Mère (restaurateur)
Mère (the French language word for 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.
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".
[1][2] Since then multiple talented female cooks, many of whom had no formal training, have been called by the title Mère.
[3]: 9 [4] 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.
[9][10] According to Jean Vitaux, the Mères of Lyon "shaped an original, feminine and regional definition of gastronomy.
Their influence and impact helped define and shape classic French cooking in modern times.
[13]In the 1830s[14] in the Charpennes quarter, Mère Brigousse or Brugousse,[14] also known as La Mère des Amoureux[14] (mother of lovers), was famous for a dish called Tétons de Vénus (breasts of Venus), a dish of giant dumplings popular among groups of young men dining stag[1][2][15] for bachelor parties.
[14] Mère Filloux or Fillioux,[16] born Françoise Fayolle in 1865 in Puy-de-Dôme,[4][17] is called La Reine des Poulardes and Empress of the Lyon Mothers.
[4][18][19][20] She was also noted for her truffle-flavored cream soup and poached chicken, artichoke hearts stuffed with foie gras, quenelles and crawfish, and lobster with shallots, tomatoes, wine, and brandy.
"[1] She married Louis Filloux in 1900[4] and bought a restaurant at 73 Rue Duquesne in Lyon's 6th arrondissement, where frequent customers were Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, who called her "an artist" at carving a chicken.
[1][21] She trained other Michelin star winners, including Paul Bocuse, who worked for her at the restaurant in Col de la Luère[7] and also specialized in half-mourning chicken,[20] and Bernard Pacaud.
[1] She was a cook at a restaurant for four years before opening La Voûte in 1943 on the Rhône in Lyon's 2nd arrondissement.
[1][17] Her specialty was a sauerkraut with champagne,[2] but when other restaurants in the area started to copy it, she took it off her menu and focussed on regional specialities such as tried tripe with chervil, pike quenelles, Lyons salad, baked cardoon with bone marrow, and bugnes.
[1]: 21 Her specialties included Bresse chicken, the dish that made her famous and earned her her first Michelin star.
[1] They moved to Rue Saint-André-des-Arts in the 5th arrondissement and she continued to produce Burgundian dishes such as poached pike with beurre blanc, roast guinea fowl, and lamb stew.
[1] Her specialties included pâté en croûte, cassoulet, veal with onions and bacon, lamb stew, lentils with salt pork, braised beef with carrots, and chicken in red wine.
[1] Mère Crouzier was born in Périgord and from 1945 to 1986 worked at La Croix-Blanche, one of the oldest inns in France, in Chaumont-sur-Tharonne in Sologne.
[1] Mère Adrienne Biasin, born in a small village near Parme, opened Chez la Vielle at 37 Rue de l'Arbre-Sec in Paris when she was 25 and operated it from 1958 thru 1993, initially serving mostly workers from les Halles.
[1] Her Christmas menu was published by Marie Claire in 1976 and she afterward complained about the deluge of new customers, saying "They all want only these dishes.
[1] Her specialities were traditional Niçoise dishes including trouchia, an omelet with bay, cheese, and chard, tourta de blea, a chard pie, pissaldiera, a pizza-like onion tart, estocaficada, a tomato-based fish stew, doba a la nissarda, a beef stew served with ravioli, and socca, a crisp garbanzo-flour griddled crepe.
