So, what has Europe ever done for us? Apart from…

The points in the Independent are mainly irrelevant to the existence of the EU – Cannot the Europhile press and Europhiles generally come up with something other than this same old lies and propaganda that has been challenged so many times in the past that it has become boring to even produce the evidence to debunk the rubbish? Or perhaps they belive that if they just carry on repeating the same nonsense people will eventually start to belive it and begin to love the EU.

I have just noticed a couple that are totally stupid

47. British restaurants now much more cosmopolitan because of European influences
49. Europe has revolutionised British attitudes to food and cooking

I happen to know a little bit about food and its development it is worth exploring this just for fun.

Well yes Europe has revolutionised British attitudes to food and cooking but in the last 50 years it has done nothing culturally on that front because the greatest influence has come form the far-east China, India, Pakistan, the Pacific rim and recently the middle-east.

Europe really did influence our attitudes to food and cooking long before the European project was off the ground. Before the 19th century, great cooking was experienced almost exclusively in the private homes of the wealthy. This began to change after the French Revolution, when the fall of the aristocracy left a number of talented chefs unemployed.

Many of these chefs later opened some of the Continent’s first fine restaurants, winning devoted followers among the French bourgeois, who were eager to display their elevated tastes in food and fashion. This phenomenon produced some of the first "star" chefs, many of whom published compendiums of their repertoires and opinions. Their cookbooks not only served as self-advertisement, but also enabled the newly rich to reproduce the professional dining experience in their own private homes.

Marie Antonin Carême (1783-1833), Thanks to Carême’s books, French chefs working at home and abroad had a basic, shared vocabulary to refer to in their cooking. L’Art de la Cuisine Français au Dix-Neuvième Siècle is an exhaustive survey of classic French cooking. Published near the end of Carême’s career as a master pâtissier and chef, the three-volume work was completed after his death by his friend and colleague Armand Plumerey.

Some of these French chefs went to work for ambitious restaurateurs in major cities like New York and London, or cities newly flush with wealth, such as post-Gold Rush San Francisco. The influence of these chefs slowly permeated British and American culture, exposing growing numbers to French cooking techniques and dining manners.

Most important, these 19th century French chefs helped to codify what came to be known as French classical cooking, their books defining by systematic repetition the basic French recipes and technique. Sauces such as vélouté, hollandaise, and mayonnaise, for example, were refined and regularized during this period.

Later another French Chef Georges-Auguste Escoffier continues the work and started the moves towards lighter foods, then in the 1960/70 it was yet another French Chef Fernand Point who took Escoffier`s work forward further lightened the classic cuisine at his restaurant La Pyramide, thus setting the scene for a group of other young chefs to produce a new style of cooking, where the sauces and dishes were lightened still further, this style became to be known as cuisine nouvelle.
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Escoffier also developed the modern brigade system in London’s Savoy Hotel. It was based on the organisation of a French military brigade and the Chefs uniform also developed from the uniform of the French army hence the double front.

For maximum efficiency, Escoffier organized the kitchen into a strict hierarchy of authority, responsibility, and function. In the brigade, widely adopted by fine-dining establishments, the general is the executive chef, or chef de cuisine, assisted by a sous chef. Subordinate are the chefs de partie, each in charge of a production station and assisted by demi-chefs and commis (apprentices). The number of station chefs can get exhaustive, including the saucier (sauces), poissionier (fish), grillardin (grilled items), fritteurier (fried items), rotissier (roasts), garde manger (cold food), patissier (pastries), and tournant (roundsman, station relief).
Today, most restaurants use some simplified variation of Escoffier’s kitchen brigade.

It was yet another French Chef Fernand Point who took Escoffier`s work forward further lightened the classic cuisine at his restaurant La Pyramide,  His influence, was enormous, his students carried his philosophy to all of French cuisine. thus setting the scene to produce a new style of cooking, where the sauces and dishes were lightened still further, this style became to be known as cuisine nouvelle. Fernand Point Died in 1955.

I know that the Europhile likes to claim the EU is responsible for everything wonderful and likes to claim that nothing would have happened without its breathtaking influence but in the those great Europeans who really did revolutionise British attitudes to food and cooking have long departed this earth leaving it much more culturally enriched which is something the EU could never do in a million years.

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