Have you ever stayed in a traditional high-end hotel, or were lucky enough to see the kitchen of a traditional style restaurant? If you have, then you may have also found a chef with a hat on his head.
The chef’s hat is traditionally white, tall, and wrinkled. Sometimes it is made of cloth and needs to be starched to make it stand tall. It is now more likely to be made of paper.
The origin of the chef hat
One of the origins of the chef’s hat was when the royal chef of King Henry VIII began to bald, Henry found a hair in his soup. He decapitated the chef and ordered the next chef to start wearing a hat to prevent the same thing from happening again.
There are many stories about the origin of chef hats, but no matter when it starts, hats have become a staple of chef uniforms.
What are the folds on the chef hat?
The pleated chef hat serves two purposes. On the one hand, the folds add a certain sense of fashion to the hat and instill a certain level or professionalism in most restaurants. However, folds have a more subtle purpose. In the early days of white toques, folds usually represented how many recipes the chef mastered. Therefore, a chef with 100 folds may know 100 different ways to boil eggs or prepare chicken. Although the symbolic meaning of the hat is not exactly the same now, the more folds-even if there are only three or four-still show the chef’s level of experience.
Is wearing a chef hat important?
In many occupations, uniforms are important for many reasons, including making a good impression, suggesting a sense of responsibility, and creating a sense of unity in the workplace.
The chef hat helps to demonstrate the qualifications of the kitchen by creating a respectable atmosphere and practical safety considerations. The chef hat is one of the most recognizable hats in the world and can be found in the kitchen of every country.
It was originally developed to prevent hair from contacting food. In the 16th and 17th centuries, it was not common for men and women to cut their hair, but the rise of chef hats meant that many men had long hair.
Like folds, the importance of hat height has changed a lot over the years. In the 1800s, the higher the hat, the more important or knowledgeable the chef.