Cheffes de Cuisine: Women and Work in the Professional French Kitchen by Rachel E. Black

Author:Rachel E. Black
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: EDUCATION / Special Education / General
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2021-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

Learning a Craft

The life of the apprenti is far from the glamor of the kitchen one sees portrayed in magazines, films, and cooking shows. Initially, apprentices are not allowed to actually touch food.2 They spend their time cleaning, running errands, and doing dirty work (cleaning up messes, eviscerating poultry, washing down the walk-in cooler, etc.) that no one higher up the brigade hierarchy wants to do. Young chefs I interviewed told me about how at this stage they felt they were learning by osmosis, taking in the sensory experience of the kitchen, observing when they could, and asking questions. Slowly, apprentices are given tasks preparing food. I often found myself chopping what felt like bales of parsley or peeling and mincing cases of onions with my eyes burning and tears streaming down my cheeks. Other kitchen staff noticed my sad state and consistently taunted me: “Don’t cry! One day Chef will let you cook something.” It would be a long time before I would be called to the piano to even observe.

From prep work and mise en place, the next progression of the kitchen apprentice is usually preparing cold food. This station is called garde-manger. A number of women told me that this is where they got stuck. One woman I interviewed, who attended the Institut Paul Bocuse and then apprenticed and worked at many fine-dining establishments, explained: “Women are seen as creative and precise. This is often why we are told to work garde-manger or pastry. At many restaurants, I had to really insist on working at a lot of different stations.” Depending on the size of the kitchen, an apprentice would then move on from prep and cold food to other stations such as saucier (sautéing foods and creating sauces), poissonnier (the cooking of fish), or grillardin (grill or hotline). Not all kitchens have all of these stations, but there is generally a division of labor based on what type of ingredients (different meats or vegetables) and whether the dishes are hot or cold. The hierarchy, which is also gendered, tends to put hot meat dishes and men at the top, and cold, vegetable-based dishes and women at the bottom. These divisions also follow popular perceptions of gendered food preferences and eating: women eat salads and men prefer meat (Counihan 1999, 10). This gendered division of labor that begins in apprenticeship can limit the apprentice’s skills and their ability to have upward mobility within the brigade system.

During this circuit of experiences through the different stations in the kitchen, the apprentice gains specialized knowledge. Some people choose to focus on a specific area, and others gain mastery at many stations. This second group is generally the people who go on to be sous-chef or chef de cuisine, overseeing the entire kitchen. It is through stages during culinary school, longer periods of apprenticeship during or just after school, and the first experiences of being commis that cooks really start to learn their craft.

As many of the boursières noted, the stage is when culinary students learn about the pace and demands of kitchen work.

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