This essay has explored some duties in cooking – how those who prepare and serve food do so for different reasons. The professional chef has chosen a life where purpose comes from the creation of great food. He does not have a personal relationship with the diner, so his duty derives from the profession itself – to follow aims that make a chef great and to adhere to the professional ethics of the kitchen – in order to become closer to nature and to art. For the home cook, their duty is to the diner, with whom they have relationships, and to follow intents and create an ethic of the kitchen that brings them closer in a spirit of love and friendship.
Introduction
What I hope to demonstrate in this essay is how the food served in a home and the food served in a restaurant are each prepared by a cook with specific duties, derived from their unique stations, that should aim to meet certain expectations of both the cook and his diners. With each set of duties, the respective kitchens of amateur and professional chefs should abide by certain ethics to achieve the intent of each type of cuisine.
While certainly there are lessons that the home cook can learn from the professional chef, and vice versa, the idea that one type of cook should create food in the style of the other is contrary to the spirit of each unique cuisine. Specifically, there are unique qualities to home and restaurant cuisines because each: is created by cooks with different values; puts different emphasis on an end result; and is produced in environments with different rules. In my essay, I will draw upon personal experience in both home and restaurant kitchens to expand and discuss the following examples.
A restaurant kitchen, and those who produce its food, in the absence of a direct and personal relationship with the diner, have a specific duty to cook “to the food.” This means that they should intend to create food that is artfully made using expert techniques, drawing out optimal flavor, texture, and color, and in which the ingredients often produce complex, original, and stimulating cuisine.
The ethics of the restaurant kitchen both emphasize honoring the abilities of the ingredients to create something greater than when they stand alone and, in order to achieve that emphasis, promoting an exclusive fraternity of the kitchen where the work of the kitchen can only be accomplished by the chefs themselves. Perhaps an appropriate analogy is that of the professional musician: each chef, like career musicians, must execute his individual effort impeccably, but just as the musician must be in sync with every other player to give proper treatment to a great symphony, so too must the chef work in tandem with the rest of the kitchen to produce a great meal. The home kitchen and the home cook, on the other hand, have a duty to cook for the diner out of love and friendship.
Their relationship is direct, personal, and unmediated – an emotional connection is present. The home cook’s intent values a fostering of comfort, providing abundance, and creating a dining atmosphere of conviviality. The ethics of the home kitchen place emphasis on honoring the diners first (and the food itself second) and accomplishing this by promoting an inclusive fraternity of the kitchen where cook and diner interact either at the stove or à table. Here an appropriate analogy might be a church choir, where although good singing is certainly desired, the primary goal is not perfectly hitting each note as paid singers might desire, but rather to enhance a worship service and promote fellowship.
A Short History of Home and Restaurant Cuisine
The preparation and consumption of food is, by all accounts, the human activity that most frequently and fully marries utility and artistry. Food is necessary to sustain and energize us. All people eat (and this is almost always done several times a day) and most are frequently, if not daily, involved in the making of a meal, either by simply gathering different foodstuffs together on a plate, or by combining them as ingredients of a recipe. Unless faced with starvation, we generally will not eat something that does not look, smell, or taste good. That is where art and craft come into play; one uses his or her ability to create a dish that is pleasing to the senses, and when fully realized, make something that becomes valued for more than simply its sustenance. Food is the basic component of cuisine, the creation of a style of cooking, and the related study of cuisine, gastronomy – the part of society that Brillat-Savarin said;
"is the intelligent knowledge of whatever concerns man’s nourishment. Its purpose is to watch over his conversation by suggesting the best possible sustenance for him. It arrives at this goal by directing, according to certain principles, all men who hunt, supply, or prepare whatever can be made into food. Thus it is Gastronomy, to tell the truth, which motivates the farmers, vineyardists, fishermen, hunters, and the great family of cooks, no matter under what names or qualifications they may disguise their part in the preparation of foods. Gastronomy is a part of . . . natural history . . . physics . . . chemistry . . . cookery . . . business . . . political economy . . . It rules over our whole life . . . It concerns also every state of society, for just as it directs the banquets of assembled kings, it dictates the number of minutes needed to make a perfectly boiled egg. The subject matter of gastronomy is whatever can be eaten; its direct end is the conservation of individuals; and its means of execution are the culture which produces, the commerce which exchanges, the industry which prepares, and the experience which invents mean to dispose of everything to the best advantage.1"The home is the primary place where food has been prepared and consumed since the beginning of civilization. Unless you were wealthy or of high status, you raised or bought your food to prepare it yourself or with your family. If you were of high status, then you perhaps had servants who performed a similar function; those of particularly elite status had the privilege of eating well-crafted dishes prepared by skilled cooks in elegant settings. Unless you were traveling, you generally did not “eat out” – the only places which served meals outside of a home would have been an inn or tavern where meals were generally reserved for lodgers. But something happened in the eighteenth century that changed the course of cuisine: the modern restaurant came into being, the profession of chef was created, and the foundations for haute cuisine were set. Haute cuisine is a style of food preparation and service that puts a premium on high-quality ingredients, expert technique, and refined service in an elegant setting.2 Much of this can be attributed to the work of Auguste Escoffier, who, through teaching and writing, trained more chefs in the techniques of haute cuisine than anyone of that time (and perhaps of anyone since).
Escoffier elevated the status of chefs beyond common laborer to that of an artisan. Many servants of French aristocrats (e.g., cooks and valets) lost their jobs in the years during and following the French Revolution and some, seeking gainful employment in a new social climate, gravitated to Escoffier’s kitchens for training. There, they frequently spent many years under the Master’s tutelage. When ready (and, more likely than not, when Escoffier himself felt they were prepared), these newly minted chefs graduated to helm a kitchen of their own. It was at this time that the production and consumption of food became divided. While eating for pleasure is almost as old as cooking meat over an open flame, the possibility that one could eat something that in addition to being delicious was prepared with an artistic touch, would be only afforded to the very wealthy or elite prior to the invention of the restaurant. Along with the restaurant came the profession of chef and new ways of thinking about food and cuisine. Professional chefs developed their own set of techniques and methodologies, and the practitioners of haute cuisine in particular spent time thinking about how human reaction to cuisine could be raised beyond that of comfort and simple enjoyment.
Ever since, we need not have households that support servants and lavish dining rooms and the finest china to enjoy an exceptional meal – we can simply go to a local restaurant and purchase that experience. The haute cuisine experience in Europe remained confined to the cities for most of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. A few chefs saw opportunity in the United States, moved there, and opened restaurants of their own. Opportunities were greatest in major urban centers, specifically New York, where the wealthy and well-traveled gravitated, and these French-trained chefs established it as the center of fine dining in the US, with restaurants like La Caravelle, La Côte Basque, Lutèce, and Le Cirque.
But the techniques and recipes of the chefs in such kitchens remained part of a secret language known only to those willing to devote their lives to the culinary arts. In the 1960s, however, home cooking in the United States was revolutionized by Julia Child and her co-authors, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, when Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published.3 The book provided a methodology and technical repertoire for home cooks to bring haute cuisine to the home. Recipes for fish preparation, baking, and pastry demystified what was previously known only to those trained in restaurant kitchens or culinary school. Mastering the Art of French Cooking sparked a gradual revolution: the home cook could now create meals with the complexity and artistry of the haute cuisine chef.
Since the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the evolution of cookbooks has been drastic. Julia Child, while trained in a culinary school, was not a seasoned professional cook but was able to distill the techniques and recipes of French high cooking into an approachable book for home cooks. Gradually, cookbooks came into the purview of professional cooks, and became a way to introduce their personality and the signature style of their own cuisines to the home cook. Particularly since the late 1980s, the most popular cookbooks have been authored by professional chefs such as Alice Waters, Thomas Keller, Wolfgang Puck, Paul Prudhomme, Charlie Trotter, and Mario Batalli.
Home cooks who buy the books frequently seek wisdom from the professional chef, hoping to tap into his or her experience and artistry, and perhaps even hoping to replicate the cuisine that emerges from his or her restaurant, thus capturing for a moment the feeling of what it means to be a world-class chef.
This desire of home cooks – a wish to distill the essence of great chefs into easier recipes with equally stunning results – however well intentioned is usually misguided. Restaurant cuisine and home cuisine, in their most fully realized forms (that is, high-level cooking), are distinct styles of food preparation and presentation often at odds with one another. While certainly both types of cuisine have shared values, they can differ significantly from one to another in the aims of the cooks, the ethics of the kitchen, and the aesthetics of the cuisine itself.
Assumptions, Limitations, and Definitions
Before I delve too deeply into comparing the foods produced in home and restaurant kitchens, allow me to set some assumptions and limitations for this essay. First, when I use the word “cooking” I mean to include all forms of food preparation, regardless of whether or not the food is actually prepared by combining various ingredients and, possibly by heating, creating a new dish. Second, I will be exclusively discussing kitchens in the United States. Third, because of my own background and experience, I am less qualified to speak of the aesthetics and ethics of Eastern kitchens, specifically Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Thai, and other major continental Asian and South Seas cuisines. The cuisines of these cultures might have very different purposes for different types of cooks and diners, but I do not have the experience to properly reflect upon them. Fourth, I will only be referring to restaurant and home cooking in the present day. Also, a note about aesthetics: when creating a food, dish, or meal, a cook desires something that stimulates the senses in the manner desired regardless of experience or employ. The aesthetics of cuisine, however, go beyond the plate itself. An aware cook knows that the setting of the food and the way in which it is served often significantly contributes to the overall dining experience. When speaking of culinary aesthetics, therefore, we have to consider elements beyond the taste, texture, and design of a dish: how it is served, how it interacts with the other dishes during a meal, and how it fits with the overall dining environment. Additionally, I would like to take a moment to clarify some terms.
Intent: The intent of cuisine depends largely on the goals of the cook and how those goals fit into his or her role as amateur or professional. The cook comes into a kitchen with a given set of cultural and personal experiences that inform his or her cuisine. Generally, he or she shapes the intent depending upon the diners for whom the food will be prepared – is the diner a family member, a friend, or a paying customer? Second, the cook takes stock of the reasons for which she is cooking, considering what sorts of food are appropriate for the time of day or occasion. Third, a cook accounts for the setting in which the food will be eaten. Is it a restaurant with a formal dining room, or a home where the food will be eaten informally? These factors jointly shape a cook’s intent.
Ethics of the kitchen: This essay is not about the ethics of eating – what and why we put something in a pot, on a plate, or into our mouths. What I mean by the ethics of the kitchen is simply the set of acceptable and desired standards according to which a kitchen operates.
Finally, before discussing the intent and ethics of restaurant and home cuisine, I feel I need to establish what exactly restaurant and home cuisine are at their most fully realized. Restaurant critics make a living by judging the quality of a dining experience, keeping in mind concepts such as the specific intermingling of flavors, the presentation of the dish, the ambience of the dining room, and the élan of the wait staff. In much the same way, I believe the best way to judge the quality of a dining experience is to examine your own expectations as a diner. Is the experience below, meeting, or exceeding what I had envisioned it to be?
If I am in someone’s home, or even my own, I ask whether the meal has satisfied its purpose, be it to provide a tasty, simple lunch or a more elaborate and rich dinner for friends and relatives during a holiday celebration. These are the questions that need to be asked before anyone can judge the merits of cuisine. In many cases, however, the diner’s expectations need to be tempered against unreasonableness by adopting an understanding of process – a way of thinking whereby one believes that the process of achieving, or journeying towards, a goal is as valuable as the goal itself. This attitude is exemplified in the traditions of Taoist or Roman Catholic teaching. Grant Achatz, a leader in the so-called “molecular gastronomy” movement, has said that once he has perfected a dish in the kitchen of his Chicago restaurant, Alinea, he retires it and moves onto another challenge.4 We can assume, therefore, that almost every time a dish is offered to a diner at Alinea, it is not up to the chef’s expectation. Yet, by most accounts, Alinea is one of the most exciting and perfected dining experiences in the US. Most seasoned diners of outstanding restaurant cuisine would likely be very impressed by their meal. So sometimes, if diners are expecting perfection from a restaurant, perhaps it is best if they moderate the standards and expectation a chef has for his cuisine with what the diners expect of the chef. Ultimately, fully realized restaurant cuisine is born when the chef uses all the tools at his disposal to perfect flavors, textures, and colors, creating something that will delight, satisfy, or challenge diners’ expectations.
My conception of fully realized restaurant cuisine, however, is most likely be found in a restaurant that most would consider as ‘fine dining,’ where highly trained chefs create food in a restaurant that puts a premium on service and quality. Most of this sort of food is being created in or near major US cities, where dining, without factoring in the cost of drinks, tax, and tip, can run between $100 and $300 a person.
What I envision as fully realized home cuisine, however, is a bit more difficult to capture in a simple description because the circumstances in which food is prepared in a home vary more than those in a restaurant. In a restaurant, expectations are fairly consistent – you know that you would not be served a burger and fries at an Italian restaurant, just as you would not expect to be served Eggs Benedict at a pizza shop. So, for sake of consistency, let us confine a fully realized home cuisine experience to times when cooking is done for an occasion. That occasion might be as simple as trying out a new Kitchen aid mixer, or having a friend over for dinner, or cooking Christmas dinner for ten. By applying this standard, we can define fully realized home cuisine as when the cook has applied some amount of thought and planning into the meal and has expended a reasonable amount of effort to prepare a good meal.
Duty and Intent
Before exploring the intent of home and restaurant cuisine, we should ask if there are any common intents between them. An argument might be made for nourishment; because all food is seemingly meant to provide the eater with sustenance, all cooks must be interested in producing nourishing food. Twenty years ago, I would have agreed that this might be a common intent. Today, I am less certain. While no chef worth her salt would want you to leave her restaurant ready to go out and eat another meal, the primary intent of some of the most innovative chefs is not to nourish, given that chefs now create dishes which seemingly disappear in your mouth – so-called “foams,” “airs,” and their variants – without making a discernable dent in your appetite. I believe that cuisine is moving in a direction where nourishment will become less and less an aim of the highest of haute dining.
The basic job of the professional cook, especially the head chef of any kitchen, is to produce food which fits the style set by the restaurant and lives up to a minimum expectation of the diner. Chefs often attend a culinary school, and then spend years training in modern-day apprenticeships, joining a kitchen to hone their skills under a more learned chef. If ambitious, a young chef might aim to ride the coat tails of a star chef known for being on the cutting edge of restaurant cuisine, and whose kitchens serve as a breeding ground for future head chefs with kitchens of their own. If we move beyond nourishment as the intent of cuisine, it becomes more difficult to find shared aims. This is largely because of who is cooking and for whom the cuisine is being cooked. In the case of restaurant cuisine, the chef or the kitchen staff generally cooks for anonymous restaurant diners. Ultimately, these two factors determine intent, for the chef is trained in the culinary arts to raise simple ingredients to a higher level without (in all but a few circumstances) having any meaningful relationship with his or her diners. The chef can only cook to the expectations of the diner and in service of the food itself – his is a duty to the food itself, and through it, a duty to nature and to art.
In Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry Cookbook, the chef/author describes a seminal moment in his tutelage in cooking, taking place before he would journey to France, where his apprenticeship at several world-class Parisian restaurants would set the foundation for the rest of his career. He had already become somewhat of a seasoned kitchen worker, having spent much of his twenties in his mother’s restaurant in Palm Beach, Florida, and in the resort areas of Rhode Island and New York’s Hudson River Valley during the busy summer season. At one such Hudson Valley restaurant, La Rive, he was given latitude in designing a cuisine that focused on local ingredients, including livestock unusual for menus at that time – pigeon, offal of pigs and fowl, and rabbits. It was in the presence of these rabbits that he became aware of how significant cuisine truly is:
"One day, I asked my rabbit purveyor to show me how to kill, skin, and eviscerate a rabbit. I had never done this, and I figured if I was going to cook rabbit, I should know it from its live state through the slaughtering, skinning, and butchering, and then the cooking. The guy showed up with twelve live rabbits. He hit one over the head with a club, knocked it out, slit its throat, pinned it to a board, skinned it – the whole bit. Then he left. I do not know what else I expected, but there I was out in the grass behind the restaurant, just me and eleven cute bunnies, all of which were on the menu that week and had to find their way into a braising pan. I clutched at the first rabbit. I had a hard time killing it. It screamed. Rabbits scream and this one screamed loudly. Then it broke its leg trying to get away. It was terrible. The next ten rabbits did not scream and I was quick with the kill, but that first screaming rabbit not only gave me a lesson in butchering, it also taught me about waste. Because killing those rabbits had been such an awful experience, I would not squander them. I would use all my powers as a chef to ensure that those rabbits were beautiful. It’s very easy to go to a grocery store and buy meat, then accidentally overcook it and throw it away. A cook sautéing a rabbit loin, working the line on a Saturday night, a million pans going, plates going out the door, who took that loin a little too far, does not hesitate, just dumps it in the garbage and fires another. Would that cook, I wonder, have let his attention stray from that loin had he killed the rabbit himself? No. Should a cook squander anything, ever? It was a simple lesson."5Keller goes to the extreme, describing a moment where he wanted to be so in touch with the foodstuffs he used every day that he would even butcher his own meat. He feels beholden to the food; that he has a duty to “ensure those rabbits were beautiful.” I am sure that today Chef Keller does not regularly kill his meat and fish, or go out into the fields and harvest vegetables, but this gave him the insight that preparing food transcends normal labor because there is a weight, a responsibility, that chefs bear to honor the food. Keller seeks greater communion with the food. Through that communion, he seeks a better understanding of our own humanity and our relationship with nature and art.
These sorts of professional cooks – the ones who seek to produce fully realized cuisine – seek to honor their duty to the food with a set of specific intentions. First, they seek to perfect a technique. Most chefs want to be able to make any dish they want. In order to do that, certain cooking techniques need to be practiced and honed, either through repeated practice of a technique or by duplicating a recipe many times over. For example, the great steakhouse is known not only for the highest quality cuts of meat, but also for its chefs’ abilities to duplicate a rare-to-medium-rare steak to taste. Second, chefs seek to create a signature style. To be called great, most chefs know that they need to set themselves apart from others. The most significant way to do that is to create their own style of cooking, one that gets noticed by diners and critics. Third, chefs aim to challenge, dazzle, or surprise a diner’s senses. This may be an offshoot of a chef’s intent to produce innovative food, but many chefs actually want diners to be surprised by what will be put in front of them, realizing that at the right moment, the unfamiliar can delight. Finally, a chef seeks to divine the true flavor of the food. Creating cuisine also means preparing food in such a way that the flavor of any ingredient is full and apparent. This may mean doing very little to an ingredient, or it may require extended, complex cooking methods. A great chef wants each ingredient to be served at the peak of its intended flavor.
Home cooks, I believe, have a very different set of aims; although preparing tasty and aesthetically pleasing food is important, it is secondary to the direct relationship with the diner. Home cooks are not paid for their work; their cooking is not an occupation which affords them days of studying and working in a kitchen. The home cook, in contrast to the restaurant chef, has a special relationship with his or her diners that supersedes a moral or spiritual calling to honor the food. True, creating outstanding food is not exclusive to a restaurant kitchen, but ultimately the reason the home cook creates cuisine is not payment, a sense of responsibility to the food, or the satisfaction that comes with expert craftsmanship. Rather, it is out of love for the diner. Further, the home cook has a very different audience for her food. In almost every case, home cooks know the people for whom they are cooking and hope that the act of cooking will maintain a longstanding relationship (cooking for family) or strengthen a newfound one (cooking to impress an evening’s date). The home cook has a personal relationship with her diners that the professional chef does not generally have with his patrons. There is an affection the home cook has for his or her diners, because of personal history, that with rare exception the professional chef will never have. Think of the last great meal you had in a restaurant and try to recall the feelings that it invokes. The food likely serves as the center of that experience. Contrast that by thinking of the last great meal you had in someone’s home. Now, it is more likely our feelings center on those with whom we enjoyed the meal. The home meal is less about the food/diner interplay and more about a shared experience among diners and between cook and diner. The home cook, while hopefully trying to produce something delicious, cooks directly for the diner in a spirit of love and friendship.
Therefore, the home cook must have the following set of intents. First, the home cook must produce comfort. Home cuisine has the ability to invoke memories, strengthen relationships, and make the diner feel good in a way which restaurant cooking cannot. The concept of ‘home cooking’ fosters love and good will. Second, a home cook intends to produce abundance. Abundance is not the same as gluttony; instead, it is a way of sharing yourself. Restaurants are tempered in the amount and frequency in which they serve their food for cost reasons. The home cook sacrifices time and money in the name of love for the diner. Furthermore, the home cook seeks to foster an atmosphere of conviviality. The professional chef seeks recognition for the food they create; the centerpiece of the meal is the dish itself. The home chef hopes that the food significantly contributes to an atmosphere that promotes joyful interactions among diners.
Ethics of the Kitchen
I have already visited the ideas of duty to food and diner. The ethics of the kitchen reflects these duties depending on the circumstance of place. In the restaurant kitchen, because honoring the food is paramount, the atmosphere the head chef of a kitchen must promote is one where hard work, diligence, and creativity are valued. I will not rehash what others have already said about the pressures, trials, and rigors involved in both training to become and working as a chef.6 Needless to say, there is a certain mentality that most who work in the kitchen of a restaurant either develop or possess prior to joining a kitchen. From my experience, professional cooks tend to be bold, opinionated, and determined in their drive to create great food. These are necessary qualities which create an exclusive fraternity of the kitchen. Chefs must seek to know what good food really is and they must work together to produce good food. This means that those who do not follow the aforementioned tenets will quickly find themselves excluded from the fraternity. Ruhlman relates in The Making of a Chef how important it is that a chef show up each time, every time, and on time when they are supposed to be in the kitchen. This is because not only are the other chefs dependent on them, but they are, in a vital sense, beholden to the food they are to make. On the other hand, the home kitchen is one which fosters an inclusive fraternity. The good home cook seeks to share the kitchen experience by becoming more participatory in the dining experience. The person who dines in the home rarely sits à table waiting to be served. Instead, they join the cook in the kitchen and either help to produce a meal, or simply join him or her in conversation in the spirit of conviviality. The home kitchen is not off-limits – it is not a place where secret wisdom is kept to be unleashed when the plate is put in front of the diner. Instead, it is an inclusive fraternity, where the shared experience of creating cuisine is key to the duty to the diner. Instead of searching for communion with the food, as the professional chef does, the home cook searches for communion with the diner; a communion between individuals rather than a communion with nature and art.
Notes
2 Trubek, A. B. Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.
3 Beck, S., L. Bertholle, and J. Child. Mastering the Art of French Cooking. New York: Knopf, 1961.
4 “America’s Top 50 Restaurants.” Gourmet. October 2006: 131.
5 Keller, T. The French Laundry Cookbook. New York: Artisan, 1999:205.
6 See Ruhlman, M. The Making of a Chef: Mastering the Heat at the Culinary Institute. 1997. New York: Henry Holt, 1997; Ruhlman, M.The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection. New York: Viking Adult, 2000; Buford, B. Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2006.
By Christian J. Krautkramer in the book 'Food & Philosophy - Eat, Think, and Be Merry, Edited by Fritz Allhoff and Dave Monroe. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK, 2007 p. 262-275. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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