Why do chefs wear tall hats? Carême, a piece of cardboard and the 100 ways to cook an egg
The tall white chef’s hat is called a toque, and its height has little to do with keeping hair out of the soup. A low cap does that just as well. The usual account is that the toque got tall because a celebrated French chef wanted to be seen, and later a kitchen system turned height into rank.
Before the tall hat
For most of history a cook was recognised by his apron, not his hat. The Culinary Institute of America, in its history of the chef’s uniform, points out that in 15th-century illustrations of the Canterbury Tales the cook is shown in an apron, and quotes a text from 1568 describing a man in “a white knitt cappe. I judged him a baker by trade.” Soft caps and berets were the working headgear of kitchens for centuries.
The more dramatic origin stories are just that. Culinary schools repeat tales of Assyrian kings giving their trusted cooks cloth crowns, of Greek cooks hiding among monks in tall stovepipe hats, and of Henry VIII beheading a cook for leaving a hair in his food. The Escoffier culinary school’s own history of the hat marks the Henry VIII story with the word “supposedly”, and none of these tales comes with a document behind it.
Carême and the cardboard
The toque as we know it is usually credited to Marie-Antoine Carême, one of the most celebrated cooks of the early 19th century. The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica lists him as chef at different times to Tsar Alexander I, the French statesman Talleyrand, George IV of England and Baron Rothschild, and as author of Le Maître d’hôtel français. A cook with clients like that dressed for the part.
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According to the Culinary Institute of America, Carême “tucked a piece of round cardboard inside a flattened, starched toque”, which let the hat stand up straight and tall. The Escoffier school adds that he reportedly wore one about 18 inches high. It also says he was inspired by the smart look of military uniforms while working for the British, a detail that fits his years in George IV’s service, although it gives the year as 1821 without a source.
The writer Alfred Suzanne dated the change more precisely. Writing in 1894, he said the toque had replaced the bonnet or beret in kitchens 54 years earlier, which puts the switch at about 1840.
Height as rank
Once the toque was tall, it could be made taller or shorter, and that is what turned it into a badge. The Culinary Institute of America credits Auguste Escoffier, who organised professional kitchens into the brigade system, with using different toque heights to mark rank. The head chef wore the tallest hat, and the hats got shorter down the line. A glance across a crowded kitchen told you who gave the orders.
Why white, and the 100 pleats
The colour has the plainest explanation: white shows every stain, so a clean white hat is visible proof of a clean cook. The CIA records that a chef named Boucher insisted everyone in his kitchen wear a white toque for sanitary reasons.
The pleats have the best-known legend. A traditional toque has about 100 folds, said to stand for the hundred ways a good chef can cook an egg. The Culinary Institute of America notes that the story has been attributed at various times to ancient Persia, Rome and France, which is usually a sign that nobody knows where it began. It is still a good story. The practical case for the tall hat is less romantic. Culinary schools point out that the column of air inside it keeps a cook’s head a little cooler over a hot stove.