From open hearth to modern kitchen — the history of the chef's trade

Making food is as old as mankind itself, but the cooking trade — food preparation as a learned craft you are trained in and can make a living from — is much younger. In most homes throughout history, food was made to survive, not to impress. The professional kitchen emerged where someone had the means to pay others to make the food: at royal courts, on estates, in monasteries and later in inns and restaurants. The history of the trade is therefore also a history of power, wealth and eventually of an entire industry.

§The open hearth and the medieval kitchen

In the Middle Ages, all cooking happened over an open fire. On the large estates and castles, the kitchen was a smoky, hot room with a fireplace where pots hung from chains and meat was roasted on spits. The kitchen boy turning the spit and the cook controlling the fire worked in a heat and smoke we can barely imagine today. A skilled cook at a princely court had great prestige because a well-prepared and lavish meal was a visible sign of the household's wealth and power.

Knowledge was passed from master to apprentice — rarely in writing. The oldest Danish food texts we know go back to the Middle Ages: among the oldest preserved are copies linked to the physician Henrik Harpestreng's herbal from the 1200s, handed down in Danish manuscripts from around 1300. Recipes were often short reminders without quantities and times — for the cook already knew the trade and learned the rest with his hands.

§Cookbooks and the emergence of cooking art

With the invention of the printing press written food knowledge slowly began to spread. In a Danish context Anna Wecker's cookbook from 1616 is considered an early milestone. In the 17th and 18th centuries the French court in particular developed refined cooking that set the standard throughout Europe. Food was no longer just made to satisfy but to please — sauces refinement and presentation became an art form and the French terminology we still use in the kitchen comes from there.

§The restaurant and the great masters

The modern restaurant was born in Paris in the late 1700s. The word 'restaurant' comes from the Latin restaurare, meaning 'to restore', and originally meant a strengthening meat broth — a 'restorative' — which you could buy and eat on the spot. The long-told story of a soup seller named Boulanger around 1765 is considered a legend today without reliable sources, but the idea itself — a place where you could come in, choose from a menu and get your own dish served at your own table — spread quickly and became the seed of the entire hospitality trade.

In the 1800s Marie-Antoine Carême (1784-1833) gathered French grand cuisine in works that made cooking into a system. Later Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935) simplified and organized it all into something a busy restaurant kitchen could actually use. His great contribution was the brigade system — the clear division of roles with executive chef sous chef and chefs for each station inspired by his time in the military. Before that kitchens were often chaotic; with the brigade came order responsibility and uniform quality and the structure is still used in kitchens around the world.

§The stove and cooling changed everything

Where the cook previously battled with open fire, there was order in the 1800s. The wood stove spread during the century and had by the early 1900s almost completely replaced the open fireplace. Gas stoves gained ground in cities as gas works and gas pipes became widespread from the late 1800s, and in the second half of the 1900s the electric stove was almost dominant in homes. With the stove, the cook could control heat precisely — a prerequisite for the modern, controlled kitchen.

Just as important was cooling. Early refrigerators from the 1800s were large, clunky and used toxic refrigerants, but in the early 1900s refrigeration technology was made usable and commercial. Refrigerators and freezers liberated the kitchen from only being able to use what was in season or could be salted and smoked. It made it possible to store raw materials safely — and thus laid the foundation for the temperature control and cold chain that is the core of all food safety today.

§From training to education

PLACEHOLDER_22

§The modern gastronomy trade

Today the chef has become a gastronomer and the profession encompasses everything from busy à la carte kitchens to canteens hotels and the new Nordic kitchen that has put Denmark on the world map. Hygiene self-control and allergen labelling have become legal requirements raw materials are sourced both locally and globally and sustainability and less food waste matter more and more. But the core is the same as the medieval hearth: transforming good ingredients into food other people are happy to eat.

“Good cooking is the foundation for happiness.”

— Auguste Escoffier (attributed)