Are cooks women and chefs men?

[mj.scuba]

Are cooks women and chefs men? I've recently seen a billboard ad for Waitrose featuring Heston Blumenthal and Delia Smith and it says something like "Britains best know cook, Britains top chef" so why have they put Heston as a chef and Delia as a cook, are chef and cook masuline and femenine terms for the same job, or is it sexist?

[rubydazzler]

I don't think Delia is actually a chef? Does she or has she ever run a restaurant/hotel kitchen? I think that's the difference.

[taxman]

I don't think Delia is actually a chef? Does she or has she ever run a restaurant/hotel kitchen? I think that's the difference.

 

She is a cook. She makes really lovely food and has been on a 40 year mission to educate the British about food. I'd like to go round her house for a three course meal and a chat about football.

 

Heston would serve me snail porridge whilst whale song was piped through headphones and half his customers were being treated in hospital with food poisoning.

 

It's a tough call but I'd rather take my chances with her cooking, than his cheffing

[HeadingNorth]

Originally, chef was an abbreviation of "Chef de cuisine" - chief of food, ie. the head cook in a kitchen.

 

It's come to mean just about any professional cook, although there is a tendency to refer to men as chefs and women as cooks. This is semantically incorrect.

[rubydazzler]

What HeadingNorth said ...

 

The term chef has often been misused, it really means that you are the Head of a kitchen team.

After training (fresh from school when you are still way too slow to work in a busy restaurant and havn't really got a clue, but think you have) you are a Commis, same as the guy or woman who started training straight in a restaurant. Then if you are good, and have learned to clean every aspect of the kitchen over and over again, do everybody elses ****y job with a smile, work extra hours, extra days, show some ability you become Chef de Partie get your own section perhaps, but not much more money than the commis. After that you might become Sous Chef and then eventually Head Chef, if you havn't packed your job in by then, because of the long hours, the bullying, the shouting, the heat etc.

So when you become the Chef, the leader of a team of kitchen workers, you have climbed a ladder with a strict hirachy in which there is only one boss (the Chief aka Chef) whose word is the gospel. No discussions, no arguing, no knowing better. The cooks cook what and how the Chef wants them to cook.