 Forgive me, I actually have to read my text. So celebrity chefs. There have always been celebrity chefs whose skill and creativity made them famous. But the passage of time usually means we know little more about them than their names. From ancient Greece and Rome, there's only one cookbook that survives in full that attributed to the Roman cook, Apesius, which dates actually from the end of the Roman Empire. I'm going to talk about the Western world. But I should point out that there were famous chefs in many places and periods, notably in the spectacular gastronomic cultures of the Islamic Caliphate of Baghdad, the Ottoman Empire, and Tang, Song, and Ming, China. But to begin with the Greeks, a chef named Miticus of Syracuse is mentioned by Plato and according to the Sophist Maximus of Tyre, Miticus was as great in the art of cookery as Phidius in sculpture. And since Phidius was the most famous sculptor of the ancient world, this is high praise indeed. Yet we have only one recipe attributed to Miticus that we know of. And I'll read it to you because it's really short. How to make ribbon fish. One, cut off the head of a ribbon fish. Two, wash and cut in slices. Three, pour cheese and oil over it and cook. So this is a little disappointing. We're told by Atheneus, the most accomplished gourmand of the classical world, that a certain glaucus of locre invented an excellent sauce called hisophagma. But we have no other information about this guy. Atheneus says that the sauce was made with fried blood, honey, milk, cheese, herbs, and sylphium. Sylphium was a sharp and sour tasting plant that grew in North Africa, a favorite condiment to the ancient world. And I put this in the past tense because it became extinct. It was so sought after. Legend has it that the Roman emperor Nero publicly consumed the last sylphium ever foraged. The first renowned chef in the Western world whose life we know something about is Guillaume Tyrell, known as Tyavan, who lived from about 1310 to 1395. He was chef to two kings of France, and he qualifies as an undoubted celebrity. King Charles V bestowed on him a knighthood and a coat of arms here depicted from his brass tomb cover. And on this tomb, Tyavan is dressed as a knight in armor and a sword, flanked by his first and second wife, not simultaneously. One died. Notice the dog at his feet and at the feet of the wife on his left. You can see that his coat of arms consists of two groups of three roses, top and bottom, with three stew pots along the center of the field. As symbols of chivalry, the pots may seem to imply contempt or amusement, but they remind the viewer that the chef was honored for his craft. At any rate, Tyavan, who designed his own tombstone, was quite pleased with this heraldic device. Tyavan was part author of a medieval cookbook known as the Viandier, which consisted of recipes from before Tyavan was born, but to which he seems to have added. The oldest version of the Viandier is this 15th century parchment scroll in the Cantona Library of the Valais in Sion, Switzerland. And there are over 150 cookbook manuscripts, from the 13th through 15th century, many of them still unedited. Nothing is further from reality than the Hollywood image of crude medieval dining in films such as Beckett, well, any number of films, where haunches of roasted meat are torn apart without regard for manners or ceremony. In fact, medieval cuisine was complicated, pecanth, subtle, and served according to very elaborate rules. So, for example, there are several medieval handbooks of carving, just of carving instructions, one of which from England in the 15th century is so finicky that it matches particular verbs to each cut-up fish or animal. So, you unbrace a mallard, but you tranche a sturgeon, you dismember a heron, but you tame a crab. And if you make a mistake in this terminology, you've shown your ignorance. All authorities agree, by the way, that crab is the hardest. According to an experienced household manager named John Russell, writing in the 16th century, crab is a slut to carve. Medieval chefs loved trompe-loy. Meatballs glazed with parsley sauce to look like green apples, or cooked animals that appear to be alive, as with this pheasant, made according to a recipe of thievon, in which the feathers and skin are carefully sewn back onto the roasted bird. They also had a ponderous sense of humor. Here is another dish of thievons called coque au mai, helmeted rooster, in which the rooster is mounted on a suckling, glazed suckling pig. The renowned chefs of the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque eras, were in the employ of great noblemen or princes. And they put on amazing banquets, and we have very few records of them worrying about any sort of financial bottom line. That doesn't mean they weren't free of stress. Francois Vattel committed suicide when the fish failed to arrive at Chantilly for a banquet celebrating a visit from King Louis XIV. But actually, he was not a chef, as much as a household official of the France de Condes. He had some other problems as well. But his fate has become a legend, emblematic of the pressures under which chefs operate. And you all know, I think, the tragic suicide of Bernard de Loisot in 2003, caused supposedly by his apprehension that the Guide Michelin would take away his three-star ranking. Chefs of this era also had to put up with annoying interventions from their employers. This painting of the Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York, is entitled The Marvelous Sauce by a painter named Jean-Georges Vibère. And it shows a cardinal instructing his dubious and harassed-looking chef in How to Make a Sauce. All of these irritations notwithstanding, there was a lot of fun and excitement. Just random example of many possibilities. A rather modest dinner served in 1524 during Lent to 24 guests at the court of the Duke of Ferrara in Italy included three courses, each with 45 dishes. 30 of them, the first two courses, were made with sturgeon. The head cooked in white sauce with pomegranate seeds. Sturgeon meatballs in sauce served on bread. Sturgeon slices in pistachio sauce. Sturgeon pies. Sturgeon with cherries and dates. Caviar. Sturgeon pasta fried with oranges. Sturgeon tripe on bread, and so forth. The author of this meal, a chef named Giovanni Battista Rossetti, was greatly admired in his time. Perhaps the most significant divide in the history of chefs and their fame is before and after the invention of the restaurant. Until the late 18th century, when restaurants were first established in Paris, great chefs cooked for ecclesiastical, aristocratic, or princely employers. The leading chef of the 19th century, here, Marie-Antonin Corème, followed this older career mode. He ran the kitchens of the Prince Talleyrand, the Prince Regent of England, the Baron de Rothschild, and was offered a job by the Russian czar, which he refused. Corème was certainly a celebrity chef, but he was also the last to spend his entire career in the employ of private individuals. He was famous because of his definitive published recipes, but few people had an opportunity to sample his cooking. Contrast with the experiences of another authoritative French chef, Auguste Escoffier, whose career closes the 19th and opens the 20th century. Escoffier collaborated with César Ritz, manager of the Savoy in London, and the Ritz Hotel in Paris. And then after Ritz had a nervous crisis, Escoffier returned to London as the chef at the Carlton Hotel. On one occasion, Escoffier prepared a dinner for Kaiser Wilhelm II, featuring his creation, Ville Orloff. The German ruler told the chef that while he, Wilhelm II, was emperor of Germany, Escoffier was, quote, the emperor of chefs, unquote. Escoffier cooked a magnificent one-off meal for the Kaiser, but his regular job was for an immense affluent public. Restaurants have allowed chefs to have a large audience. An invention of the 18th century, the restaurant was distinct from a tavern, chop house, in or takeout establishment. All of these have always existed. The restaurant was new because it was a destination, not a convenience. Rather than eating at a crowded board, whatever the landlord set out, you could arrive at a range of possible times, sit at a separate table with your friends, and order from an extensive selection of dishes. Restaurant chefs were no longer dependent on the whims of wealthy patrons. This does not mean, however, that Grand Cuisine as a spectacle was over. 19th century restaurants offered dishes as splendid as those of the Middle Ages, requiring days to prepare, immense cooking skill and decorative ability, such as this game purée on the top and the partridge chartreuse on the bottom. The nature of the meal service and the look of the table setting changed dramatically in the 19th century. The old, so-called French form of service placed the entire first course on the table before the guests entered the dining room. This provided a dazzling spectacle of food on magnificent serving dishes arranged in colorful patterns and shapes. There were only two or three courses for French service, but each one might consist of dozens of dishes. No single diner could try everything, but the meal was convivial in the sense that you depended on neighbors to pass things to you or on footmen standing behind you. In 1805, the first celebrity restaurant critic, Grimoire de la Reignière, ridiculed as excessive the dinners typical of the era before the French Revolution where 60 guests might be served over 120 dishes just for the first course. And for 60 diners, he advocated a frugal 35 dishes, nearly for each of three courses, a modest 115 in total. Who were these people? How could they dine like this? I don't have a good answer for this. The French service was perfected in the setting of the palace while the Russian service came into favor with the advent of the restaurant. Russian service gradually took over between 1830 and 1880, and here there were fewer dishes per course, but many courses. This is what we are familiar with. It meant the table was more decorated because the profusion of food did not itself provide the required grand effect. Flowers, apane, wine glasses, chargers, plates, fish forks, the way he looked of the Victorian era replaced the small plates and minimal table decor of the French service where the food itself provided the beauty. Modernist restaurants have tended to dispense with the starch table cloths and multiple wine glasses look, but now the presentation of the food has become once more highly stylized. From the point of view of the chef, both systems had advantages and disadvantages. The French service meant there was no way for the food to be piping hot, obviating that problem. A huge number of dishes were prepared, but there were only a few courses. In the kitchen, the Russian service meant a constant stream of orders bringing dishes back and forth, and it required lots of waiters and precision timing. The Russian meal service is also either long or rushed. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York from 1862 until 1892, said he expected a 14 course dinner to take two hours and 20 minutes, 10 minutes per course, but he was quite happy upon request to accelerate the speed to allow eight minutes per course, so the repast might conclude in under two hours, and my original intention was that this would evoke gasps of astonishment, but since Noma is able to do this, maybe not. Now historically, most restaurant chefs were men, while the overwhelming majority of domestic cooking was performed by women. This is a unique profile in which professional and home practitioners have been divided by sex. Some exceptional women did manage to become renowned chefs. The so-called Maire Lyonnaise made the food of Lyon famous and created a self-perpetuating gastronomic culture. In New Orleans, Madame Elizabeth Kettering Begay was the most celebrated chef at the beginning of the 20th century. Of German origin, she mastered the Creole cooking of New Orleans. Her restaurant's main meal service was at 11 o'clock, a version of the German institution known as the second breakfast. Here, intended for the convenience of butchers when they finished their business in the neighboring meat market. Discovered by tourists around 1890, these Bohemian breakfasts, as they were called, became wildly popular and constitute probably the first form of brunch, a particular American passion. Liver with bacons and onions was Madame Begay's most famous dish. Again, maybe a little disappointing. Restaurants have allowed chefs to be creative and to become celebrated, not just for mastery of classic dishes, such as chartreuse of partridge, but as inventors of new things. So, Ranhoffer's lobster à la Nuburg, at Delmonico's, Escoffier's Peshmelba, named after the great opera singer or Jules Alchatorre's Oysters Rockefeller at Antoine's in New Orleans. Of course, there are disadvantages to restaurants. The public is inclined to be unpredictable, fickle, easily bored, heard like, and not always appreciative of quality. And I say this, of course, as a non-chef and member of that public. Restaurants in the 19th and 20th century renowned for their food have not always had famous chefs. Our colleague Alain Sanderin is an exception, but most great Parisian restaurants, such as Taillon to the Tour d'Argent, were known for their proprietors and front-of-the-house managers. Restaurants in the French provinces were more likely to be run by chef owners, such as Fernand Poin of the legendary La Périmide in Vienne or François Bise of the Auberges de Père Bise at Talois. The rise of modern celebrity chefs means a change in the balance between the restaurant as a stage set by its managers, where the chef is literally in the background, and the chef-driven restaurant. The waning of France's traditional dominance over what is defined as Grand Cuisine is a key factor in building a new kind of fame. As long as French cuisine was the international standard, the best chefs were considered master craftsmen, practicing a received skill, a body of knowledge that could be traced back to what Taillavent or the chefs at Versailles learned and later taught. The end of unquestioned French power to define gastronomy for the entire world is perhaps the most significant event in the modern history of restaurants and cuisine. And I say this not as something that I think is a great idea, but just as something that has happened. In 1969, the restaurant guide, authors Henri Goh and Christiane Mio were asked by the American magazine Holiday, what is the greatest restaurant in the world? And they contemptuously dismissed most of the globe, including Italy. Goh said of Italy, I don't have a single exciting memory except for the scampi at Harry's Bar in Venice. For Spain, ordinary and heavy food. For Denmark, they agreed that little children like Danish food a lot. As for the United States, the best restaurants there were French anyway, so why bother? Mulling over about 20 eligible restaurants in France, Goh and Mio came up with a tie for first place between the restaurant of Paul Bocuse and that of Jean-And-Pierre Toigreau. This holiday interview was a last manifestation of the serene assumption of the superiority of French gastronomy before La Nouvelle Cuisine of the 1970s started breaking it apart. As it happens, Goh and Mio both named and championed Nouvelle Cuisine. Goh and Mio were prescient in this article in one observation, particularly, it seems to me. The difference between the Toigreau brothers who in 1969 they said were working for the sake of art within an established tradition and Bocuse who they said was working for glory and whose food was lighter, more playful and creative. Partridge chartreuse to be sure, but Bocuse used juice from the pressed partridges rather than the meat of the bird. Restaurant cuisine and the outlook of chefs would tend to follow the Bocuse example in the next decades and in fact, the Toigreaux themselves took this past as well rather than serving as custodians of an unchanging heritage. This is not to say that chefs suddenly discovered innovation whereas before they had merely followed precedent. Grandmasters of the past like Scappi, La Varene, Carem and Escoffier made earth shaking changes in cuisine. But they replaced one authoritative system with another. What has happened since the 1970s, accelerating, since the 1990s I would say is the fragmentation of authority. The use, the absence of any agreed upon code, whether an old one or a new one. Chefs still influence each other of course, especially with regard to technique, but less in the creation and definition of canonical dishes. What we are seeing in the 21st century is fidelity not to tradition but to ingredients. This is appropriate to a food world undermined by industrial processing, agricultural unsustainability, mass market food and ecological damage. So Alice Waters just as an example. Leading chefs in recent years have tended to see themselves as advocates for a terroir, but they have expanded the definition of basic ingredients found in that locality. To include wild plants or previously ignored varieties, I can't remember how many kinds of horseradish renais says grow in Denmark, but it's over a hundred. Chefs have encouraged the restoration of forgotten breeds of agricultural products and livestock. A chef is not a contemporary artist exactly who can simply do away with traditional techniques and training, but the way is open. It seems to me as an outside observer for more creativity than in the past and that gives chefs more opportunities to achieve artistic and creative status. Yet, as Alex Attila has said, creativity isn't doing something that nobody has ever done before. It's doing the same thing that everybody does, but doing it better. And ideally, there should be a harmony between history and innovation. I hope it's not just banal to conclude my time with you by saying that achieving a creative vision as a chef comes from actual cooking and only secondarily from shaping a personality or taking positions on politics and sustainability. Our theme, what is cooking, represents more than a call to return to the stove, but I think a rejuvenated sense of our surroundings and our history. Thanks so much.