What is Nouvelle Cuisine?

By Troy Pentico


The 1970's brought a great       not necessarily mean less.    
deal of upheaval and new ideas                                 
to the forefront, and the        One of the main goals of      
world of cuisine was no          nouvelle cuisine was to excite
exception. In June of 1975,      more than just the sense of   
the British magazine Harpers     taste. A skilled nouvelle chef
Queen coined a term to refer     would be able to produce a    
to a new type of food that was   meal that was artistically    
sweeping the world: Nouvelle     arranged on the plate and     
Cuisine.                         contained a wonderful mix of  
                                 smells, textures, and flavors.
What is nouvelle cuisine? It     Oils and fresh spices were    
is, in a word, the marriage of   used extensively to bring out
health-conscious California      the natural flavor of the     
to traditional France.           fresh vegetables and pastas in
Consider it an updated version   these meals.                  
of French cuisine- flavorful                                   
food with a light-handed,        The way we cook at home today 
healthy approach. It's           owes a great deal to nouvelle 
difficult to define nouvelle     cuisine. Olive oil,           
cuisine in more specific terms   vinaigrette, and fresh herbs  
because of its huge impact on    are common today in many      
the way food in general is       American kitchens, mainly due
prepared today. Nouvelle         to the influence of the       
cuisine opened doors to a new    nouvelle cuisine movement.    
generation of restaurant-goers   Restaurants, too, have taken  
who loved rich tastes and        their cue: before the         
fresh combinations, but didn't   appearance of nouvelle        
want their bodies to pay for     cuisine, portions were heavier
it later.                        and larger, and consumers     
                                 went to restaurants expecting
With this new lighter menu       to come out full, but not     
came a new style of cooking as   necessarily sated. Nowadays   
well. Chefs in nouvelle          fine restaurants base their   
cuisine restaurants used         expertise on combining        
shorter cooking times and        flavors, not smothering them;
fresher ingredients, cutting     and on their presenting food  
down on the multiple steps       that satisfies, not simply    
that got in the way of the       fills, an empty stomach.      
natural flavors of the food.                                   
In a world that was waking up    There is still a debate on    
to faster-moving times and       whether nouvelle cuisine has  
stricter diets, this new         disappeared from the radar. It
cuisine caught on with           has certainly influenced      
incredible speed.                other fields of cooking, but  
                                 nobody is sure if it can be   
Like any other trend,            considered a movement of its  
nouvelle cuisine was often       own in the current times. Then
widely misunderstood and         again, a trend that catches   
misrepresented. Depending on     on so quickly is almost always
what regional restaurant you     destined to develop in other  
visited, you might have been     ways and spread to other      
subjected to a low-calorie       things, losing its identity as
meal with tiny portions and      a separate entity along the   
been told it was nouvelle        way.                          
cuisine. Many chefs and                                        
consumers alike did not grasp                                  
the concept that lighter did                                   

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