Know thine enemies: Get a hat and hang on.

Height Does Matter

I think a lot about cookies, and I think a lot about cooking. Recently I landed myself back in the kitchen and I am now thinking a lot about the health  department regulations, particularly safety. A part of that safety is head coverings. So naturally I am now thinking a lot about hats; the chef’s hat, or toque, goes back to ancient times. 
Thousands of years ago in Assyria, poisoning was a common way for a person to rid himself of enemies.

Aware of this problem, Assyrian royalty selected their cooks carefully. They chose only their most loyal subjects to be their chefs, sometimes even members of the royal family itself, and made them members of the court. 

Responsible for the kings’ safety, chefs were paid handsomely in money and land, to avoid the temptation of being bribed by the kings’ enemies. They were entitled to wear a crown of a similar shape to the royal family employing them, although made of cloth and lacking in jewels. Some believe the crown-shaped ribs of the royal headdress developed into the pleats of a chef’s hat.

Legend has it that the approximately 100 pleats on today’s toques represent the number of ways a chef knows how to prepare an egg. (Oh the egg is a fascinating ingredient). Also height matters.

Traditionally, the height of the chef’s hat was meant to signify station and rank in the kitchen. The executive chef wore the tallest hat in the kitchen, and the hats got a bit shorter as you go down the line, essentially following the traditional hierarchy in world-famous French chef Auguste Escoffier’s brigade de cuisine. Carême reportedly wore a hat that was 18 inches tall – supported in part by pieces of cardboard – to demonstrate his expertise. Although this is not always the case in modern kitchens, the tallest hat still usually belongs to the most senior chef.