July 26, 2010 • 25 mins
Traditionally, cooking has been considered a female task. Yet in the professional realm, men predominate. Why? Do men and women cook food differently? Molly and Cristen explore gender issues in the culinary world in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
From House top works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen. I'm
(00:20):
gonna read you a little bit of an email that
came into us from one of our wonderful listeners. Her
name is Sarah, and it caught my eye because the
subject line was eleven hours of Sminty in the prep
closet today. What I know, even I can't stand myself
for eleven hours and she was talking about it, so
I had to. I had to read on and uh.
She goes a little bit into how she followed sort
(00:42):
of a weird career path just settled on cooking, and
she writes, I spend many, many hours a day trimming lamb,
cooking the crap out of our awesome bass food, and
listening to Sminty while doing it. I'm actually lucky enough
to work in a restaurant where there's an even fifty
fifty split of females to males. Total two prep girls
three female cooks to zero prop guys, and five male
cooks that being said, the culinary side of employment is
(01:04):
heavily skewed towards males, which makes a whole lot of
crap sense when one considers who does most of the
cooking outside a restaurant, not most men. My life and
food is blessed and full of amazingly respectful lady friend
of guys who know I can kick just as much booty.
She's uses it on the word, and I can't remember
whether we can stay on the podcast or not on
the line as they can. But I think with just
(01:25):
a bit of research you'll find plenty of fodder for
a fine, encouraging podcast about the differences between male and
female chefs and lo and behold we did. Boy was
Sarah right? Yeah? There was so much information about this
very topic that Molly, we could just start having a
cooking show, like a cooking podcast. Um. So, today, like
(01:48):
Sarah requested, we're going to talk about if women and
men indeed cooked differently, and also dig into why it
is that head chefs are often men. Why are restaurant
kitchens often dominated by men, because, like she points out,
women are traditionally the cooks. We've been cooking for people
since we started cooking food as people how don't gather
(02:13):
they haven't cooked the food we did. So with no
further ado, Molly, let's get into this and let's start
at the top. Let's start with the executive chefs and
maybe work our way from the restaurant kitchen into the
home kitchen, because it's all going to come back there.
So I found this article from New York Magazine interviewing
(02:34):
seven prominent women chefs in New York about this very issue,
and they say they confirmed the fact that yes, as
a woman chef, not only are they among a very
small minority, but also they encounter different issues such as, um,
you know, male mailman coming into the room and looking
(02:57):
for someone else to hand the mail too, because a
woman certainly couldn't be the head chef. But they have
a lot of trouble getting financial backing because financiers are
more hesitant to give money to women chefs. And they
also discussed this issue of whether or not men and
women cook differently, which will be the main topic of today.
(03:19):
But let's let's dive into that financial thing a little
bit more, Christen, because that to me was the most
interesting thing and it made a lot of sense maybe
we talked about women in business before. In fact, memb
our very first podcast was about women in negotiation, about
how women are more fearful to ask for money to
do something, in that case a raise. But that's what
all these women chefs say is that it's a lot
(03:40):
harder to go into a group of investors, people who
are looking to invest in a restaurant and say, hey,
I'm going to run this restaurant. I'm the chef, here's
my food. It's much harder for a woman to do
that as opposed to a man. The investors seemed to
seek the men out. They want to see men with
business experience that some of these female chefs don't have.
And uh, that was what they saw as the real
(04:01):
boys club, not necessarily the coming up in the training kitchens.
That's what people say is often the boys club. But
they said it was more the investment financial side that
was hard to do. Right. The guys are going out,
they're playing golf together, they're playing poker together, and next
thing you know, you know their male colleagues. As Alex
Gorna Shelley from Butter put it, she says, um, you
(04:22):
know she'll have male colleagues come up to her and say, yeah,
I just met with a big group of investors to
open a restaurant. And she says, I'm looking at them
trying to sit my coffee, like, yeah, bro, that must
be rough. And I go home and trade in the
coffee for tequila, wondering if I did something wrong, you know,
because they're working just as hard. Um, And somehow these
these men are still getting more of a leg up.
(04:44):
But it might have to do too with the nature
of being a chef, because it's it kind of caters
more two men in terms of families and in terms
of marriages, because with being ahead chef, you have to
be open and available on nights and weekends and often
(05:04):
pulling late night shifts and uh for and some chefs
say that that's exactly why you don't see more women
executive chefs and uh. In the New York Times article
the group of magazine or Sorry, and then in the
New York Magazine article Yeah, these seven women chefs point
out that that pastry chef is often kind of the
(05:26):
the reserve spot for women because it doesn't demand quite
the same intensive hours and there's lots of a sense
of competition. Now they also asked the chefs about their
training and coming up through professional kitchens. They ask those
kitchens seems sort of traditionally shamelessly sexist. Is that true?
And these women sort of made a point of not
(05:48):
wanting to play a victim card. Absolutely, they you know,
they did have experiences where they've been sort of discriminated against,
or the people that they were working with for betting
against them, you know, straight out if they didn't think
the women would be able to cut it, but all
this would just put their head down and worked through
it and uh and persevered, right, because they want to
be respected as chefs, not respected as women chefs. Kind
(06:10):
of like when we were talking about women directors in Hollywood,
you know, they don't want to be seen as, oh,
you're so great for a woman. No, they just want
to be respected for their art. And the same thing
with these women in food. And just to throw out
a couple of stats to back up what we're saying,
according to star chefs dot com, which is run by
Antoninete Bruno, um, a poll found that of executive chefs
(06:34):
or men people and then um there was an article
on the Huffington's Post talking about food and Wines annual
list of the best new chefs, and the author points
out that in the Best New Chefs two thousand nine,
there was one out of ten of these chefs who, um,
(06:55):
who was a woman, Naomi Pomeroy. And it's just kind
of how it's always been. They'll have, she says, they
had one woman chef in two thousand nine, two thousand seven,
two thousand six, two thousand five and onward. So they
still aren't even getting um, aren't even getting a lot
of recognition for what they're doing coming up through the ranks.
But speaking of rank smally, the history of the kitchen brigade,
(07:21):
that hierarchy that is in the kitchen most like high
end kitchens that you'll see, might explain why the restaurant
atmosphere is dominated by men. And let's talk a little
bit about what that brigade is before we explained that, because, um,
all of my experience of what it's like in a
kitchen is based on movies. Okay, Um, so it took me,
(07:45):
so it's my head or it's true to life, right,
so I'm sure it is. So we have as an
executive chef assisted by a Sioux chef, and then below
that are chefs who are in charge of certain production stations.
So um, you know, based on how the restaurant has
their kitchen structure, you could have a ton of these stations.
You could have a sauce station, a fish station, a
(08:08):
guerrilla station, fried items, roast, cold foods, pastries, um. And
they talk about how working your way up is basically
putting in your time at all of these stations and
getting the go ahead too, you know, ascend to another station. Yeah,
because a kitchen has to operate like a well oiled machine,
you know, sort of like an assembly line. So of
(08:29):
course you have the saucy a who is busily working
on sauces while the shoes shox chef is doing more
the prep. The head chef is sort of the general
in charge of everything, um keeping, keeping all of the
different stations in line. And if it sounds kind of
like a military brigade, that's because lo and behold, the
(08:50):
kitchen system is based on European military organization. And we
found a great article in the Austin Chronicle written by
m Impact which walks us through the history of the
kitchen brigade and um Pack says that from the fourteenth
century on traveling armies had to be fed and cokes
were selected from among the ranks. And so as these
(09:13):
kind of cooking brigades expanded, and these military cookes would
end up cooking for kings and nobility, and so they
would have to prepare these complicated meals and feasts for
huge numbers of people. So it became a pretty significant position.
Um and Trade guild soon developed, and then you had
(09:34):
uniforms for people, and these gills and the rigid hierarchies
started to take place of you know, the head chefs
of the time down to the people doing the prep
work and the more menial tasks. Um and Pack says it.
Until after the French Revolution and the rise of restaurants,
this cast of cooks continued to work exclusively for the aristocracy.
(09:57):
And the classic double breasted white jacket and the hat
the chefs wear even goes back to these times. And
you know, I think that this really helped me understand
why we think of so many chefs as male Kristen.
It's because starting you know, back from these times when
the was tied to going to battle, cooking was a
(10:17):
profession for men, whereas it something we expect women to
do just as part of their nurturing role. Someone's got
to feed that family. You know, the mother starts out
feeding the family through breastfeeding and selling natural that she
would continue to oversee the children's meals as they grow.
And the idea that you brought up that women of
women cooking as an act of love is the concept
(10:39):
that Mike Wise from the San Francisco Chronicle dug into
in this two thousand seven article because he had the
same idea of well, you know, like, do men and
women cook differently? In his theory going into this little
culinary adventure was that, yes, women do cook differently because
they put more of a nurturing air into it, and
(11:00):
he refers to it as mama food. Now we should
note that, you know, as as the title of the
paper might imply San Francisco Chronicle, this is happening in California,
And many of these articles who read made a note
that California is one place where women have really achieved
some culinary equality in the kitchen, most notably Alice Waters.
Christen's favorite things she found out about Alice Waters as
(11:22):
her nickname, her nickname the renegade lunch Lady. But you know,
all the articles point out that she chose not to
run her kitchen in that traditional kitchen style brigade. Everyone
sort of just worked together and uh, you know, her
restaurants acclaimed. And so he was basically going around to
these different restaurants in San Francisco because he had had
his most memorable meals there and coincidentally, all his most
(11:43):
memorable meals were cooked by women, and so it was
kind of surprising to me when he went and interviewed
the female chefs who cooked his memorable meals. They kind
of agreed with his with his hypothesis to an extent
that yes, women did have uh creativity around food, but
it was usually based on their desire to put something
good in your body, to really nurture your body with
(12:04):
what they were giving you, whereas guys who pursued becoming
a chef more interested in like the molecular gastronomy, uh
cooking with the science set. They called it the show
off cooking, right, was show off cooking too. Um. There
was a fat in the nineties of having tall food
like plates that were kind of where the dishes were
(12:25):
built up. Um had a and i'll had a vertical
element to it. And that was kind of the prime
example of this show off food that was really promoted
by male chefs, whereas women were really focusing more and
on the flavors. And I would say, just from the
research that I've done, Molly, that this this idea of
mama food versus show off food, it's something that's pretty
(12:47):
It's a pretty pervasive notion in the culinary world. For instance,
there was a blog post on Serious Eats by um
ed Levine who went to who participated actually in a
panel UM investigating whether it was a taste to panel
to find out whether or not you know men, if
you could tell the difference between men's food and women's food,
and food cooked by men and women. UM. And he
(13:09):
pointed out that there are a lot of preconceived notions
and cliches about the differences between male and female chefs,
and among them, for instance, Living points out that there's
the thought that women chefs will use spices more subtly
than men men's. Male chefs will use a lot of
toys in their cooking, for instance, with all of the
molecular gastronomy stuff that's going on now. Uh, female chefs
(13:33):
like to nurture and feed people's souls, while male chefs
are looking to compete and impress. UM and women's chefs
will be more precise and follow more instructions, whereas men
will kind of go a little more haywire. And then
I thought this was kind of funny. Um Levin says
that male chefs like to cook red meat, whereas female
chefs are more likely to cook pink food and use
(13:54):
edible flowers. And the interesting thing is from the panel,
Levin concluded that, um, while gender does kind of affect
all chef's cook they couldn't discern whether or not a
meal was cooked by male chef or female chefs. And
he says that the thing that has the most influence
over someone's cooking style isn't gender, but rather how they
(14:15):
were trained. And so I think it's interesting that Alice
waters Uh doesn't follow the brigade style and kind of
molds her soux chefs and the other cooks under her
to a different style. And I bet that influences how
the male chefs in her restaurant are cooking. And you know,
one thing that came out of that that Lavian piece
that struck me was that you know, they're talking about
(14:37):
whether they could tell which meal was cooked by which gender,
and they talked about how there was some culinary cross dressing,
and that the male chef produced something that was very pink,
that did have a flour I think, and the female
chef produced, you know, a hardcore meat dish. And I
don't remember what the dishes were at this exact moment,
but um, I think that there does need to be
(14:58):
that awareness that we're cooking differently, we may be cooking
for different reasons. Um. But you know, even in the
in the White article, the San Francisco Chronicle article, there
was a little bit of discomfort and admitting that because
it seems like such a weird backwards thing to admit.
But like I said, when you read some of these
quotes by the female chefs, you're like, wow, I button.
(15:18):
I wouldn't have said that myself, but I guess that's true.
And it might seem like a silly topic to even discuss,
like as long as food tastes good, like who cares
whether or not men and women cooked differently? But I
think that it's also important to talk about because, um,
I think it's one of this idea of you know,
men being the head chefs and restaurants, whereas women are
(15:39):
the head chefs at home. It's kind of fascinating because
you know, for so long, like we've said, cooking has
been completely reserved for women. It kind of embodies this
idea of you know, kind of our like socialized idea
of women as like the nurturers and the givers and um,
the ones who are raising at home, raising the families, um.
(16:02):
Whereas on the flip side, you know, men are able
to pursue cooking as a career, right. And you know,
one of the things that would point out in that
article from San Francisco was that the whole reason we
have show off cooking was because the men had to
do something to differentiate it from cooking for the home,
right he had They had to do something in terms
of adding more toys, the equation, adding more exotic ingredients,
(16:25):
adding something so that when that food got to your plate,
it was almost like you'd have to admit a woman
couldn't have done this. I mean, that's how it sort
of seemed to me. I don't know if I'm reading
too much into it, but yeah, I mean that was
never overly stated, but I think I think you're exactly right.
But whereas today restaurant kitchens are absolutely dominated by men.
(16:46):
You know, we go back to that stat that I
threw out earlier. Nine one of kitchens are run by
male executive chefs. But I think what is going to
be interesting to watch for it's sort of how the
um this male element in the restaurant kitchen is affecting
the male element and kitchens at home. Okay, because, uh,
(17:11):
Time magazine pointed out that there has sort of been
a rise lately in quote unquote dude food, and we're
talking about um all of these male food personalities that
have risen up kind of the male Rachel Ray's, if
you will, UM who have become pretty prominent on UM
food television. For instance, we have people like Anthony Bourdaine.
(17:35):
We have Andrew Zimmern, the cake Boss, Bobby Flay, Um,
Ted Allen, all these guys who have who have become
really prominent not just for you know, being male chefs,
but cooking more. What Time magazine calls dude food sort
of this bringing the making cooking accessible for guys at home.
(17:58):
And it's not just the grill thing, you know, like
men have been the grill masters since the days of
Don Draper, but now they're actually transitioning men into the kitchen,
making it more fashionable, more accessible, and I would say,
molly more masculine for men to get into the kitchen
and make a fabulous meal. And speaking of all these
(18:19):
sort of alpha male chefs that are on television, I
want I want to throw out some statistics from an
article from ad Week that kind of blew my mind.
I was actually an article about toys, what we're gonna
get into a minute, but they were talking about how
the male audience for a show like Iron Chef. Overall
male audience for Iron Chef America is thirty six percent overall.
(18:41):
But if you just look at the two to eleven
age break, so boys age two to eleven, it jumps
to forty And they say that holds true for quite
a few of these cooking shows, is that young boys
are the biggest fans of them. And this was relevant
to this article about toys because if you think about
things like easy bake ovens, like plastic kitchens, all that
(19:04):
is marketed to girls. And so it was really saying
that these boys want to be part of this from
a young age. They're seeing how cool it is on television.
They basically want, you know, one of those plastic kitchens
from Toys r Rest to play with. But they'll get there,
They'll get to the store and it's there between the
barbies and the other dolls, and that's when they get
the message, oh, cooking is a girl thing. I'll have
(19:26):
you know, you can't do that. And it was about, um,
how some of these toy companies are trying to bring
boys more into this, but they're still encountering resistance from
the dad's still encounting some resistance from the dads, and
some of the companies are still holding fast to no, no, no.
We have the most marketing success with targeting these toys
(19:47):
at girls. We're gonna stick with it. But you know,
I think that, uh, I think that that's changing a lot,
at least according to the ad age articles. So I
guess the question in my mind is that while yes,
when in certainly do the line share of the cooking
at home, it's still exactly the way it is. But
I kind of wonder whether, um, this movement to bring
(20:11):
more men into the kitchen um and get more men
interested in cooking at home, if that's going to have
any impact at all on the situation kind of the
gender politics in restaurant kitchens, because I think that it's
kind of going to dismantle this divide between you know,
cooking home cooking as a woman's purview and professional cooking
(20:34):
as you know, something reserved for men. You know what
I'm saying. I do. I do think that where you
might be in the middle. It's a broad statement to make,
but perhaps a generational shift, and that all these young
boys who are growing up with these shows a very
strong male personalities will get interested in cooking and may
do the cooking from a young age in their house.
Whether it's something they go on to pursue professionally, but
(20:56):
that could remain to be seen. But the fact that
we do have more our boys in the kitchen may
help sort of drive that. I agree, Yeah, Smalling, I
think that we've talked about you and I have talked
enough about this topic. I'm curious to know what our
listeners think about this, and especially I'm sure that we've
got plenty of listeners out there, Molly, who are working
(21:16):
in kitchens right now, and I would love to hear
from you guys and see a guy's and girls goodness
listen to me. Um, Molly is shaking her head. Um,
we would love to hear from you and and kind
of know whether or not you know, Molly and I
aren't working in a kitchen. Maybe we're totally off the mark,
or maybe we're spot on. Let us know your thoughts
on this, this idea of male cooking versus female cooking.
(21:39):
And really we have just hit on the tip of
the iceberg. Let us the appetizer, course of the appetizer. Yes, Um,
when it comes to gender and cooking, there's so much
more that we could talk about. This is really just
the start of the conversation. So let us hear from you. Mom.
Stuff at how stuff works dot com. And I'll read
(22:04):
an email from someone who wrote in this is from Sarah,
but not the Sarah that I mentioned at the beginning
of the show. Um. Another Sarah wrote about the podcast
episode why do Men Propose? And she writes, not all
of us lads are afraid to kick the norms. My
now fiance mentioned that after we've been dating about six months,
that he wasn't interested in relationships that aren't marriage and
(22:25):
family bound. No pressure. But if I ever realized that
I wasn't that serious would be time for quits. I
took another six months to think about it, and one
morning I propose appo of nothing. I have a full
time salary while he scrapes by on music commission. So
we both knew it was going to have to be
my decision. We went together and picked matching copper rings
for five dollars. Is now a year later and when
we married this Saturday, so happy wedding. Yeah. Absolutely, I'm
(22:51):
the bread winner while he stays home intense the garden,
does the laundry and dishes and fixes up the house
and makes a little money with his music. We both
cook and clean. And yes, I am wearing a white
dress and taking his name, so I say her. Ladies
in the world, don't you dare marry a man you
couldn't propose to, even if it happens that you didn't,
And don't less selly magazines and blogs tell you not
to pull the trigger yourself. They certainly don't speak for everyone.
(23:12):
All right, I've got an email here from Kristen not muscles.
She says, when I was a young wife and mother living, oh,
I should mention this is in relation to our condoms.
Condoms Condoms episode She fell a little story for us
about when she was a young wife and mother living
in rural West Cork, Ireland. So she went to the
(23:33):
village and to visit the Kennists, which is what they
call pharmacy over there, and she screwed up her courage
to the sticking point and boldly asked for some condoms.
So my husband had bought condoms in Dublin and Cork City,
so even though Ireland is a Catholic state, I knew
the condoms are available. This was the late ninety nineties.
For crying out loud any who, the elderly lady behind
(23:55):
the counter gave me the dirtiest look I've ever been given,
in a scandalized voice with a thick West Cork accent, said,
we certainly don't sell such things. Just try to imagine
how embarrassing that was. And it was crowded at the
cash register, and it was my own tiny village, my
neighbors crowding around the register to see me turn beat red.
Turns out In Ireland, individual pharmacies can choose whether to
(24:17):
sell condoms and facilitate their customers going to Hell, or
they can take the moral high ground. Thank you, Kristen
for maybe one of the most unique condom buying stories
I've ever heard, so there are some more coming. Yeah,
you guys have some unique condom buying storm story. They
are wonderful. So whether you want to talk about condoms
(24:39):
are cooking, give us an email. It's mom Stuff how
stuff first dot com. You can also follow us on
Twitter and Facebook and so anytime you're on the internet,
we should be close to you. Stalk us online basically
including our blog It's called Stuff Momar told you, and
it's at how stuff works dot com for moral this
(24:59):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how staff works
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
From House top works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen. I'm
(00:20):
gonna read you a little bit of an email that
came into us from one of our wonderful listeners. Her
name is Sarah, and it caught my eye because the
subject line was eleven hours of Sminty in the prep
closet today. What I know, even I can't stand myself
for eleven hours and she was talking about it, so
I had to. I had to read on and uh.
She goes a little bit into how she followed sort
(00:42):
of a weird career path just settled on cooking, and
she writes, I spend many, many hours a day trimming lamb,
cooking the crap out of our awesome bass food, and
listening to Sminty while doing it. I'm actually lucky enough
to work in a restaurant where there's an even fifty
fifty split of females to males. Total two prep girls
three female cooks to zero prop guys, and five male
cooks that being said, the culinary side of employment is
(01:04):
heavily skewed towards males, which makes a whole lot of
crap sense when one considers who does most of the
cooking outside a restaurant, not most men. My life and
food is blessed and full of amazingly respectful lady friend
of guys who know I can kick just as much booty.
She's uses it on the word, and I can't remember
whether we can stay on the podcast or not on
the line as they can. But I think with just
(01:25):
a bit of research you'll find plenty of fodder for
a fine, encouraging podcast about the differences between male and
female chefs and lo and behold we did. Boy was
Sarah right? Yeah? There was so much information about this
very topic that Molly, we could just start having a
cooking show, like a cooking podcast. Um. So, today, like
(01:48):
Sarah requested, we're going to talk about if women and
men indeed cooked differently, and also dig into why it
is that head chefs are often men. Why are restaurant
kitchens often dominated by men, because, like she points out,
women are traditionally the cooks. We've been cooking for people
since we started cooking food as people how don't gather
(02:13):
they haven't cooked the food we did. So with no
further ado, Molly, let's get into this and let's start
at the top. Let's start with the executive chefs and
maybe work our way from the restaurant kitchen into the
home kitchen, because it's all going to come back there.
So I found this article from New York Magazine interviewing
(02:34):
seven prominent women chefs in New York about this very issue,
and they say they confirmed the fact that yes, as
a woman chef, not only are they among a very
small minority, but also they encounter different issues such as, um,
you know, male mailman coming into the room and looking
(02:57):
for someone else to hand the mail too, because a
woman certainly couldn't be the head chef. But they have
a lot of trouble getting financial backing because financiers are
more hesitant to give money to women chefs. And they
also discussed this issue of whether or not men and
women cook differently, which will be the main topic of today.
(03:19):
But let's let's dive into that financial thing a little
bit more, Christen, because that to me was the most
interesting thing and it made a lot of sense maybe
we talked about women in business before. In fact, memb
our very first podcast was about women in negotiation, about
how women are more fearful to ask for money to
do something, in that case a raise. But that's what
all these women chefs say is that it's a lot
(03:40):
harder to go into a group of investors, people who
are looking to invest in a restaurant and say, hey,
I'm going to run this restaurant. I'm the chef, here's
my food. It's much harder for a woman to do
that as opposed to a man. The investors seemed to
seek the men out. They want to see men with
business experience that some of these female chefs don't have.
And uh, that was what they saw as the real
(04:01):
boys club, not necessarily the coming up in the training kitchens.
That's what people say is often the boys club. But
they said it was more the investment financial side that
was hard to do. Right. The guys are going out,
they're playing golf together, they're playing poker together, and next
thing you know, you know their male colleagues. As Alex
Gorna Shelley from Butter put it, she says, um, you
(04:22):
know she'll have male colleagues come up to her and say, yeah,
I just met with a big group of investors to
open a restaurant. And she says, I'm looking at them
trying to sit my coffee, like, yeah, bro, that must
be rough. And I go home and trade in the
coffee for tequila, wondering if I did something wrong, you know,
because they're working just as hard. Um, And somehow these
these men are still getting more of a leg up.
(04:44):
But it might have to do too with the nature
of being a chef, because it's it kind of caters
more two men in terms of families and in terms
of marriages, because with being ahead chef, you have to
be open and available on nights and weekends and often
(05:04):
pulling late night shifts and uh for and some chefs
say that that's exactly why you don't see more women
executive chefs and uh. In the New York Times article
the group of magazine or Sorry, and then in the
New York Magazine article Yeah, these seven women chefs point
out that that pastry chef is often kind of the
(05:26):
the reserve spot for women because it doesn't demand quite
the same intensive hours and there's lots of a sense
of competition. Now they also asked the chefs about their
training and coming up through professional kitchens. They ask those
kitchens seems sort of traditionally shamelessly sexist. Is that true?
And these women sort of made a point of not
(05:48):
wanting to play a victim card. Absolutely, they you know,
they did have experiences where they've been sort of discriminated against,
or the people that they were working with for betting
against them, you know, straight out if they didn't think
the women would be able to cut it, but all
this would just put their head down and worked through
it and uh and persevered, right, because they want to
be respected as chefs, not respected as women chefs. Kind
(06:10):
of like when we were talking about women directors in Hollywood,
you know, they don't want to be seen as, oh,
you're so great for a woman. No, they just want
to be respected for their art. And the same thing
with these women in food. And just to throw out
a couple of stats to back up what we're saying,
according to star chefs dot com, which is run by
Antoninete Bruno, um, a poll found that of executive chefs
(06:34):
or men people and then um there was an article
on the Huffington's Post talking about food and Wines annual
list of the best new chefs, and the author points
out that in the Best New Chefs two thousand nine,
there was one out of ten of these chefs who, um,
(06:55):
who was a woman, Naomi Pomeroy. And it's just kind
of how it's always been. They'll have, she says, they
had one woman chef in two thousand nine, two thousand seven,
two thousand six, two thousand five and onward. So they
still aren't even getting um, aren't even getting a lot
of recognition for what they're doing coming up through the ranks.
But speaking of rank smally, the history of the kitchen brigade,
(07:21):
that hierarchy that is in the kitchen most like high
end kitchens that you'll see, might explain why the restaurant
atmosphere is dominated by men. And let's talk a little
bit about what that brigade is before we explained that, because, um,
all of my experience of what it's like in a
kitchen is based on movies. Okay, Um, so it took me,
(07:45):
so it's my head or it's true to life, right,
so I'm sure it is. So we have as an
executive chef assisted by a Sioux chef, and then below
that are chefs who are in charge of certain production stations.
So um, you know, based on how the restaurant has
their kitchen structure, you could have a ton of these stations.
You could have a sauce station, a fish station, a
(08:08):
guerrilla station, fried items, roast, cold foods, pastries, um. And
they talk about how working your way up is basically
putting in your time at all of these stations and
getting the go ahead too, you know, ascend to another station. Yeah,
because a kitchen has to operate like a well oiled machine,
you know, sort of like an assembly line. So of
(08:29):
course you have the saucy a who is busily working
on sauces while the shoes shox chef is doing more
the prep. The head chef is sort of the general
in charge of everything, um keeping, keeping all of the
different stations in line. And if it sounds kind of
like a military brigade, that's because lo and behold, the
(08:50):
kitchen system is based on European military organization. And we
found a great article in the Austin Chronicle written by
m Impact which walks us through the history of the
kitchen brigade and um Pack says that from the fourteenth
century on traveling armies had to be fed and cokes
were selected from among the ranks. And so as these
(09:13):
kind of cooking brigades expanded, and these military cookes would
end up cooking for kings and nobility, and so they
would have to prepare these complicated meals and feasts for
huge numbers of people. So it became a pretty significant position.
Um and Trade guild soon developed, and then you had
(09:34):
uniforms for people, and these gills and the rigid hierarchies
started to take place of you know, the head chefs
of the time down to the people doing the prep
work and the more menial tasks. Um and Pack says it.
Until after the French Revolution and the rise of restaurants,
this cast of cooks continued to work exclusively for the aristocracy.
(09:57):
And the classic double breasted white jacket and the hat
the chefs wear even goes back to these times. And
you know, I think that this really helped me understand
why we think of so many chefs as male Kristen.
It's because starting you know, back from these times when
the was tied to going to battle, cooking was a
(10:17):
profession for men, whereas it something we expect women to
do just as part of their nurturing role. Someone's got
to feed that family. You know, the mother starts out
feeding the family through breastfeeding and selling natural that she
would continue to oversee the children's meals as they grow.
And the idea that you brought up that women of
women cooking as an act of love is the concept
(10:39):
that Mike Wise from the San Francisco Chronicle dug into
in this two thousand seven article because he had the
same idea of well, you know, like, do men and
women cook differently? In his theory going into this little
culinary adventure was that, yes, women do cook differently because
they put more of a nurturing air into it, and
(11:00):
he refers to it as mama food. Now we should
note that, you know, as as the title of the
paper might imply San Francisco Chronicle, this is happening in California,
And many of these articles who read made a note
that California is one place where women have really achieved
some culinary equality in the kitchen, most notably Alice Waters.
Christen's favorite things she found out about Alice Waters as
(11:22):
her nickname, her nickname the renegade lunch Lady. But you know,
all the articles point out that she chose not to
run her kitchen in that traditional kitchen style brigade. Everyone
sort of just worked together and uh, you know, her
restaurants acclaimed. And so he was basically going around to
these different restaurants in San Francisco because he had had
his most memorable meals there and coincidentally, all his most
(11:43):
memorable meals were cooked by women, and so it was
kind of surprising to me when he went and interviewed
the female chefs who cooked his memorable meals. They kind
of agreed with his with his hypothesis to an extent
that yes, women did have uh creativity around food, but
it was usually based on their desire to put something
good in your body, to really nurture your body with
(12:04):
what they were giving you, whereas guys who pursued becoming
a chef more interested in like the molecular gastronomy, uh
cooking with the science set. They called it the show
off cooking, right, was show off cooking too. Um. There
was a fat in the nineties of having tall food
like plates that were kind of where the dishes were
(12:25):
built up. Um had a and i'll had a vertical
element to it. And that was kind of the prime
example of this show off food that was really promoted
by male chefs, whereas women were really focusing more and
on the flavors. And I would say, just from the
research that I've done, Molly, that this this idea of
mama food versus show off food, it's something that's pretty
(12:47):
It's a pretty pervasive notion in the culinary world. For instance,
there was a blog post on Serious Eats by um
ed Levine who went to who participated actually in a
panel UM investigating whether it was a taste to panel
to find out whether or not you know men, if
you could tell the difference between men's food and women's food,
and food cooked by men and women. UM. And he
(13:09):
pointed out that there are a lot of preconceived notions
and cliches about the differences between male and female chefs,
and among them, for instance, Living points out that there's
the thought that women chefs will use spices more subtly
than men men's. Male chefs will use a lot of
toys in their cooking, for instance, with all of the
molecular gastronomy stuff that's going on now. Uh, female chefs
(13:33):
like to nurture and feed people's souls, while male chefs
are looking to compete and impress. UM and women's chefs
will be more precise and follow more instructions, whereas men
will kind of go a little more haywire. And then
I thought this was kind of funny. Um Levin says
that male chefs like to cook red meat, whereas female
chefs are more likely to cook pink food and use
(13:54):
edible flowers. And the interesting thing is from the panel,
Levin concluded that, um, while gender does kind of affect
all chef's cook they couldn't discern whether or not a
meal was cooked by male chef or female chefs. And
he says that the thing that has the most influence
over someone's cooking style isn't gender, but rather how they
(14:15):
were trained. And so I think it's interesting that Alice
waters Uh doesn't follow the brigade style and kind of
molds her soux chefs and the other cooks under her
to a different style. And I bet that influences how
the male chefs in her restaurant are cooking. And you know,
one thing that came out of that that Lavian piece
that struck me was that you know, they're talking about
(14:37):
whether they could tell which meal was cooked by which gender,
and they talked about how there was some culinary cross dressing,
and that the male chef produced something that was very pink,
that did have a flour I think, and the female
chef produced, you know, a hardcore meat dish. And I
don't remember what the dishes were at this exact moment,
but um, I think that there does need to be
(14:58):
that awareness that we're cooking differently, we may be cooking
for different reasons. Um. But you know, even in the
in the White article, the San Francisco Chronicle article, there
was a little bit of discomfort and admitting that because
it seems like such a weird backwards thing to admit.
But like I said, when you read some of these
quotes by the female chefs, you're like, wow, I button.
(15:18):
I wouldn't have said that myself, but I guess that's true.
And it might seem like a silly topic to even discuss,
like as long as food tastes good, like who cares
whether or not men and women cooked differently? But I
think that it's also important to talk about because, um,
I think it's one of this idea of you know,
men being the head chefs and restaurants, whereas women are
(15:39):
the head chefs at home. It's kind of fascinating because
you know, for so long, like we've said, cooking has
been completely reserved for women. It kind of embodies this
idea of you know, kind of our like socialized idea
of women as like the nurturers and the givers and um,
the ones who are raising at home, raising the families, um.
(16:02):
Whereas on the flip side, you know, men are able
to pursue cooking as a career, right. And you know,
one of the things that would point out in that
article from San Francisco was that the whole reason we
have show off cooking was because the men had to
do something to differentiate it from cooking for the home,
right he had They had to do something in terms
of adding more toys, the equation, adding more exotic ingredients,
(16:25):
adding something so that when that food got to your plate,
it was almost like you'd have to admit a woman
couldn't have done this. I mean, that's how it sort
of seemed to me. I don't know if I'm reading
too much into it, but yeah, I mean that was
never overly stated, but I think I think you're exactly right.
But whereas today restaurant kitchens are absolutely dominated by men.
(16:46):
You know, we go back to that stat that I
threw out earlier. Nine one of kitchens are run by
male executive chefs. But I think what is going to
be interesting to watch for it's sort of how the
um this male element in the restaurant kitchen is affecting
the male element and kitchens at home. Okay, because, uh,
(17:11):
Time magazine pointed out that there has sort of been
a rise lately in quote unquote dude food, and we're
talking about um all of these male food personalities that
have risen up kind of the male Rachel Ray's, if
you will, UM who have become pretty prominent on UM
food television. For instance, we have people like Anthony Bourdaine.
(17:35):
We have Andrew Zimmern, the cake Boss, Bobby Flay, Um,
Ted Allen, all these guys who have who have become
really prominent not just for you know, being male chefs,
but cooking more. What Time magazine calls dude food sort
of this bringing the making cooking accessible for guys at home.
(17:58):
And it's not just the grill thing, you know, like
men have been the grill masters since the days of
Don Draper, but now they're actually transitioning men into the kitchen,
making it more fashionable, more accessible, and I would say,
molly more masculine for men to get into the kitchen
and make a fabulous meal. And speaking of all these
(18:19):
sort of alpha male chefs that are on television, I
want I want to throw out some statistics from an
article from ad Week that kind of blew my mind.
I was actually an article about toys, what we're gonna
get into a minute, but they were talking about how
the male audience for a show like Iron Chef. Overall
male audience for Iron Chef America is thirty six percent overall.
(18:41):
But if you just look at the two to eleven
age break, so boys age two to eleven, it jumps
to forty And they say that holds true for quite
a few of these cooking shows, is that young boys
are the biggest fans of them. And this was relevant
to this article about toys because if you think about
things like easy bake ovens, like plastic kitchens, all that
(19:04):
is marketed to girls. And so it was really saying
that these boys want to be part of this from
a young age. They're seeing how cool it is on television.
They basically want, you know, one of those plastic kitchens
from Toys r Rest to play with. But they'll get there,
They'll get to the store and it's there between the
barbies and the other dolls, and that's when they get
the message, oh, cooking is a girl thing. I'll have
(19:26):
you know, you can't do that. And it was about, um,
how some of these toy companies are trying to bring
boys more into this, but they're still encountering resistance from
the dad's still encounting some resistance from the dads, and
some of the companies are still holding fast to no, no, no.
We have the most marketing success with targeting these toys
(19:47):
at girls. We're gonna stick with it. But you know,
I think that, uh, I think that that's changing a lot,
at least according to the ad age articles. So I
guess the question in my mind is that while yes,
when in certainly do the line share of the cooking
at home, it's still exactly the way it is. But
I kind of wonder whether, um, this movement to bring
(20:11):
more men into the kitchen um and get more men
interested in cooking at home, if that's going to have
any impact at all on the situation kind of the
gender politics in restaurant kitchens, because I think that it's
kind of going to dismantle this divide between you know,
cooking home cooking as a woman's purview and professional cooking
(20:34):
as you know, something reserved for men. You know what
I'm saying. I do. I do think that where you
might be in the middle. It's a broad statement to make,
but perhaps a generational shift, and that all these young
boys who are growing up with these shows a very
strong male personalities will get interested in cooking and may
do the cooking from a young age in their house.
Whether it's something they go on to pursue professionally, but
(20:56):
that could remain to be seen. But the fact that
we do have more our boys in the kitchen may
help sort of drive that. I agree, Yeah, Smalling, I
think that we've talked about you and I have talked
enough about this topic. I'm curious to know what our
listeners think about this, and especially I'm sure that we've
got plenty of listeners out there, Molly, who are working
(21:16):
in kitchens right now, and I would love to hear
from you guys and see a guy's and girls goodness
listen to me. Um, Molly is shaking her head. Um,
we would love to hear from you and and kind
of know whether or not you know, Molly and I
aren't working in a kitchen. Maybe we're totally off the mark,
or maybe we're spot on. Let us know your thoughts
on this, this idea of male cooking versus female cooking.
(21:39):
And really we have just hit on the tip of
the iceberg. Let us the appetizer, course of the appetizer. Yes, Um,
when it comes to gender and cooking, there's so much
more that we could talk about. This is really just
the start of the conversation. So let us hear from you. Mom.
Stuff at how stuff works dot com. And I'll read
(22:04):
an email from someone who wrote in this is from Sarah,
but not the Sarah that I mentioned at the beginning
of the show. Um. Another Sarah wrote about the podcast
episode why do Men Propose? And she writes, not all
of us lads are afraid to kick the norms. My
now fiance mentioned that after we've been dating about six months,
that he wasn't interested in relationships that aren't marriage and
(22:25):
family bound. No pressure. But if I ever realized that
I wasn't that serious would be time for quits. I
took another six months to think about it, and one
morning I propose appo of nothing. I have a full
time salary while he scrapes by on music commission. So
we both knew it was going to have to be
my decision. We went together and picked matching copper rings
for five dollars. Is now a year later and when
we married this Saturday, so happy wedding. Yeah. Absolutely, I'm
(22:51):
the bread winner while he stays home intense the garden,
does the laundry and dishes and fixes up the house
and makes a little money with his music. We both
cook and clean. And yes, I am wearing a white
dress and taking his name, so I say her. Ladies
in the world, don't you dare marry a man you
couldn't propose to, even if it happens that you didn't,
And don't less selly magazines and blogs tell you not
to pull the trigger yourself. They certainly don't speak for everyone.
(23:12):
All right, I've got an email here from Kristen not muscles.
She says, when I was a young wife and mother living, oh,
I should mention this is in relation to our condoms.
Condoms Condoms episode She fell a little story for us
about when she was a young wife and mother living
in rural West Cork, Ireland. So she went to the
(23:33):
village and to visit the Kennists, which is what they
call pharmacy over there, and she screwed up her courage
to the sticking point and boldly asked for some condoms.
So my husband had bought condoms in Dublin and Cork City,
so even though Ireland is a Catholic state, I knew
the condoms are available. This was the late ninety nineties.
For crying out loud any who, the elderly lady behind
(23:55):
the counter gave me the dirtiest look I've ever been given,
in a scandalized voice with a thick West Cork accent, said,
we certainly don't sell such things. Just try to imagine
how embarrassing that was. And it was crowded at the
cash register, and it was my own tiny village, my
neighbors crowding around the register to see me turn beat red.
Turns out In Ireland, individual pharmacies can choose whether to
(24:17):
sell condoms and facilitate their customers going to Hell, or
they can take the moral high ground. Thank you, Kristen
for maybe one of the most unique condom buying stories
I've ever heard, so there are some more coming. Yeah,
you guys have some unique condom buying storm story. They
are wonderful. So whether you want to talk about condoms
(24:39):
are cooking, give us an email. It's mom Stuff how
stuff first dot com. You can also follow us on
Twitter and Facebook and so anytime you're on the internet,
we should be close to you. Stalk us online basically
including our blog It's called Stuff Momar told you, and
it's at how stuff works dot com for moral this
(24:59):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how staff works
dot com. Want more how stuff works? Check out our
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