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Joël Robuchon was sent to a seminary at the age of twelve to become a priest and ended up in the monastery kitchen. By fifteen, he was apprenticed to a chef instead. He became a Meilleur Ouvrier de France in 1976, and when he opened Jamin in Paris in 1981, the restaurant had three Michelin stars within three years, faster than anyone had achieved it before.
His best-known contribution is also his simplest. Pommes purée, potato purée made with roughly 250 grams of butter per kilo of potatoes and passed through a sieve twice. It is now served in restaurants all over the world and is probably the most copied side dish in modern French cooking.
In 2003 he opened the first L'Atelier, with counter seating facing an open kitchen and French dishes served in small portions instead of white tablecloths and a tasting menu. The format spread to major cities around the world and has been copied by countless others.
This book is arranged encyclopaedically and covers everything from vinaigrettes to game. It is sometimes called France's Joy of Cooking, which is a fair description of what it is for. Robuchon died in 2018.
Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 610
Language: English
First published: 2008
The Kitchen Lab Selection
It should be said straight away that this is not the most representative Robuchon. If you want to see what the man actually did, look at the restaurant work, and that is unfortunately no longer in print. This is instead 800 recipes of French home cooking, without a single photograph and with instructions that assume you already know a fair amount.
But Robuchon belongs on a cookbook shelf. He held 31 Michelin stars at once, more than anyone ever has, and Gault Millau named him chef of the century when he was 45. He is moreover the last truly great figure in the classical French line, before Adrià and the others moved the centre of gravity somewhere else entirely.
That he of all people chose to write about what you cook at home says something. He also stopped at 50, at the top, because he felt it was enough. He then changed his mind, but that is another story.
