The wearing of hats was also to create a sense of unity in the kitchen. Today, the chef hat has been standardised and ranges between inches tall and has a generic number of pleats. The original toque chef hat style today is usually reserved for very experienced chefs and are most often seen in fine dining settings. Modern chefs still wear hats, in part for cleanliness, to keep hair out of food and to help absorb sweat.
Chefs these days often prefer more modern hats like our Aussie Chef box hats, baseball caps or disposable hats. Myth or Fact? Subscribe Email address:. Follow us facebook twitter youtube. Search Search for: Search. Ever Wonder Why?
Search for: Search. Just as police officers, firefighters, doctors, and other professionals sport iconic uniforms that immediately identify them, so, too, do members of the food service industry. And in the same manner that garments and accoutrements worn by these other professionals serve specific purposes, so, too, do the components of the chef's uniform. Easily the most identifiable component is the chef's headgear. In fact, he's probably whirling all the more vigorously because so many modern, high visibility chefs don't wear anything on their heads at all.
When, for instance, have you ever tuned into the Food Network and seen Bobby, Guy, or Emeril wearing a toque? But, hold that thought for a minute.
There are as many stories about the ancestry of the toque as there are people to tell them, but here are a few of the more common ones. One tale includes 6 th century chefs among the ranks of freethinking artists and artisans being persecuted — and often executed — for their radical beliefs. In order to escape the ax, these revolutionary cooks took refuge in the monasteries of the Orthodox Church and disguised themselves, adopting the same tall headgear as that worn by the priests.
But in order not to appear too blasphemous, they wore gray or white hats instead of the ordained black. Now, the logic of hiding oneself away while at the same time doing something to obviously distinguish oneself escapes me, but that's the way the story goes. It seems that the hapless chef began losing his hair and he had the misfortune to lose some of it in a dish served to the king.
The enraged monarch supposedly had the Royal Chef's male pattern baldness cured at the neck by the Royal Executioner. Henry hence decreed that the next head of the royal kitchen should have a hat on it, and so the tradition began. If you know much about the hygiene of the time, about Henry's personal grooming habits, and about the quality of food that came out of his kitchens, you would seriously doubt that something like a hair in his soup would cause him much consternation.
But that's the way the story goes. A more lofty legend goes back to ancient Assyria, where chefs were highly regarded members of the royal court and were entitled to wear their own version of a crown, albeit one made of fabric rather than precious metal. By the 18 th and 19 th centuries, members of the French culinary disciplines were becoming more aware of cleanliness and basic hygiene and so decreed that head coverings should be worn in the kitchens.
Since white was generally considered to symbolize purity and cleanliness, it was chosen as the appropriate color for the culinary artist. It was a symbol of kitchen rank and status: the taller the toque, the higher the stature of the chef wearing it.
Today's pleated toques are usually about eight inches in height. Higher-flown chefs can choose a ten or twelve inch variety.
This may also have been a reflection of social fashion outside the kitchen, where the height of a man's top hat was commensurate with his social standing. The same standard applies to the pleats in a toque; the greater the number of pleats, the higher the ranking of the chef. According to tradition, a real chef's toque must have a hundred pleats, symbolizing that a real chef can cook an egg a hundred different ways.
I haven't ever actually stopped to count the pleats on any I've acquired or worn, but I have seen paper toques proudly advertised with forty-eight pleats. The sartorial stratification continues in the style of the toque. There are tall round toques, flat floppy toques, pointy toques, and toques that look like mushrooms. Theoretically, each style represents a different type of chef. Practically speaking, however, many modern chefs eschew the traditional toque and opt for a more functional head covering.
Now, your mama always told you that you lose more heat through the top of your head than anywhere else on your body, right? So from a functional point of view, the tall, stiff, traditional toque acts like a kind of chimney, funneling that heat up and away from the wearer's head — a good thing in a hot kitchen. Even so, many kitchen pros now wear flat caps, sometimes made of disposable materials.
Or they wear bandanas, berets, or ball caps. Some just slap on a hairnet of some sort. Although doing so does not necessarily make them look like chefs, it does satisfy the aforementioned health officials, most of whom share the same negative reaction to hair in food as that mythically ascribed to Henry VIII.
Perhaps not as extreme. Still holding that thought from a few paragraphs ago? That's why it sometimes bugs me to see TV chefs running around bareheaded. When it comes to the functionality of a chef hat, chefs look for factors like being lightweight, easy to wear, and easily washable. Oftentimes, a kitchen staff will opt to wear matching hats for a sense of camaraderie and teamwork in the kitchen.
For instance, the Chef Instructors at Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts wear the classic chef uniform, complete with a traditional white toque, while teaching students about this history. Did You Know? Get the workbook! Program of Interest.
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