Why does a chef's hat have 100 pleats?
Remember, how you, or your friends loved dressing up as a chef in that fancy dress competition in school. All you needed was an apron and a towering chef’s hat and there you are, ready to play a chef! Now, let us share a few facts about those carefully pleated white chef’s hats. First, the correct name is a chef’s toque, the French word for "hat." Second, they usually have exactly 100 folds. And that number is for a good reason! The number of pleats or folds in the hat tells the number of ways the chef could prepare the dishes.
Where does it get its name from?
The traditional tall, white, pleated chef’s hat is officially referred to as a toque. While this word has been used for thousands of years to refer to any hat, the French popularised using “toque” or “toque blanche” to refer to a white chef’s hat.
Chef’s hat: The myth
In the early days, the number of pleats in the chef’s hat represented the number of recipes a chef knew for a given food item, like egg or chicken. Having a hat with 100 pleats meant he knew 100 recipes to prepare with an egg.
The same applied to the height of the hat. The taller the toque, the more a chef knew. If you saw a chef with a towering cap, you could be sure they were likely the head of the kitchen or a masterchef. For example, Marie Antoine Carême, who was considered a great French chef in the 1800s, wore a hat 18 inches in height — so tall it needed cardboard support.
Chef’s toque: The origin story
So who invented a toque? There are many origin stories behind the invention. One story will tell you that when Greek chefs were fleeing from Byzantine invaders around 146 BCE, they took refuge in monasteries, where the tall stovepipe-style hats of the monks helped them blend in. These became a part of the attire for a chef.
Another story would say that the toque originated in Assyria (a region loacted in the middle east) in the mid-seventh century when King Assurbanipal lived in fear of being poisoned. He required the head cooks to wear these headgears to identify the cooks of a particular household and to encourage their loyalty.
Yet another origin story will tell you that King Henry VIII, one of the kings of England in the 16th century, beheaded a chef after finding hair in his meal. So, all the chefs after him were ordered to wear a hat while cooking. This would keep their hair out of the food cooked and maintain hygiene and cleanliness in the kitchen.
Much later, in the 1800s, the toque was a common sight in kitchens and linked to the belief that white symbolised cleanliness.