In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

fou r Theorizing the Kitchen Cooks must not consider the use of books beneath them. Menon, Nouveau traité de la cuisine (1739) From the seventeenth through the early eighteenth centuries, the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française defined la cuisine mainly as the“location of the house where meats are prepared and cooked,”in other words, as“kitchen.”Under this primary definition the 1694 and 1716 editions of the dictionary included the phrase faire la cuisine, which it explained as“to prepare [food] to eat.”In the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the dictionary’s definition of la cuisine began to shift in an unexpected direction, with the 1740 text declaring, “Also signifies the art of preparing meats and of cooking.” This revision was significant for two reasons. First, la cuisine itself now directly signified cooking without any qualification. It was no longer necessary for la cuisine to be “done” or “made” (fait) to be considered cooking, which indicates that cuisine was no longer simply one act among many but a distinct process in its own right. Second, by labeling la cuisine an art, the dictionary signaled that cooking involved some degree of order, since according to it, arts required both “rules” and “method.” The examples provided under this secondary definition illustrate the profound change in la cuisine’s meaning: “He learns cooking. He knows cooking well.”Cooking had gone from something one did to something one knew. What had transpired in the decades before 1740 for cooking to stray from the purely mechanical to the intellectual? The transformation of la cuisine from place and action to knowledge resulted from a passionate campaign conducted by cooks to theorize their work. From the 1730s on, cooks claimed to be practicing an entirely new style of cooking, which they dubbed la cuisine moderne or la nouvelle cuisine (“modern” or “new cuisine”). They made an exceedingly wide range of claims regarding the purported benefits of the new style. It required “less equipment, less trouble, and does not cost as much,” the 1750 Dictionnaire des alimens (Dictionary of Food) claimed. “It is simpler, cleaner, more delicate, 96   The Expert Cook in Enlightenment France more scientific, we say, and even more varied.”1 Choosing from this broad array of attributes, some cooks focused on la cuisine moderne’s science by invoking the language of chemistry, the latest and most fashionable branch of scientific knowledge. Others argued for a style of cooking that was at the same time more economical and healthful. Some claimed to be able to refine the human spirit through the precise modification of diet. Whatever the approach, all shared the goal of the complete reconfiguration of cooking as an occupation that involved not just the hands but the mind.2 One thing la cuisine moderne did not do was introduce a radically different set of new recipes. As the meticulous work of food historians has shown, the cookbooks produced around la cuisine moderne borrowed heavily—to put it charitably —from the seventeenth-century predecessors they claimed to reject, and they would continue to appropriate recipes from the competitors that emerged during the eighteenth century.3 Yet by focusing on food, rather than the people behind it,historians have overlooked la cuisine moderne’s most important contribution : the promise of an entirely new kind of cook, situated at the vanguard of French culture, who had seized control over the production of taste from elites.4 Instead of receiving taste from above, cooks began to claim to create taste from below.They relied on the medium of print both to codify and to transmit the new theory that enabled this transformation. No longer strictly mechanical, cooking would henceforth involve the application of cooks’ own theoretical knowledge to produce proper meals. Cooks fully recognized the social implications of their claims, and they campaigned for cooking to assume its rightful place in France’s cultural patrimony along with the arts and sciences. Thus this “entirely new language ” of la nouvelle cuisine, in the words of Mercier, offered nothing less than an inversion of cultural authority, with cooks asserting control over the origins of taste. Given the dire conditions of the kitchen and the constraints of domestic service , it might at first seem highly unlikely that cooks would undertake such an ambitious task. Claims to produce cleaner and more healthful food ran counter to the widespread perception of the kitchen (not to mention the person of the cook) as a source of infection.Likewise,domestic...

Share