Why White ? In the 1800s, a chef named Marie-Antoine Carême, a French chef who served the royalty of Europe and who wrote several classic works on cuisine, decided that chefs deserved a specific uniform, and white was his color of choice, since it signified cleanliness in the kitchen.
Each station and rank in the kitchen also had a different height hat. The chef, being the highest ranking of all kitchen staff, wore the tallest hat.
How Many Pleats Are On Your Torque?
The Pleats on a Chef Torque, are steeped in a rich history too. Their beginning came from the idea that the more experience a chef had, the more pleats his hat had. A pleat could signify a technique or recipe he had mastered.
At one time, a chef had 100 pleats in his hat to signify the 100 ways he knew how to prepare eggs. Chef hats today don’t hold so many pleats, but they still signify a chef’s level of experience.
Modern Times
Today, the chef hat remains a symbol of authority and knowledge, and few pieces of headgear are as recognizable as the traditional white hat that many chefs today still embrace as their own.
Over the years, chefs have adopted other, more functional forms of headwear, the Chef Torque Blanch has become mostly a show piece for Executive chefs who meet guests or buffet chefs in the public eye. There are many variations of hats worn by chefs around the world, such as baseball caps, skull caps, torques and beanie wraps, a little creativity and design was needed to move the chef hat with the times.
One thing will never change and that is a Chef hat is a regal symbol of the culinary industry’s long and storied history.