Keywords

Introduction

Entries in encyclopaedias and articles in handbooks usually summarise the established information in a particular field. With regard to the historical development of the organisation of labour in commercial kitchens, this poses a problem because the digested knowledge is not the fruit of scientific research but of the endless repetition of assertions made in a booklet published in 1955 by two disciples of the renowned chef de cuisine Auguste Escoffier (1846–1935). Not Auguste Escoffier himself, but the cooks Eugène Herbodeau (1888–1981) and Paul Thalamas (1871–1961) claimed that the French chef applied Taylorism before industrialists even studied Frederick Taylor’s theories (Herbodeau & Thalamas, 1955). Allegedly, Escoffier revolutionised kitchen work by rationalising it and by dividing kitchen workers into specialist groups or parties.

Contributions discussing or mentioning the work organisation in commercial kitchens uncritically reproduced this claim (Mennell, 1996; James 2002; Ganter, 2004; Civitello, 2007; Rambourg, 2013; Van den Eeckhout, 2013; Kelly, 2022; Lortie et al., 2023; “Brigade de cuisine”, 2023). Unless one explores a more diversified range of source material, one is bound to repeat these assertions endlessly. By going beyond Herbodeau’s and Thalamas’ booklet, one can establish that a hierarchically structured brigade of specialised kitchen workers is not a phenomenon invented by Escoffier round the turn of the century. What discussions of work organisation in commercial kitchens also neglect to tell is the fact that the kitchen type described by Herbodeau and Thalamas is a very specific one. Escoffier and other renowned chefs worked in the kitchens of international grand hotels, where the French brigade system, known at least since the 1860s, was applied. That system was adopted in high-end establishments and venues catering for an international clientele. However, numerous large restaurants appealing to a more local clientele organised their work differently. Typically, they employed more women cooks, for which there was no room in the hierarchically structured brigades. This article focuses on restaurants in Western Europe between the end of the eighteenth century and the eve of the Second World War.

The History of Work Organisation in Large Kitchens

That scholars, discussing both historical and contemporary restaurant kitchens, refer to a French chef de cuisine is no coincidence. Since the end of the seventeenth century, French cuisine has set the norm, beginning with culinary practices in aristocratic households and courts. Employing a French cook had a status-enhancing effect (Ketcham Wheaton, 1996; Mars, 2013; Bellamy, 2017). But also in less prestigious circles, such as Early Modern inns, the qualification “à la française” had a positive connotation (Hell, 2022). With the advent of the restaurant since the 1760s, the French culinary influence was consolidated. The French restaurant was presented as a new formula of eating out which allowed patrons to dine at any hour of the day, choosing from a written or printed menu or carte, which listed individual dishes with their price (Spang, 2000). Not only the restaurant formula was exported, but prestigious commercial kitchens around the globe also recruited French chefs de cuisine and subordinate cooks. From the second half of the nineteenth century until the First World War, employing French kitchen personnel suggested status and quality (Haley, 2011). However, as a result of the upheaval of war, restrictive immigration policies and economic hardship, the demand for French cooks shrank drastically in the interwar period (Van den Eeckhout, 2017).

When in 1890 Auguste Escoffier was appointed to direct the kitchens of the languishing Savoy hotel in London, he was one of the numerous French cooks to find employment outside France. Herbodeau and Thalamas suggest he innovated the work organisation in commercial kitchens while working in the Savoy. Allegedly, he divided cooks “into specialist groups or parties to prepare sauces, fish, entremets, soups, roasts, pastry, ices and sweets. This division already existed up to a certain point, but Escoffier defined it more closely […]” (Herbodeau & Thalamas, 1955).

However, the French chef de cuisine and cookbook writer Jules Gouffé (1807–1877) already mentioned that type of kitchen organisation in 1867, not in relation to commercial kitchens but with regard to the private kitchens of the elites in the Ancien Régime. Gouffé acknowledged that even the rich could no longer afford such a large and specialised kitchen staff. More important, however, is that he referred to the different parties with their specialisation (soups, roasts, sauces, entremets, pastry), while he also pointed to the hierarchical structure of the different groups. Each specialised partie consisted of a chef, aides (subordinate cooks) and apprentices (Gouffé, 1867). Clearly, that type of organisation was older than Escoffier’s entrance in the kitchens of grand hotels. Quite remarkably, Jules Gouffé made no mention of kitchens in restaurants and hotels. But until the 1880s, renowned chefs and cookbook authors had little appreciation for commercial kitchens. The private kitchens of the elites, where cooks had comparatively larger budgets at their disposal and where there was less time pressure, were regarded as the places par excellence for the preparation of haute cuisine (Chatillon-Plessis, 1885; Gilbert, 1885). But even in these grand mansions, there was a tendency to replace tenured chefs de partie with so-called extras, who were only engaged for a banquet or other festivities (Brisse, 1873).

Unfortunately, Jules Gouffé did not elaborate on the organisation of private kitchens in the Ancien Régime. The European courts had a large kitchen staff, of course. In the fifteenth century, the kitchens of the court of Burgundy, for instance, were characterised by a hierarchical structure, specialisation and division of labour (Morel, 2017). Specialisation seemed less pronounced in the eighteenth-century kitchens of the French court (Newton, 2006). In the Early Modern period, French cookbook authors often worked for aristocratic households with an extensive kitchen staff (Davis, 2013). But concrete details regarding their composition are hard to find. The available information concerns households of noble women who were separated from their husbands. Theirs is not a complete household, which can explain why they only employed a maître d’hôtel, a chef de cuisine, a roast cook and a pastry cook (Chatenet-Calyste, 2010). From some casual remarks of Marie-Antoine Carême (1784–1833), who cooked for the rich and famous in the beginning of the nineteenth century, we learn that rich households might also employ a sauce cook or saucier (Carême, 1815).

Until the 1860s the organisation of commercial kitchens is largely unknown territory. What inns and caterers served to their clientele in the Early Modern period has been discussed, but overall the way backstage activities were organised remains a mystery (Pennell, 2000; Brown, 2007; Carlin, 2008; Kümin 2012; Hell & Meijer, 2019). This also applies to the culinary institution developed in eighteenth-century Paris: the restaurant. Its advent has been studied, but this does not include backstage operations (Spang, 2000). A lot of information concerning early restaurants comes from the diaries, letters and travel accounts of restaurant patrons. But the fact that many kitchens were situated in the basement prevented visitors to catch a glimpse of cooks at work.

A full-blown confrontation with backstage activities was thus rather exceptional, but when it did occur, the scene was observed with disgust. Patrons did not like the sight and smell of raw meat and nor did they appreciate the noise of cooks shouting at one another during the rush hour (Schulz, 1791). The German writer Friedrich Schulz, who described both the backstage of Beauvilliers and La Barrière, two well-known Parisian restaurants, noticed eight cooks at work in the latter. Each cook had his specialisation. He also noted that he could start eating 10 minutes after ordering, an experience shared by other visitors (Schulz, 1791; Blagdon, 1803; Arndt, 1804; von Kotzebue, 1805). Christian von Bertram saw ten cooks toiling in a non-specified restaurant that catered for 300 patrons each day, while in the iconic establishment Les Frères provençaux, Victor de Jouy watched 20 cooks trying to keep up with the orders that came pouring in (von Bertram, 1787; de Jouy, 1813). From these rare observations we learn that time pressure in commercial kitchens was not an invention of industrialised society and neither was catering for a large number of people. Moreover, cooks specialised in particular aspects of their trade, while the speed at which the food was served suggests that a lot of preparatory work had been done prior to the rush hour.

Despite the fact that observers noticed that round 1800 restaurant cooks had already a degree of specialisation, the latter were not designated with a specific title, such as sauce cook or roast cook. But in the 1860s, Pierre Vinçard, who wrote a book about food workers in Paris, distinguished different categories of restaurant cooks: sauciers, entremettiers, rôtisseurs and garde manger (Vinçard, 1863). Table 1 mentions their tasks as they were described later in the century. In his book on Parisian restaurants, the writer and son of a Parisian restaurateur Eugène Chavette mentioned a rôtisseur, entremettier, saucier, garde manger and légumier or vegetable cook, while he also pointed to the hierarchical structure of the parties with their chefs and aides (Chavette, 1867). In the 1870s even newspaper articles distinguished the different specialist cooks and their tasks (“Le chien du commissaire”, 1878; “Cuisines et cuisiniers”, 1878). The 1893 inquiry into working hours and wages that investigated a wide range of Parisian restaurants had no trouble designating the specialist cooks and their assignments: saucier, rôtisseur, entremettier, garde manger and potager or soup cook. It also mentioned the hierarchical structure of the parties with their chefs, aides and apprentices and reveals the existence of the tournant, a cook who replaced absent colleagues (Du Maroussem, 1893).

Table 1 Tasks of the chefs de partie according to Gustave Garlin (1887)
Full size table

The claim of Herbodeau and Thalamas that these specialisations “already existed up to a certain point” is thus an understatement. Specialisation in commercial kitchens was observed since the early restaurants, and at least since the 1860s the specialist restaurant cooks were designated with specific titles, while their tasks were specified. But Herbodeau and Thalamas claim that Escoffier defined more closely the specialisation of the different parties. However, chef de cuisine and cookbook author Gustave Garlin (1838–1923) already described the tasks assigned to the chefs of the different parties at length in 1887. Garlin provides the most thorough discussion of the specialisation of the different parties in the nineteenth century.

The existence of specialist cooks is one thing, how work was organised on a daily basis something else. Herbodeau and Thalamas explain how Escoffier managed to maximise efficiency by a combination of division of labour and the synchronisation of specialist cooks. Quite remarkably, however, their description does not match with what Escoffier himself wrote about his efforts to improve efficiency in the kitchen of grand hotels. In his Guide culinaire (1903), Escoffier devotes only 1 of 800 pages to the organisation of work in restaurant kitchens. He assumed that restaurant patrons would order their meal beforehand. On the basis of that information, the secretary of the kitchen made several lists: a general list of the meals that were ordered, as well as separate lists for the different chefs de partie with the dishes to which each of them had to contribute. The garde manger received the general list with the names of the persons who ordered a meal, the number of participants, the time when the meal was scheduled and the dishes that composed the meal. The chefs de parties received the lists with their particular assignments. Besides his limited explanation, Escoffier added a few menus and an example of the lists handed to the garde manger and the sauce cook. On that page the latter found the number of participants of a specific meal, the time at which it would take place and the dishes to which he had to contribute.

How Escoffier’s rather static view of the division of labour in restaurant kitchens enabled cooks of the different parties to synchronise their efforts during rush hour is not clear at all. However, Herbodeau and Thalamas fill in the blanks. With the example of a particular dish, oeufs sur le plat Meyerbeer, they explain how the synchronisation of the different parties helped to save time. Oeufs sur le plat Meyerbeer consists of fried eggs, with grilled kidneys and a Périgueux sauce (sauce of white wine with truffle). If one cook prepared all the ingredients of the dish, it took him about 15 minutes. But if the entremettier fried the eggs, the rôtisseur grilled the kidneys, and the saucier prepared the Périgueux sauce, the dish was ready in only a few minutes, Herbodeau and Thalamas argue.

However, that way of proceeding was not new. In fact, Gaston Jollivet, a French journalist and writer, described that practice in 1887 (Jollivet, 1887). He argued that in high-end restaurants the division of labour ensured the quality of what was served. When you eat a chicken à la Provençale in a renowned restaurant, at least four cooks have been dealing with it. Jollivet asserted: one cook fries the chicken, the second one prepares the onions and the artichokes, the third one the sauce and the fourth one presents it on a plate. It is the simultaneity and the speed at which cooks proceed that make a dish so exquisite, he added. What Jollivet describes is a perfect match with the practices Herbodeau and Thalamas reported in 1955. At least since the 1880s, a variant of this division of labour was used for plating at large banquets. The Swiss-French cook Joseph Favre entitled it as “chain work”, which evokes a factory rather than a luxurious banquet (Favre, 1891).

One cannot but conclude that Auguste Escoffier did not revolutionise the organisation of kitchen work. The specialisation of the kitchen staff, the division of labour and the synchronisation of the efforts of the different parties were reported before he started working in the kitchens of the London Savoy. That important textbooks regarding the management of large hotel kitchens did not mention Escoffier’s alleged contribution is indicative of the fact that where work organisation was concerned, there were no remarkable achievements to report (Anderegg, 1915; Leospo, 1931). Apart from that, the voluminous cookbook published by a German cooks organisation round 1910 did not mention Escoffier either, although it devoted quite a few pages to the division of labour in restaurant kitchens (Internationaler Verband der Köche, 1910). That same organisation distributed the German edition of Escoffier’s Guide culinaire and was a genuine admirer of the French chef. Undoubtedly, it would have reported innovations regarding the division of labour authored by Escoffier. The latter was praised for his simplification of plating methods, sacrificing labour-intensive and superfluous decorations, but that aspect of kitchen work has no bearing on the division of labour as such (“Die Reform in die Kochkunst”, 1904). In the obituary, published in episodes, that Paul Thalamas wrote when Escoffier passed away in 1935, he did not mention the chef’s achievements in that respect (Thalamas, 1935–1936). Twenty years later, however, he and his co-author launched the idea that Escoffier was an early adopter of Frederick Taylor’s approach.

Beyond International Hotel and Restaurant Kitchens

Both in France and abroad, the vast kitchens of prestigious international hotels and restaurants adopted the system of the French kitchen brigades, with specialised parties and male cooks only. The lingua franca of international kitchens was French and so was the language for designating the specialist cooks. When the cooks’ journal Kochkunst published contributions of their members regarding the division of labour in international hotel kitchens, the German cooks used the French terminology while discussing at length the assignments of the different chefs de parties (“Die Arbeitseinteilung in einer grossen Hotelküche”, 1903).

However, there were international kitchens, such as in Vienna, where the principle of specialised parties was adopted but without the French terminology and with some local adjustments. The parties were called Plätze. There was a Chefplatz (the chef de cuisine had his own small team, which was unusual), a Suppenplatz (soups), a Bratenplatz (roasts), a Melhspeisenplatz (pastries), a Salatplatz (salads), a Gemüseplatz (vegetables) and a Saucenplatz (sauces). Restaurants catering to a rich, international clientele employed male cooks, but in quite a few other kitchens female cooks headed the small specialist teams (Internationaler Verband der Köche, 1910; “Die Not der Luxusküchen”, 1932). Of course, not every Viennese restaurant kitchen harboured all these different Plätze, but the larger establishments often worked with four or five specialist teams while also employing a Fleischhauer (preparing the meats) and a Zuckerbäcker (pastry cook).

The manual Grosses Restaurations-Kochbuch illustrates, however, that there was a world beyond international hospitality, where kitchens were not organised on the basis of the French brigade system (Internationaler Verband der Köche, 1910). The chapter on work organisation in German kitchens was largely based on the contributions of cooks who were members of the organisation. They described the division of work and the composition of the kitchen team of the hotel or restaurant that employed them. No mention here of chefs de partie or titles that indicated the specialisation of the cook. Specialisation was also less pronounced than in international hotel kitchens, while in the cooking department more women were employed. Female cooks were often responsible for the cold dishes (in that case they were called kalte Mamsell), vegetable dishes and the pantry, and they also cooked staff meals.

In the new edition of this cookbook published round 1931, the pages on labour division in the kitchen were no longer written by ordinary members but by an international German cook and one of the founding members of the international cooks’ organisation. The authors followed the French brigade system, with the French terminology, and as a result women seemed to disappear from the German restaurant kitchens or at least from the pages of the manual (Banzer & Friebel, 1931).

With the national socialist party in power since 1933, the culinary world had to do its share in the “germanisation” of civil society. Reservations were formulated regarding the supremacy of the international (French) cuisine. German regional cuisine had to be promoted, and the realm of the lingua franca of gastronomy had to end (Landry, 2021). The (German) irritation towards the French language as the universal tongue for communicating about culinary matters was not new, however. As early as 1790, the German writer and pedagogue Joachim Heinrich Campe proposed a German alternative for the French word restaurateur (Campe, 1790). One should call that institution Wiederhersteller. Periodically, attempts were made to replace the French words for dishes, kitchen practices and cooks’ titles with German equivalents but without success (Lunnebach, 1871; “Amusante Verdeutschungskünste”, 1903). In the 1930s and the early 1940s, the efforts became more systematic (“Nicht mehr chef de rang”, 1940).

Catering for the Masses

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, new restaurant formulas developed, providing decent food at very reasonable prices in neat and clean venues. Chains of lunchrooms and teashops exploited economies of scale, eliminated intermediaries and bought their food and drink directly from producers, or they had their own production facilities. Vertical integration and (semi-)industrial ways of producing bread, pastries, pies, sausages, canned food, sparkling water, lemonade, etc., enabled these chains of eateries to offer an increasingly diversified choice of light refreshments and snacks. The oldest in this genre was Bouillon Duval, established in Paris in the 1850s (“Les Etablissements Duval”, 1882). From the second half of the nineteenth century, the greater London (and sometimes provincial cities as well) welcomed branches of the Aerated Bread Company, Lyons, Pearce & Plenty, The British Tea Table Company, Lockhart’s, Slaters, Ye Mecca’s, Express Dairy Company and Appenrodt (Bird, 2000; Burnett, 2004; Gutzke, 2019). The Aschinger lunchroom empire began with a Bierquelle in Berlin in the 1890s (Allen, 2002; Glaser, 2004). The Wök in Vienna was created in the aftermath of the First World War (Sprenger-Seyffarth, 2023), while the Dutch company Heck’s Lunchroom started its activities in the 1920s (Mallander, 2005). The devise of all these entrepreneurs in hospitality was small profits, massive sales. When some of these actors created more upmarket, somewhat luxurious venues, where one could savour full menus with live music in the background, they still had the ambition “to cater for the millions”. In Aschinger’s Rheingold restaurant or the Popular Café and Corner House of Lyons, prices remained very reasonable, because here too the devise applied: small profits, massive sales.

How these chains of eateries operated behind the scenes is seldom discussed, however. Occasionally, newspaper articles were dedicated to their enormous central kitchens, but journalists were more interested in the impressive quantities of food passing through the kitchen than in the way the production process was organised. The division of labour between the individual branches and the central kitchens of the chains is usually far from clear. That bread, pastries, sausages, canned food and sparkling water were produced for all the branches of the chain goes without saying. But where were the snacks and hot meals cooked? It would seem that most London chains opted for a central kitchen, in which the hot meals were cooked that would be served the next day. In Pearce & Plenty, however, the food was prepared very early in the day and transported to the branches to be served that same day (Gutzke, 2019). At Slaters each branch had its own kitchen, so we learn from the autobiography of a cook who praised the well-equipped and airy kitchen of the branch that employed him (Dingle, 1955). The food of the Lyons teashops was baked and cooked at their central premises. The cooking in individual branches was limited to making toast, tea and coffee and frying eggs (Bird, 2000). The upmarket venues of the Lyons chain had their own kitchen, however. In the London Popular Cafe that Lyons opened in 1904, every floor had its own kitchen, with each a chef de cuisine and kitchen brigade (“Organising a restaurant”, 1904). On the five floors of the Lyons Corner house in Coventry Street, there was a restaurant on each floor and as many kitchens with each their own brigade. Confectionary, sausages and pastries were also made on the premises (Palleta, 1932). At Bouillon Duval the cooking was probably done in each branch separately. Twice a day the restaurants were supplied with ready-to-use meat (“Les Etablissements Duval”, 1882). The Aschinger concern in Berlin had a central kitchen, which was accessible for paying visitors interested in the kitchen machinery that had been mostly conceived and developed by the two brothers who had established the firm. Horse carriages, later on lorries, brought the food to the branches (“Ververschingslokalen te Berlijn”, 1897).

How the kitchen staff of chain restaurants and their upmarket venues were composed is hardly documented. In the upmarket venues, the “classic” hierarchically structured kitchen brigades undoubtedly predominated. In the factory-like production units of Aschinger and Lyons, probably as much bakers and butchers were employed as cooks. Photographs of the shop floor in Aschinger’s central kitchen show male cooks and butchers and women working in the fish department, peeling potatoes and making pancakes (Glaser, 2004).

Conclusion

Restaurant patrons had no patience. Neither visitors of low-priced lunchrooms nor patrons of prestigious restaurants were prepared to wait too long for their food. “Too long” meant that it took the kitchen more than 20 minutes to either prepare the dish or to finalise the cooking process (Friebel, 1929). It is no coincidence that in Leospo’s manual, most preparations mentioned in a table with their approximate cooking time were served 20 minutes after ordering or even sooner (Leospo, 1931). That also applies to the list of cooking times published in the journal Die Küche (“Die internationale Karte des Restaurants und Hotels”, 1932). The different sorts of meat needed more time (mostly 25–40 min), but this is negligible compared to the 1–4 h cooking time about hundred years earlier (Bernardi, 1845). However, in the latter case the pieces of meat were much larger and would have to pass through the hands of the carver before being served. It goes without saying that such dishes were ordered a day or so in advance. But apart from the meats, most menu items round the middle of the nineteenth century also took 20 minutes or less to prepare.

The visitors of the early restaurants noticed and appreciated a swift service, it was argued, and this attitude has not changed since then. Even the patrons of high-end restaurants were not prepared to wait too long for their exquisite meals to be served. That was the reason why Auguste Escoffier and his colleagues were interested in the division of labour in restaurant kitchens and why Escoffier, who was an expert in the confection of wax flowers, became a proponent of eliminating superfluous decorations and pleaded for a simplification of plating methods (Escoffier, 1912). The division of labour in restaurant kitchens contributed to the promptness of the service but also to the quality of what was served. During their apprenticeship, cooks were expected to pass through the different parties, so that they would become all-round cooks. But they would also specialise in a specific partie. Their specialisation benefited both quality and speed.