The chef hat isn’t for style but sheer practical use.
They are for preventing every food eater’s nightmare of finding hair in
their food, purely and simply. They also denote how accomplished the chef
is. If you’ve ever noticed the pleats on a chef’s hat and thought they were
simply for sheer fanciness then guess again – they are the equivalent of
stripes on the arm of a military person. The number of pleats goes up to one
hundred, which would be the most accomplished a chef could be.
There is no single known origin of the toque, the French
name for the chef hat, and it is shrouded in historical guesswork and
nothing is conclusive. One widely accepted origin of the chef hat is it
originated in the Henry VIII era, when much to the King’s horror he found a
hair in his food. He then beheaded the person whose head it fell from, and
thereafter ordered all of his kitchen staff to wear chef hats.
However other countries lay claim to been the first
inventors of chef hats.