France

In parallel with the eighteenth-century English boom in domestic cookbooks, in France several giants in the culinary world were to influence the direction of all future cooking within the country and well beyond. These cooks refined haute cuisine and launched a fresh style they called nouvelle cuisine. The trend had begun at the start of the century with Massialot, and he was joined by Vincent La Chapelle, a Frenchman who, as head cook to the Earl of Chesterfield, worked in England and the cultural center of The Hague, picking up ideas on both sides of the Channel.