What part of a gradute's costume gave the cordon bleu cooking school it's name?!
What part of a gradute's costume gave the cordon bleu cooking school it's name?
Answers:
Do they wear a cordon bleu?
The name comes from the highest order of chivalry in France, instituted in 1578 by King Henri III, initially as the Order of 'Le Saint Esprit' (Holy Spirit) and subsequently merged with the older (1469) order of St Michel (St Michael). The cordon blue was the blue ribbon attached to the order's insignia.
With the formation, in the 1895 of the French culinary institute of the same name -- specifically for *domestic cooks* of excellence, i.e. principally women -- the analogy of both 'the highest order' of that name with its insginia, and the common colour of French kitchen apron strings of the day, i.e. blue, gave part of the inspiration for the name, applied to cuisinières.
It had famously been given sharp public focus fifty years earlier, by Eugène Briffault in an essay from his 'Paris à table' of 1846, when he explicitly insisted that the 'forgotten heroes' of the French kitchen, i.e. women, had a long overdue right to be honoured with the expression 'cordon bleu'. It was to this expressed opinion that the 1895 founders of the institute probably harkened equally, when they decided on the name of their enterprise that stands to this day
(The modern day institute still harks back to the apron string I mentioned by attaching it to their graduation pin in commemoration.)