Jules Gouffé

Martin Jules Gouffé (; 1807 – 28 February 1877) was a French chef and pâtissier, nicknamed ("The apostle of decorative cooking").

He had a deep impact on the development of French gastronomy by publishing unusually simple and precise recipes in his cookery books, of which the two best-known are (1867) and (1873).

Life and career Gouffé was born in 1807 at 2 rue Saint-Merri, in what is now the 4th arrondissement of Paris. His father, Pierre-Louis Gouffé, was a well-known pastry cook, and Jules and his two brothers, Alphonse and Hippolyte, all trained under him. Alphonse later became head pastry cook to Queen Victoria and Hippolyte, head chef to Count Shuvalov of Russia. Unlike them, Jules spent his entire career in Paris. Carême was impressed and took on the sixteen-year-old Gouffé as a trainee. Fifty years later, Gouffé wrote:blockindent|I began my first campaign at the grand ball which the city of Paris gave in 1823 to the Duc d'Angoulême, following the expedition to Spain. On that memorable evening, we served 7,000 people. Carême's team was responsible for the cold buffet consisting of 100 large pieces ... and 300 cold starters. We were seventeen workers and our work lasted four days.

In 1838 Gouffé married Anne Suzanne Mercier. He remained under Carême's tutelage until 1840, when he opened a pâtisserie in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The establishment flourished: workers there soon numbered twenty-eight. He sold the shop in 1855, and was persuaded by his long-time friends Charles Monselet, Baron Brisse and Alexandre Dumas senior to take over the management of the kitchens of the Jockey-Club de Paris. His biographer Edmond Neirinck writes that the Universal Exhibition of 1867 allowed Gouffé to express all his talent,

Less than four years later, during the Siege of Paris in 1870–71, when the Prussians blockaded the city, Gouffé, like other chefs, had to exercise ingenuity and a willingness to use unfamiliar ingredients in dishes such as horse soup, mule's liver and roast leg of dog.

Books While chef to the Jockey Club, Gouffé began writing cookery books. They were published not only in France but in translation elsewhere; the English versions were translated by his brother Alphonse. In the preface to his first book, (1867), Gouffé wrote:

As a chef, Gouffé became known ("The apostle of decorative cooking"),

In The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson writes that Gouffé's most successful book was , "a comprehensive work which ran to nearly 900 pages and was distinguished by a number of innovations. The typographical design was clear and spacious, and the book was beautifully illustrated with nearly 200 engravings and colour lithographs". In Davidson's view, the content matched the presentation: "Gouffé wrote in a limpid style, comprehensible by all and exhibiting a standard of literary craftsmanship which equalled the author’s skill in the kitchen. This was, moreover, the first French cookery book to give metric measurements and cooking times in a systematic way". and molecular gastronomy researchers, such as Hervé This.

Works All published by , Paris TitleEnglish titleDateRef *Le Livre de cuisine The Royal Cookery Book 1867 *Le Livre des conserves The Book of Preserves 1869 *Le Livre de pâtisserie The Royal Book of Pastry and Confectionery 1873 *Le Livre de soupes et des potages The Book of Soups 1875