Celebrity chef

Early

The earliest chef to be credited with being a celebrity was the 16th-century Italian, Bartolomeo Scappi. He was the personal chef to Pope Pius V, and is credited with writing one of the first modern recipe books, Opera. The 19th-century French chef Marie-Antoine Carême has also since been referred to as a celebrity of his era, due to the complexity of his recipes.

Celebrity chefs

The first chef to achieve widespread fame and celebrity status was Alexis Soyer. Born in France, Soyer became the most celebrated cook in early Victorian England. In 1837, he became chef de cuisine at the Reform Club in London, where he designed the kitchens with Charles Barry. His exceptional cooking skills were combined with an excellent eye to marketing and self-publicity to ensure that he molded the public's perception of him. His image was even successfully used as a trademark to market a range of bottled sauces produced by Crosse & Blackwell.

Soyer also invented many popular new recipes and foods - he produced and marketed a popular drink made of a variety of fruits mixed with aerated water, which he called 'Soyer’s Nectar Soda Water'. His special dish at the Club, Soyer's Lamb Cutlets Reform, is still on the Club menu today. At the Reform Club, he instituted many innovations including cooking with gas, refrigerators cooled by cold water, and ovens with adjustable temperatures. His kitchens were so famous that they were opened for conducted tours. When Queen Victoria was crowned on 28 June 1838, he prepared a breakfast for 2,000 people at the Club.

He was also well known for his philanthropy. During the Great Irish Famine in April 1847, he implemented a network of soup kitchens to feed the poor. His "famine soup" was served to thousands of the poor for free. Soyer wrote a number of bestselling books about cooking, one of them even selling over a quarter of a million copies. His 1854 book A Shilling Cookery for the People was a recipe book for ordinary people who could not afford elaborate kitchen utensils or large amounts of exotic ingredients. Other works included The Gastronomic Regenerator (1846), The modern Housewife or ménagère (1849) and Soyer's Culinary Campaign (1857).

Television celebrity chefs

The earliest television celebrity chef in the UK was Fanny Cradock. She appeared on British television for over two decades, from the 1950s through the 1970s. She originally became popular following the publication of her first cookbook in 1949, The Practical Cook, and after gaining a cult following with cookery demonstrations in theatres around the country. Her television career came to an end when she appeared as a judge on reality television show The Big Time in 1976. She appeared to pretend to retch as contestant Gwen Troake described her menu for former Prime Minister Edward Heath. Presenter Esther Rantzen later described the incident as like "Cruella de Vil meets Bambi".

Described as America's first celebrity chef, Julia Child first appeared on American television in 1963 on the Boston-based WGBH-TV. She soon starred in her own show The French Chef, which was followed by other shows. At the time of her death she was credited by the media as having "demystified the art of cuisine for the home cook and inspired many of today's celebrity chefs". Such was her impact on American cuisine, her kitchen has been preserved on display at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

In recent years, gaining a Michelin star has increased a chef's profile sufficiently for them to be featured on television and become a household name. Marco Pierre White became the youngest chef in the world to achieve three Michelin stars, which went on to make him a household name and have one of his cookbooks, White Heat, described in 2005 as "possibly the most influential recipe book of the last 20 years" by food critic Jay Rayner. More typical of Michelin starred restaurants in recent years, the success of Gordon Ramsay led to the commissioning of five part television series Boiling Point by the UK's Channel 4 which followed the chef as he opened his first solo restaurant, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. While Joël Robuchon, Alain Ducasse and Gordon Ramsay all run restaurant empires which each hold more than ten Michelin stars, Ramsay is arguably the more famous chef due to his number of television shows broadcast internationally both in the UK, the United States and around the world.

Dedicated food related television channels have also become a medium for chefs to become household names, for example in the United States, the Food Network features shows from celebrity chefs such as Paula Deen and Bobby Flay. While in the UK, the Good Food Channel has shows with chefs such as Rick Stein and Jamie Oliver. Certain chefs, such as Nigella Lawson have had shows featuring on channels in more than one country.

Influences

Celebrity chefs have changed the style of food that the general public consume. For example, despite the fact that Asian cuisine had been available in the UK since before the Victorian era, it was only due to the influence of chefs like Ken Hom and Madhur Jaffrey in the early eighties that the public became aware that these anglicised meals were not the authentic article. Tying into his first television series in 1984, the book Ken Hom's Chinese Cookery sold 1.2 million copies in the UK alone. Chef Jamie Oliver ran a campaign in the UK in his television show Jamie's School Dinners to introduce better eating habits in school dinners for schoolchildren. The campaign saw a change in food standard requirements across the UK, and the show was exported to the United States for the same purpose.

Endorsements

Endorsements by celebrity chefs have led to increased demands for certain food products. Both Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson caused a surge in sales of goose fat after including it in recipes, and Ken Hom's first television series caused a surge in sales of peking ducks. Endorsements by Delia Smith became so well known that the "Delia effect" was added to the British dictionary in 2001. For example, her How to Cook series caused a ten percent spike in egg sales alone, and sales of tinned minced beef and Fray Bentos tinned pies went up by around 12 percent following the publication of How To Cheat At Cooking.

Product range tie ins on housewares have also becoming a staple part of a celebrity chef's income. More than 4.7 million of Ken Hom's endorsed wok range have been sold in Europe. The writing of cookbooks have also been a regular product of the celebrity chefs, from both those which have gained Michelin stars, and home style cooks which have had books produced as a tie in for television shows.

Certain endorsements by celebrity chefs have led to high levels of criticism from the food industry and the public. In 2011, Australian chef Darren Simpson created a range of burgers for fast food giant Kentucky Fried Chicken, leading to comments being posted on Twitter such as "Darren Simpson you complete and utter sell-out. KFC? Seriously?". Australian television chef Colin Fassnidge said that the move by Simpson resulted in him becoming a laughing stock, and that while celebrity chefs can make a fortune from such deals, they also risk their credibility. In the UK, Marco Pierre White drew criticism after teaming up with Bernard Matthews Farms in March 2010 to create a range of ready meals which were dropped after a year of production.

Healthiness of recipes

A 2012 paper published in the BMJ found that recipes in top-selling books by television chefs (Nigella Lawson, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jamie Oliver and Lorraine Pascale) were less healthy than supermarket ready meals. Neither ready meals nor the chefs' recipes met national or international recommendations for a balanced diet.