FACTORALY - E85 CHEFS

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

There are cooks, and there are chefs. This one is about the latter. Those who train under greatness and go on to achieve greatness themselves - even if, at the end of the day, it's only a plate of food. From the first celebrity chef to the buttons on the overalls, this one is for the foodies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Good day Simon. Good day to you Bruce. How are you today? I'm recovering nicely thank you very much. Good. still that's been going on for a long time now, hasn't it? I know. Dear me, dear me. It's a bit like when you watch TV shows, when it seems like the presenter's been pregnant for like four years. Yes, yes. It seems like Bart Simpson has been eight years old

for the last four decades. Hello everyone. Hi there. You all know who we are, but just in case you've forgotten I'm Simon Wells. Yeah, he is Simon Wells. Good. And he's Bruce Fielding. Am I? Yeah, you are. Okay. Last time I checked anyway. Still? Yeah. Okay, cool. We are both professional voiceover artists. We talk for a living and then we come here and we talk

even more just for the fun of it. Well, because we're nerds. Yes, we are. I mean, let's be honest. Proudly. Yes. We love facts. We both enter pub quizzes. We I won't say we bore people, but we enlighten and enrich people's lives with with our useless knowledge and random facts and things.

Yeah. And that's why we say so. Yeah, I do. And that's why we're here today. We're here to talk about a particular topic and give you lots of interesting facts. Yes. Can you cook? No. Okay. Not really. You can. I know you can. I can, yes. I wouldn't describe myself however as a chef. No. I think I'm a cook. Okay, fine. So the word chef. The word chef. Tell me about the word chef Simon. This this episode has been one of great learning for me. I found a good number of facts that I didn't already know here. The

word chef, the official title of the person who runs the kitchen in a restaurant, is the chef de cuisine and it literally translates as head of the kitchen. So chef means head and it's related to the word chief which means the head of a clan or the head of a tribe. It's been in use since the 1700s, chef de cuisine. Chef on its own became a thing in 1826. That was the first time we sort of stopped bothering to use the whole title and that's what it's been ever since. Cool! There are other titles, some of them obsolete, but there were other titles in French that

also use the word chef. The chef de cabinet was the private secretary, the head of the cabinet. Chef de train was the railway guard or conductor. Chef de colle was the head teacher of a school. Fair enough. So, but we're not talking about them, we're talking about the foodie ones. So chefs, who was the first chef? When did chefs first appear? Was it the Romans or the Greeks? Yes. Was it really Was it really? It was both of those, yeah.

Oh right, okay. They had chefs. Yeah, yeah. So chefs, I suppose this is where we need to distinguish between a cook and a chef, isn't it? Yeah. A cook is anyone who cooks. So people have always had cooks.

For a start, people have always cooked, obviously. You know, we've always made food for ourselves. It's why our brains are bigger. Yes, it is, yeah. The properties of heated food, it imparts certain nutrients and things that go to the brain. Well, what it does is it means that you can get more calories down you, which means you can use more energy. Your brain uses up 25% of all the energy that you eat. So technically, the more you eat, the bigger and better your brain is.

Oh, right, okay. I mean, that obviously, there are limits. Yes, there are, I'm sure. I'm sure there's like an inverse curve there somewhere. Yes. So cooks have been around for ages. Those who are wealthy enough have always had private cooks in their household.

And if you have a group of cooks within your household you have to have one who's the head of them who runs the whole show. And Ancient Greece is the first mention that I could find of this particular role, sort of the head cook or not actually using the word chef yet but the head cook, the one in charge of the kitchen in a private establishment, goes back to ancient Greece. The Romans had them left, right and centre. Again, in private dwellings, we're not talking restaurants here, but wealthy homeowners had their own private in-house cooking staff headed up by a chef. Apparently, the Roman historian Livy said that the decline

of the Roman Empire was connected with the rise in the cook's status. Oh! He said that the Empire began to fall when people like cooks began to rise above their station. So they've been around for a long time. They have. But not what we would call a chef chef. No, not a chef chef. They're sort of like senior cook in the kitchen of a private house. Yeah. So what about the first chef, proper chef? Well, so around the Middle Ages, around sort of the 15th, 16th

centuries, you started getting people officially training. You started getting culinary schools. Mostly in Italy, one of the first culinary schools was in Venice. It was called the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice in the 1400s. And they started actually teaching people to be chefs as a profession. And it was pretty much for those who could pay. It was quite an expensive course. So you really sort of had to be invested in this and make it your lifelong calling. And these people were trained again to sort of had to be invested in this and make it your lifelong calling. And these people were trained again to sort of prepare banquets for the wealthy. You started getting celebrity chefs being headhunted by royal families and the pope, you know, the pope had his own private chef. So it's all been going on for several hundred years.

chef. So it's all been going on for several hundred years. I believe there is a person who is officially accepted as the first chef. Well, the first celebrity chef, shall we say? Hmm. Yes. Okay. A guy called Marie-Antoine Carême. Obviously French. Obviously. Sort of like late 18th, early 19th century. He started off as a kitchen boy and later became an apprentice to a well-known patissier.

Oh, right. Okay. And then he kind of like worked his way up and he developed more refined style of cooking and he started using herbs and vegetables and he sort of invented that what's known today is the five mother sauces which he used in everyday, well I say everyday home cooking. I mean that's if you use things like bechamel, velute, espanol, hollandaise and tomato sauce in your home cooking. He's called like the chef of kings and the king of chefs. Oh what a great title. I know.

Although there's another chef later on who we'll talk about in a minute who also used that title as well. Right, okay. But Kerem was the first one to use it. And there was a reason for that because Kerem cooked for Napoleon. How did he really?

And King George IV. Ah. And Tsar Alexander I. Wow. So he got around a bit. He did, didn't he? Oh, he around a bit. He did quite a lot of like posh cooking, posh houses. And he went on to influence the other chap we're going to be talking about, Georges Auguste Escoffier. Ah yes. And Escoffier was the modern kitchen started with this coffee. Yeah. Yeah, although he was he was a young apprentice in Restaurants when they were fairly grubby noisy

drunken places And he wasn't very tall and he actually had to wear platform shoes to see over the hob. Did he? It's really quite short. Oh brilliant We started off doing that and then he got conscripted into the army. Just after arriving in Paris. And he thought, okay, well, I'll serve in the army. So he served in the army and he saw in the army how the army organized itself into, you know, dedicated people doing dedicated things.

And that started this idea in his head of the brigade. Oh I see in the kitchen. Yes, so because he'd been in the army he kind of went okay Well, we need to get this sorted. Yeah, and we need to we need to have it as like there's a head chef There's a pastry chef. There's a sous chef. There's all sorts of different chefs Yeah in the kitchen who all have their own tasks. Yes. And that's the way it worked. Right, so that came out of his experience in the military. Yes. Oh.

And then he met a guy called Ritz. Did he? Yes. The guy who made the crackers. Cesar Ritz. Ah, him. Yes. And things went from strength to strength.

And the rest is history. And the rest is history. The other thing that Escoffier introduced, which I thought was quite interesting, is he introduced, well, he made, there's like the French way of serving food, where you just serve it when it's ready. A bit like Chinese restaurants, or when they kind of just bring the food up when it's ready. Or there's the Russian way of serving food, which is course by course. Oh, I see, okay.

So the way we have food now is you have like a starter, a main course and a dessert, and they come one by one in cereal rather than parallel. So that the things don't get cold. As you're waiting for your nice hot pudding and you're served everything at the same time. Yeah. So, Escoffier changed that and basically brought that into popularity.

And he also worked with this guy, Cesar Ritz, and there are hotels. I've heard of those. So, yeah, so Escoffier brought all these, all these proper chef-like things into, into being, including uniforms. Yes. Now I was going to reference that. The, this was, um, these two gentlemen in particular, I think, uh, Kerem first sketched the idea of a chef's uniform, you know, baggy trousers, white jacket, double breasted jacket,

big white hat, etc. as a sort of a concept. But Escoffier really latched onto it and really sort of started using that as a uniform. I think he made it mandatory that all chefs should wear that uniform in each of his restaurants that he owned around London. Well it's practical as well as anything else isn't it? You know, you've got nice thick white material to stop you getting burned or stop spills from hurting you. Yeah, yeah. I believe that the white uniform sort of represented cleanliness, you know. Look at this chef, he's making all these amazing bits of food, there's you know, sauces splashing around all over the place, but he's kept his jacket so pristine.

Yes. Ergo, his kitchen must also be really pristine. Yes. My favourite piece of a chef's uniform is the hat. Known as. A toque. A toque. So the word toque is originally is an Arabic word for a hat, specifically a brimless hat and it's thousands of years old but the one used by chefs, the big white thing, is called a

toque blanche, so a white hat. And historically, I don't think it's so much the case anymore, but historically the height of your hat represented your seniority in chefdom. Okay. So if you were a junior chef you sort of had quite a short hat almost a skull cap. Yeah. Then you sort of went through those floppy hats that you know pastry chefs and bakers wear to the big tall hat that that you know signifies your seniority. Apparently, Kerem's hat was 18 inches tall and supported with cardboard inserts to make it stand upright. Well, given that he was quite short.

Well, yes, that would help as well, wouldn't it? Yeah. And apparently, again, historically, the higher number of pleats that you had in your hat also represented your seniority. It was sort of one pleat for every dish that you had mastered your hat. Yeah. Also represented your seniority. It was sort of one pleat for every dish that you had mastered. Every technique. Every technique. Yeah. And the most senior people would have 100 pleats in their hat to show that they knew 100 ways to cook an

egg. I can't even think of 10. I can probably, hang on, one, two of I can probably think about six okay there well you've got like fried egg over easy of the different subsections yeah absolutely yeah wow and the jacket of course with this sort of fairly thick jacket yeah buttons on the jacket yeah signifying things did you know this oh no I didn't know so so chef's buttons if you if a quali- if you're a qualified chef, Yeah. You wear black buttons. Okay.

And students wear white buttons. Oh really? Apparently. How charming. They were originally sort of knotted cloth buttons so that you know, they would survive frequent washing. Right, okay. Um, but, uh- Brilliant.

There are other things as well. And there's things like the checked hands, hands, toothed trousers and all those things. Yes, apparently those are, I don't quite understand this logic, but if the white jacket is there to show you how clean and pristine they are, the checked trousers are there to mask the spilled food. Presumably, I don't know, maybe it's maybe it's more, more likely that you splash something on your trousers than on your jacket. I don't know. But apparently that's why they they look like a chessboard. I mean, I don't know about you, but when I'm

when I'm wearing an apron or something like that when I'm cooking, I usually use it to wipe my hands on. Yeah, true. Yeah. So it gets it gets it's actually the grubbiest piece of material that I wear when I'm cooking. Hence when you when you sort of see on TV, you know, someone in a restaurant asks to give their compliments to the chef, the chef immediately takes off the grubby apron and then walks out into the restaurant looking all pristine and fresh. Yeah, that's true. Of course, you know what most chefs want? No, tell me what they want. Well they want

several things. I mean they want sharp knives. We'll get on to knives in a minute. Okay. But they also want a Michelin star. Oh yes of course they do. So the history of the Michelin star is that the brothers who invented the Michelin inflatable tire wanted people to use their tires more. Yes by going on longer journeys So they invented a the the guide Michelin Which is basically a it's like a travel book to show you where you could go To I mean find nice places to go and visit or nice roads or nice places to eat. Hmm And so that's a the give me shown started off to to sort of tell people to go to nice restaurants.

And they awarded stars for this. So the way it works is that they have these anonymous inspectors that go around all of the restaurants. And they use five key criteria to measure the restaurant. It's like quality of ingredients, mastery of techniques, harmony of flavors, chef's personality and consistency. If they go back a couple of times, was it the same the second or third time as it was the first time? Cool, what an arduous job having to visit these restaurants again.

They're generally sort of former restaurants and hospitality professionals. They're always anonymous. You will never know when you're being visited by a Michelin inspector. Yeah. So I talked about the five criteria. There are no other factors provided you have good quality, fresh ingredients and you know what you're doing when you cook and the flavours work together and you're not a complete asshole Well, although that doesn't always work show and consistency There are no other factors. So even if you're working out of a really like a rough old, you know basement somewhere Right, you can still get a Michelin star or two. That's brilliant This you know, the decor service atmosphere not considered at all. Yeah, yeah, it's purely about

the food. That's great. And then you get a water to star or two stars or three stars. If it's a one star, then that just means you know, it's high quality cooking worth a stop. Yes, give me a shot. Two stars signifies excellent cooking worth a detour. Okay. So go out of your way. Three stars represents exceptional cuisine

worth a special journey. Ooh, wow. And that's actually what they mean. Those are the three levels of star. Isn't that wonderful? I had, I'd always sort of thought of the Michelin star as having nothing to do with the Michelin man of tires. Yes.

Especially because of the way that we pronounce Michelin. Yes. Michelin tires. It's nothing to do with good food. So I was quite surprised to find that these things are so connected. And the fact that, as you said, it just sort of started off as a travel guide, the first copy. The book came out in 1900 and it was originally, where's my nearest petrol station? Where's my nearest Michelin tire shop? It was there largely to promote their own businesses and services. It came out in 1900, it only started in including restaurants and hotels in the 1920s and the stars only came out in in 1926 so it had a good long life before

you know before it actually started talking about food yes apparently one of the Michelin brothers saw five of his guides being used to hold a table up and he said right people aren't taking this seriously, we're gonna have to charge for it. So up until that point, it was free. And then they just started charging seven francs per book. Oh, great. After that.

Oh, brilliant. Just to give it some more importance. But the Michelin character is called Bibendum. There's a man made of tires, Bibendum. Bibendum. Yes. And there's actually a restaurant called Bibendum which is in an old Michelin tyre shop. Oh really? In Kensington. I didn't know that. I just thought he was called the Michelin man. I'll tell you what, I'll put a picture of the shop. Yes. On our show notes. Where would people find those

show notes Bruce? That would be something like Factorally.com. Factorally.com? Yeah, let's assume that's it. Okay, fine. Good. Okay. Well, head over there and have a look at what we're talking about. Yeah, you'll find lots more information about all sorts of things that we're talking about today. You will.

And it'll keep you occupied for more time than you can probably spare. Absolutely. It'll take you on a very, very deep dive, so brace yourselves. I apologize in advance. Oh, no, I don't. It's take you on a very, very deep dive. So brace yourselves. I apologize in advance. Oh no, I don't. It's a wonderful repository. I had a little, it all seems to come back to Escoffier, doesn't it? One of my favorite facts of all time is regarding Escoffier. And it's a slightly long-winded fact so brace yourself but essentially Escoffier invented the peach melba dessert. Oh yes! He invented it whilst working at the Savoy and this fact is that the peach melba is

indirectly named after a mill in Derbyshire. Oh okay because I was expecting something else entirely. Right okay Okay. Well, it will probably go via what you're thinking Okay Escoffier invented the peach melba in honor of Dame Nellie Melba the Australian opera singer who was on tour in London and staying at the Savoy Yes, Dame Nellie Melba not her real name. She called herself that in honor of her hometown Melbourne in Australia Melbourne Australia was founded in the Victorian era and it was named after Lord Melbourne who was the British Prime

Minister at the time. Lord Melbourne was given his title because his family owned Melbourne Hall. Melbourne Hall is in Derbyshire and named after the town of Melbourne. The name of Melbourne originally was called Milbourne which means mill stream because there was a stream in a mill. So via that chain of events, the Peach Melba is named after a mill in Derbyshire. Congratulations, you win today's prize. Thank you so much. What do I win? Some Peach Melba. The other thing that chefs are very keen on apart from the Michelin star are their knives. Oh yes of course they are.

You know how when you have a fountain pen you never let anybody borrow your fountain pen because it's your shape and it's yours. Chefs will never lend their knives to anyone. They're very personal, aren't they? Yeah, well, okay, there are two different types of chef's knives. There's Japanese knives and German knives, which are slightly different shapes. So the German knife was developed by Henkels,

and the Japanese knives originated in Seki. And they're really very, very effective knives. And the German ones are sort of heavier and have thicker blades yeah and could be used to be much more force but the Japanese knives are much finer and they have sharper they get actually sharper edges yeah like that they're very delicate I've seen videos of these things that you sort of see a see someone having just sharpened their Japanese knife and they simply I don't know They just sort of touch a tomato and the tomato just falls to pieces

You know, there's no effort or weight applied to it at all It just sort of cuts through you know can cut through the thinnest sheet of paper. That's not even under tension It's yes quite impressive the chiffon scarf test for us for a sword I would imagine that a chef's knife It's like the chiffon scarf test for a sword. I would imagine that a chef's knife could go through a chiffon scarf as well. Yeah absolutely. And these days they're made of all sorts of, they're made of stainless steel but they're also made of ceramics. So there are ceramic knives which are made of something called zirconium oxide and it takes 300 tons of pressure to make a ceramic knife crikey and they're light they're sharp they're temperature resistant

they're rust proof and they're really good but if you drop them they just shatter right okay yes yeah yeah not not good so so they're very very i mean they're delicate yeah but they're very, very, I mean, they're delicate, but they're delicate. Yeah, yeah. Whereas a carbon steel knife has been, you know, carbon forging for swords is sort of quite common. And carbon steel makes a really good strong, versatile knife, right. But you can also use titanium. Oh, can you? And they're very, very popular now. Huh? They're light and they're more resilient. And they don't break if you drop them. Yes But they are very common and they don't hold a sharp edge for particularly long. So you have to keep sharpening them

I take a lose their edge. Yeah, but chefs chefs are really fussy about their knives If you want if you want to get a chef talking ask him about his knife Yes, you sort of see people with those almost belts. they're sort of they look like a work belt you know yeah which they unfold and they just have a knife for every possible occasion every size and grade and everything and they sort of carry those knives with them as they go through their career. I think it's quite common to be presented with a set of knives once you've you know passed from culinary school. Yes yes and they have their own wet stones to sharpen them on. And there's exact angles that they have to have them at,

and different strengths of sharpening stone. Yeah. I mean, we could do a whole episode on chef's knives. We probably could. And we won't. We won't. I said I wouldn't go into TV chefs because there's just too many of them. Yes.

But I was just surprised at how many there are. We sort of talked about the first celebrity chefs being head hunted by the Pope. We talked about Kerem and Ascoffier. And I don't know, it's just always been a thing. If you get a particularly good chef who can cook in a particularly interesting or unique way, the public seemed to really latch onto them. And then of course, there came television

and the whole thing just went wild. And I sort of felt like I could name a couple of celebrity chefs. I went online to see if I could find a list. And these are just the ones that I've heard of. There are many, many more. But from this list, the ones I've heard of include Fanny Craddock, Ainsley Harriot, Julia Child, Keith Floyd, Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal, The Hairy Bikers, The Two Fat Ladies, Gino Di Campo, James Martin, Mary Berry,

Paul Hollywood, Hugh Fernley, Whittingstool, Anthony Warrell, Thompson, Delia Smith, Paul Rankin and Rick Stein. There are just lots. There are lots. Each with their own personal cookbooks, their own TV shows. Several cookbooks. Yes, absolutely. Thousands of cookbooks between them. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. But I mean, people like Julia Child, for example, she brought sort of French cooking to America. Yes, that's right. On TV. Yeah. In fact, there was a TV series French cooking to America. Yes, that's right. TV. Yeah. In fact, there was a TV series about Julia Child called the French chef. Okay. Other sort of interesting things about the celebrity chefs, which I quite like is Delia Smith, another very famous celebrity chef with rock and roll links. So really how? Yes she um okay so do you know the Rolling Stones record Let It Bleed? Sure yes. And on the front of that there's a

cake. Right. It's iconic because it's one of the first album covers that didn't feature the band. Oh I see okay. And so this cake on the front of Let It Bleed was baked by Delia Smith. Was it really? Yes. How wonderful. That's a thing to put on your CV, isn't it? But the first TV chef that I can remember was Fanny Craddock and Johnny.

Yeah. I think there are so many people who learned to cook through that. Hmm. ["Let It Bleed"] Simon, tell me all about what Guinness has to say about chefs. Okay, well I'll narrow this down. One of these records is just my favourite, so I've not

gone too far into this. You're starting with the really good one? I'll save that one till the second. But one record I found was for the Longest Cooking Marathon, which was held by an Irish chef called Alan Fisher and the record I cannot believe that he actually personally cooked for this long so maybe he had a team under him and he went and had a quick nap I don't know but his record was 119 hours 57 minutes and 16 seconds. Cooking? Yeah that's basically five days straight. Wow. So I don't understand how that's possible. That was achieved in October 2023. He

was an Irish chef in Japan and this thing he did to sort of promote the Irish cuisine culture. In that time he cooked 32 recipes, he served 3,360 portions of food, weighing a total of 590 kilograms. Okay. And it doesn't technically say whether he went off and had a quick nap at any point, but I don't know how anyone could stay awake for five days, let alone be constantly cooking for five days. So that's cool, that's impressive enough. But then I found this fella, a Canadian chap called Wallace Wong, also known as the Six-Pack

Chef. Six-Pack Chef. He used to be a professional competitive bodybuilder before becoming a chef and he claims to be the world's fastest chef. Basically his knife work is incredible. He's got a TikTok channel and he does all of these videos and he has multiple world records. I saw a throwaway thing saying at a recent event he added another nine Guinness World Records to his belt. So he added nine. How many here would he have? But his world records include most tomatoes cut in one minute. Fourteen. Most tomatoes cut in one minute whilst blindfolded. Nine. Most slices of celery sliced in 30 seconds. 128. Most slices of celery sliced whilst blindfolded in 30 seconds. 125. Only three

less. Wow. The fastest time to slice a bell pepper. 9.43 seconds. Most slices of garlic sliced in 30 seconds. 117. He sliced 127 blindfolded. He can slice garlic faster blindfolded than not blindfolded. Most number of chilies chopped in 30 seconds 13. Most slices of carrots sliced while blindfolded in 30 seconds 121, et cetera, et cetera. He's very, very fast with a knife.

We'll have to put some videos up on the blog. Absolutely, so he fascinated me. I think that's some quite an achievement. Yes, and how many fingers does he have? It didn't say that he's lost it So far so good Well, I think all of my chef related facts have been served up. Oh, that's very good. Mine have gone across the pass. Lovely. So that's all we have to give you today.

It is. We hope you've enjoyed our serving of chef related facts. And if you'd like to be served more, if you'd like, if you'd like seconds, thirds or fourths, yes. And then please subscribe to the podcast. Please do. You can leave us a nice five star review. I mean, obviously three stars is what Michelin. But we want five. Yeah, totally different. And a really nice review, obviously. That'd be lovely. And then please tell all of your equally nerdy friends about this podcast so that they can come along and enjoy the fun as well. Absolutely.

So thank you very much for coming along and listening. Please come again next time for another fun-filled episode of Facts of Ali. Au revoir. Oh, cheerio. Facts of Ali Facts of Ali Facts of Ali Facts of Ali

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