Mère
female cooks of the 18th through 20th centuries in France
Mère (French: [mɛʁ], lit. 'mother') is an honorary title given to talented female professional cooks, many of whom had no formal training, in France during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Between 1759 and the end of the 20th century multiple women have been called Mère. Their work turned the city of Lyon and its environs into the gastronomic center of France and the world, and the most famous of them, Mère Brazier, is regarded as "the mother of modern French cooking".
History
The first mentions of a Mère were in 1759 when Mère Guy, who cooked at an inn on the banks of the Rhône, became famous for her eel stew and in the early 1800s Mère Brigousse in the Charpennes district became known for her dumplings. Since then multiple talented female cooks, many of whom had no formal training, have been called by the title Mère. The practice of calling female cooks 'Mère' gained popularity during the 19th century, when gastronomic societies were popular, and reached its peak in the interwar years when talented cooks who had been working for wealthy bourgeois families were losing their positions due to changing household economics and automobile tourism was developing, so they set up in business as restaurateurs.
Lyon
Lyon is known as the "cradle" of the Mères, and the Mères had a profound effect on Lyonnaise cuisine, according to Curnonsky turning Lyon into the food capital of France and the world. According to Jean Vitaux, the Mères of Lyon "shaped an original, feminine and regional definition of gastronomy." Writing for Medium, Francois de Melogue said "(they) brought the gastronomic spotlight to Lyon, the undisputed gastronomical capital of France. Their influence and impact helped define and shape classic French cooking in modern times." According to Eater, their work "secured the city’s reputation for exceptional cuisine."
The first mention of a Mère of Lyons was in 1759 when Mère Guy, who cooked at an inn near the Rhône in Mulatières and became famous for her eel stew or eel matelote and her crawfish gratin. In the 1800s her granddaughter also became known as Mère Guy, "La Génie" (The Spirit).
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This entry incorporates text from “Mère” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.