in small touches and only to rouse the flavors that would blend
with those of the products. The effect they aimed at was to enhance the
quintessence of the product, that is to say that sauces or spices were only
used to bring out the product's taste and qualities, not as a substitute for
them.
The
approach was similar to that of previous cuisine movements. The new chefs stressed
the importance of nutrition and its consequence for people's health. They
wanted to change the image of an obese gastronome into that of the slim, smart
dilettante so much in vogue in the magazines of the 1960s. For their female
clients, always anxious to watch their figures, the chefs felt urged to
contrive new recipes that could be delightful without being rich. Indeed, it is
significant to note that the first book written in 1976 by Michel Guerard was La
cuisine minceur.
As a
result, less food was served; of course what each dish lacked in quantity had
to be replaced by better quality and a better esthetic presentation. It is true
that the grande cuisine had always included an element of display and ceremony:
As the dishes were prepared for all the guests present, the dinners were
organized as a ceremony for the whole party, to such an extent that, at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, Antonin Carême defined the patisserie(pastry
cooking) as a branch of architecture. Instead, the new chefs replaced the
presentation of entire dishes with that of individual plates; what was
considered beautiful and attractive was not the whole chicken, the whole pate
en croute,or baba, but the layout of the food on each plate that the
guest was about to eat. To serve the dishes, the chefs no longer enacted their
ritual at the pedestal tables on which they used to carve the meat or flambé
the basses. They brought each guest their own plates, with the food previously
prepared. Sometimes, it was hidden under shining dish covers the waiter would
take off as a surprise, once the plate was set in front of the guest. Then the
guests would appraise the esthetic aspect of the layout and enjoy the
all-pervading fragrances of the food.
The
chefs were always in search of new products and new aromas. Similarly they also
kept looking for new techniques. As they were the best technicians of their
generation, they began using all the new tools available: cutter blenders, food
processors, nonstick materials, and so forth.
The relationship
between food and fire had become a central problem, so they started
experimenting with new methods such as cooking under vacuum, microwave ovens,
and steam ovens. Yet this did not mean that they ignored some of the old
methods; in fact quite a number of them were brought back into fashion, for
instance, the cuisson en croute de sel and steam cooking. Moreover the
fact that they had learned how to control the use of refrigeration enabled them
to use new ways of preparing the food or carving the meats, which otherwise
would not have been possible
A
Cultural Phenomenon
First
and foremost, the nouvelle cuisine was a genuine revolution accomplished by the
chefs themselves, more precisely the best of them. However, the newspapers and
other media played an important part in the overall outcome. Raymond Oliver was
the first to appear on a weekly TV show, which lasted for fourteen years and
made him a star. Other chefs also became stars, which was seldom the case
before that.
The
expression "nouvelle cuisine" owes a great part of its success to two
journalists, Henri Gault and Christian Millau (who for the first time in 1969
published the Nouveau Guide, followed in 1971 by the Guide Gault et
Millau, a monthly magazine which soon became popular and had a great
influence on the chefs as well as on their clients). Besides, at the time, the
expression itself fitted nicely into a whole set of new trends of thought, of
things or events which had appeared after World War II, for instance la
nouvelle critique litteraire (the new literacy criticism), le nouveau
roman (the new novel, with Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, and Nobel
Prize winner Claude Simon), and la nouvelle vague (the new wave) in the
cinema with Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Claude
Chabrol.
Traditional
guides, the Michelin in particular, had already acknowledged the worthy
chefs by giving them one to three stars: for example, Paul Bocuse was awarded
three stars in 1965, Haberlin, in 1967, and Troigros and Barrier, in 1968. The
new Gault et Millau Guide quite cleverly introduced a new distinction
between the nouvelle cuisine chefs and the traditional ones. Later on the
distinction was noted by a printed symbol, the former having a red one and the
latter a black one.
Heyday
and Demise
In
1973, in number fifty-four of their guide, Gaut and Millau published the ten
commandants of nouvelle cuisine, among which they advocated that one should
reduce cooking time, use best-quality products and products fresh from the
market, offer a shorter menu, limit the use of modern technical tools, while
keeping open to new developments, do away with marinades and game hanging, cook
sauces that were less rich, respect dietary rules, use a simple estheticism,
and be creative. To these commandments, they added another one: friendship.
From
then on, nouvelle cuisine became quite fashionable. It was everywhere, on
television, on the radio, in the newspapers; people talked about it and held
controversial discussions. The chefs who had become real stars were rich enough
to purchase their own restaurants and become their own masters. The economic
boom of the 1960s and the 1970s boosted the careers of the chefs, providing
them with much money, which of course incited other less-gifted chefs to follow
suit.
Unfortunately
for several of them, what ought to have been simple, original, or healthy food
became approximate, ridiculous, meager food. The journalists who had praised
the best chefs, now did the same with drudges, and gave the seal of quality to
poor, ridiculous, and botched dishes. As a result, the movement was quite
discredited though the greatest chefs were never criticized by those who blamed
their imitators.
By the
1980s, nouvelle cuisine had lost its appeal and today it is no longer used; it
even has turned into a pejorative connotation.
The
concepts used by the chefs who inspired them predominate within today's grande
cuisine, not only in France, but the world over.
Products
must be selected with a ruthless eye on quality, wines and dishes matched with
flair, cooking times short and accurate, and sauces lighter. Judicious blending
of foreign trends and customs is a major element. An attractive plate is
served, the food displayed simply and esthetically. An open mindedness and a
concern for nutrition and diet are the essential ingredients binding the whole
approach. Today, there cannot be a grand chef in the world who has not in some
way or other been influenced by the nouvelle cuisine ethos.
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