The chef's hat or toque is a distinctive article of clothing which immediately identifies the wearer, whether amateur or professional, as a preparer of foods. Like many articles of clothing, it has a long history, riddled with fables.
One story has it that the hat originated in ancient Assyria, when the king's chefs were so renowned that they were entitled to wear a crown of notoriety of their own, albeit in cloth, not precious metal. Another, more popular story says that in the 6th century, famous and learned chefs, fleeing Greece from the invading Turks, would hide out in Orthodox monasteries, where the monks wore tall black hats. The chefs copied that style, but in white, when they regained their freedom.
The reality is much more mundane. In medieval and Renaissance times, chefs wore hats in the smoky, dirty kitchens for two reasons: to keep their hair (and lice?) from falling into their eyes or the food that they were preparing, and to prevent the grease, gunk and soot on the ceiling from falling down in their heads. The shapes of hats varied in size and color at that time- some chefs wore berets, others skullcaps or stocking caps, while still others wore a version of the mortarboard style that we associate with graduation today.
At some point, some chef realized that making the crown of these brimless (that is what toque means, a brimless hat) caps taller helped to move trapped heat (kitchens were notoriously hot, at all times of the year) away from the head and up into the hat, so hats gradually got taller. As kitchens grew larger in the 18th century, it became more important to know at a glance who gave the orders that really counted. That's what the tall toque did- by giving the Head Chef the tallest hat, he could be found easily. A Viennese chef named Antonin Careme set the ultimate standard by propping his cap up with a piece of cardboard, and chefs have followed suit for centuries, though the cardboard has since been replaced by starch.
And, of course, as hygiene improved and people became more concerned with germs, white became the standard color (as in hospitals) for cleanliness, professionalism, and efficiency.
Another probably apocryphal story concerns the pleating in the tall hats. In "A Pageant of Hats, Ancient and Modern," by Ruch Edwards Kilgour (copyright, 1958) wrote: "It was regarded as natural that any chef, worthy of the name, could cook an egg at least one hundred ways. The most-renowned chefs often boasted that they could serve their royal masters a different egg dish every day in the year, some of them so cleverly prepared, that aside from being highly palatable they had flavors as widely different as completely diverse kinds of foods. Today, noted chefs are seldom called upon to prove their prowess in this manner. Nevertheless, they still wear one hundred pleats on their hat, the old-time symbol of their skill in the egg department." Most toques these days sport many fewer than 100 pleats, and the pleats, in reality, are mainly there to help support the fabric in staying up.
Today, chefs are less concerned about their headgear. Kitchens are often air-conditioned, and hats are sometimes not worn at all. Some chefs wear baseball caps. Some chef's hats are now made out of paper and are disposed of at the end of the day. In some grand kitchens or restaurants, the style and shape of the hat denotes what kind of chef you are, whether you make the sauce or soup or specialize in desserts, but there are no set rules.
The next time you see a chef, notice what kind of hat he's wearing. Is it a tall, cylindrical one made out of paper, or a cloth one that resembles a loaf of un-baked bread? Then remember that such a simple article of clothing has such a long and fabulous history!
SOURCES: The LA Times, March 21, 2001, and from various spots on the web, including the Ed Kane at the Las Vegas Register (http://lvrj.com/lvrj_home/1998/Mar-18-Wed-1998/lifestyles/7128827.html), and the folks at The Straight Dope (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_025.html)
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