Nouvelle cuisine - Misplaced Pages

Approach to food cooking and presentation

Nouvelle cuisine (French pronunciation: [nuvɛl kɥizin] ; lit. 'new cuisine') is an approach to cooking and food presentation in French cuisine. In contrast to cuisine classique, an older form of haute cuisine, nouvelle cuisine is characterized by lighter, more delicate dishes and an increased emphasis on presentation. It was popularized in the 1960s by the food critic Henri Gault, who coined the phrase, and his colleagues André Gayot and Christian Millau in a new restaurant guide, the Gault Millau, or Le Nouveau Guide.

History

The term nouvelle cuisine has been used several times in the history of French cuisine, to mark a clean break with the past.

In the 1730s and 1740s, several French writers emphasized their break with tradition, calling their cooking "modern" or "new". Vincent La Chapelle published his Cuisinier moderne in 1733–1735. The first volumes of Menon's Nouveau traité de la cuisine was published in 1739. And it was in 1742 that Menon introduced the term nouvelle cuisine as the title of the third volume of his Nouveau traité. François Marin worked in the same tradition.

In the 1880s and 1890s, the cooking of Georges Auguste Escoffier was sometimes described with the term.

The modern usage is variously attributed to authors Henri Gault, Christian Millau, and André Gayot, who used nouvelle cuisine to describe the cooking of Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, Jean and Pierre Troisgros, Michel Guérard, Roger Vergé, and Raymond Oliver, many of whom were once students of Fernand Point. Paul Bocuse claimed that Gault first used the term to describe food prepared by Bocuse and other top chefs for the maiden flight of the Concorde airliner in 1969.

The style Gault and Millau wrote about was a reaction to the French cuisine classique placed into "orthodoxy" by Escoffier. Calling for greater simplicity and elegance in creating dishes, nouvelle cuisine is not cuisine minceur ("thin cooking"), which was created by Michel Guérard as spa food. It has been speculated that the outbreak of World War II was a significant contributor to nouvelle cuisine's creation—the short supply of animal protein during the German occupation made it a natural development.

The "formula"

Gault and Millau discovered the "formula" contained in ten characteristics of this new style of cooking. The ten characteristics identified were:

A rejection of excessive complication in cooking.
Cooking times for most fish, seafood, game birds, veal, green vegetables, and pâtés were greatly reduced in an attempt to preserve their natural flavours. Steaming was an important trend from this characteristic.
The cuisine was made with the freshest possible ingredients.
Large menus were abandoned in favour of shorter menus.
Strong marinades for meat and game ceased to be used.
Heavy sauces such as espagnole and béchamel were replaced by seasonings with fresh herbs, high-quality butter, lemon juice, and vinegar.
Regional dishes replaced cuisine classique as a source of inspiration.
New techniques were embraced and modern equipment was often used; Bocuse even used microwave ovens.
The chefs paid close attention to the dietary needs of their guests through their dishes.
The chefs were extremely inventive and created new combinations and pairings.

Abandonment

There is a standing debate as to whether nouvelle cuisine has been abandoned. Much of what it stood for—particularly its preference for lightly presented, fresh flavours—has been assimilated into mainstream restaurant cooking. By the mid-1980s, some food writers stated that the style of cuisine had reached exhaustion and many chefs began returning to the cuisine classique style of cooking, although much of the lighter presentations and new techniques remained.

References

Citations

Philip Hyman and Mary Hyman, "Printing the Kitchen: French Cookbooks, 1480–1800", in Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari, eds., Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present, 1999, ISBN 0231111541 (translation of Histoire de l'alimentation, 1996), p. 398
Mennell, p. 163
André Gayot, "Of Stars and Tripes: The True Story of Nouvelle Cuisine"
"Stormy weather for Bahama Billy's". Monterey County Herald. January 10, 2008.
Grimes, William (20 January 2018). "Paul Bocuse, Celebrated French Chef, Dies at 91". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 January 2018.
^ Mennell, 163–164.
France on a Plate BBC Four TV programme 1 December 2008
Hewitt, 109–110.
Gault&Millau, history of the company Archived 2015-04-19 at the Wayback Machine, see paragraph "Les 10 commandements de la nouvelle cuisine"

Sources

Hewitt, Nicholas. The Cambridge Companion to Modern French Culture. Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-521-79465-7
Mennel, Stephan. All Manners of Food: eating and taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the present. 2nd ed., Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0-252-06490-6
Patrick Rambourg, Histoire de la cuisine et de la gastronomie françaises, Paris, Ed. Perrin (coll. tempus n° 359), 2010, 381 pages. ISBN 978-2-262-03318-7

v t e Cuisines
Continental	African North West list Americas Caribbean North South list Asian Caucasian Central Levantine South list European Balkan Central Eastern list Oceanian Intercontinental Global Latin American Mediterranean Middle Eastern
National and regional	Afghan Albanian Algerian American Californian Floribbean Hawaiian Lowcountry (South Carolina) Midwestern US New English New Mexican Pacific Northwestern Puerto Rican Southern US Southwestern US Texan Angolan Argentine Armenian Australian Austrian Azerbaijani Bahraini Bangladeshi Barbadian Belarusian Belgian Belizean Beninese Bhutanese Bolivian Bosnian-Herzegovinian Botswana Brazilian British Anguillia Channel Islands English Gibraltarian Northern Irish Saint Helena Scottish Welsh Bruneian Bulgarian Burkinabé Burmese Burundian Cambodian Cameroonian Canadian Acadian Québécois Central African Republic Chadian Chilean Chinese Beijing Cantonese Hong Kong Macanese Shandong Sichuan Tibetan Xinjiang Colombian Congolese Croatian Cuban Cypriot Czech Danish Faroese Greenlandic Djiboutian Dominican Dominican Republic Dutch East Timorese Ecuadorian Egyptian Emirati Equatorial Guinean Eritrean Estonian Ethiopian Fijian Filipino Kapampangan Finnish French Corsican La Réunion French Guianan Occitan Gabonese Gambian Georgian German Ghanaian Greek Cretan Epirotic Greek Macedonian Heptanesean Guatemalan Guinea-Bissauan Guinean Haitian Honduran Hungarian Icelandic Indian Andhra Arunachali Assamese Bengali Bihari Chhattisgarhi Goan Gujarati Haryanvi Kashmiri Jharkhandi Karnataka Kerala Maharashtrian Manipuri Meghalayan Mizo Naga Odia Punjabi Rajasthani Sikkimese Sindhi Tamil Telangana Tripuri Uttar Pradesh Uttarakhandi Indonesian Acehnese Balinese Banjar Batak Betawi Gorontalese Indo Javanese Madurese Makassar Minahasan Minangkabau Palembangese Sundanese Iranian Iraqi Irish Israeli Italian Abruzzese Apulian Ligurian Lombard Lucanian Neapolitan Piedmontese Roman Sardinian Sicilian Tuscan Venetian Ivorian Jamaican Japanese Okinawan Jordanian Kazakh Kenyan Korean North Korean South Korean Kosovan Kuwaiti Kyrgyz Lao Latvian Lebanese Lesotho Liberian Libyan Liechtensteiner Lithuanian Luxembourgish Macedonian Malagasy Malawian Malaysian Sabahan Sarawakian Maldivian Malian Maltese Marshallese Mauritanian Mauritian Mexican Moldovan Monégasque Mongolian Montenegrin Moroccan Mozambican Namibian Nauruan Nepalese New Zealand Nicaraguan Niger Nigerian Niuean Norwegian Omani Pakistani Palestinian Panamanian Papua New Guinean Paraguayan Peruvian Polish Portuguese Qatari Romanian Russian Bashkir Chechen Circassian Cossack Komi Mordovian Sakha Tatar Udmurt Yamal Rwandan Saint Lucian Salvadoran Sammarinese São Tomé and Príncipe Saudi Arabian Senegalese Serbian Seychellois Sierra Leonean Singaporean Slovak Slovenian Somali South African Spanish Andalusian Asturian Balearic Basque Canarian Cantabrian Catalan Extremaduran Galician Manchegan Valencian Sri Lankan Sudanese Swazi Swedish Swiss Syrian Taiwanese Tajik Tanzanian Zanzibari Thai Togolese Tunisian Turkish Turkmen Tuvaluan Trinidadian and Tobagonian Ugandan Ukrainian Uruguayan Uzbek Vanuatuan Venezuelan Vietnamese Western Saharan Yemeni Zambian Zimbabwean
Ethnic	African American Ainu Arab Arab-Indonesian Aromanian Assyrian Balochi Berber Buryat Cajun Chinese American Australian British Cambodian Canadian Filipino Indian Indonesian Malaysian Pakistani Peruvian Crimean Tatar Gagauz Greek-American Hazaragi Hmong Indian English Indonesian Malaysian North Indian South Indian Indigenous American Indigenous Australian Inuit Italian American Jewish American Ashkenazi Bukharan Ethiopian Mizrahi Moroccan Sephardic Syrian Kurdish Livonian Louisiana Creole Malay Ossetian Parsi Pashtun Pennsylvania Dutch Peranakan Pontic Greek Romani Sámi Tejano Transylvanian Saxon Yup'ik
Religious	Buddhist Christian Goan Catholic Mangalorean Catholic Mennonite Hindu Islamic Chinese Ital Jain Kashrut Kosher food Ritual slaughter Sikh
Historical	Ancient Egyptian Ancient Greek Ancient Israelite Ancient Roman Antebellum America Aztec Byzantine Early modern European Historical Argentine Historical Chinese Historical Indian subcontinent Historical Japanese Historical North Indian and Pakistani History of agriculture History of alcoholic drinks History of bread History of seafood History of vegetarianism Hittite Inca Mayan Muisca Mughal Medieval Ottoman Peasant Pre-contact Hawaiian Korean royal court Scottish royal household Soviet Thirteen Colonies
Styles	Classique Fast food Fusion New American Eurasian Haute Molecular gastronomy Note by Note Nouvelle Vegetarian
Lists	List of cuisines List of historical cuisines Lists of foods Prepared
Related	Cookbook Cooking Culinary arts Drink Food history sociology Diet Fat Meal Meal preparation
Category Outline

Category:

French cuisine