Anna Richards/ BBC:

With more restaurants per capita than any other French city and the home of Rue du Bœuf (the street with the most Michelin stars in the country), Lyon is France’s undisputed gastronomic capital. And although the city has become synonymous with the name Paul Bocuse (1926-2018) – with five restaurants falling under the late chef’s brand, and even Halles de Lyon – Paul Bocuse (an indoor food market) bearing his name – its culinary legacy began long before he rose to fame.
Known as “the mother of French cooking”, Eugénie Brazier (or Mère Brazier) never completed primary school and was forced to leave home at 19 after becoming pregnant. Yet, by the time she turned 40, she was running two restaurants and was the most decorated chef in the world. In 1933, she would become the first person to receive six stars in the Michelin Guide, a record that remained unchallenged until Alain Ducasse matched her in 1998. She was also largely responsible for teaching Bocuse his trade.
Brazier was no doubt a tour de force. So, why, then, have her achievements been largely forgotten, while those of chefs like Bocuse have been lauded?
One of her restaurants, the currently two-starred La Mère Brazier, is still running to this day under the guidance of chef Mathieu Viannay. Inside, the 1933 Michelin guide sits proudly in a glass case, while a photo of Brazier in a starched white blouse lines a sliding door. Although Brazier’s legacy is kept alive in the restaurant, few people know about her important contributions to French gastronomy. Viannay believes this is due to the time she was living in.
“Brazier is well-known to anyone who knows the history of French cuisine,” Viannay said. “When I reopened the restaurant in 2008, articles came out in 80 different countries. But Brazier came from a time when chefs weren’t in the media.”
Given that famous male French culinary names like François Pierre de la Varenne, Marie-Antoine Carême and Auguste Escoffier all pre-dated Brazier but are much better known globally, the timeframe can’t be the only reason for her relative anonymity.
“Her gender had a huge role to play,” explained food historian Dr Annie Gray. “France’s culinary scene was largely split into two categories: haute-cuisine, prepared by those with classical training (mostly men); and cuisine de la grand-mère, grandmother’s style cooking, usually accompanied by the stereotypical image of the buxom woman at the stove.”
In the 19th and early 20th Centuries, the route to becoming a top chef in France followed strict rules. Boys aged between 10 and 13 would start apprenticeships in kitchens, working their way up the ranks. Training would follow, largely in Paris, but often with a spell in Nice and on the Normandy coast, working in casino resorts. Women weren’t made apprentices, and Brazier was no exception.
Growing up in the early 1900s, her family lived on a farm in La Tranclière, 56km north-east of Lyon. Under her mother’s instruction, Brazier began to cook as soon as she could hold a spoon. By the age of five, she could make two types of tarts, although she wasn’t allowed to light the oven. She was responsible for the family pigs, and her schooling was sporadic at best. She only attended classes during winter when there was less work to do on the farm.
Brazier’s mother died when she was just 10, and she took a job at a neighbouring farm to help provide for her family. But in 1914, the 19-year-old Brazier became pregnant out of wedlock and her father kicked her out, as it was considered scandalous in those times. To make ends meet, Brazier got a housekeeping job with a wealthy Lyonnaise family, the Milliats, placing her son, Gaston, in a pensionnat (boarding school).
She travelled with the family each year as they spent winters in Cannes in southern France, and eventually took on the additional role of cook once the family decided to live there year-round. With no cookbooks to consult, she would ask merchants or local hotel staff for recipes and recreate them from memory.
After World War One, Brazier, now a more seasoned cook, started working in the kitchen of Mère Filloux, a restaurant in Lyon’s Brotteaux neighbourhood with an all-female staff, which was common at the time. Typically, bouchons (traditional restaurants) were run by women called “Lyonnaise mothers”, who served offal and offcuts of meat to hungry businessmen and silk workers.
By 1922, Brazier had saved enough money working at Mère Filloux and other restaurants to buy a grocery shop, which she turned into a small restaurant. There, she began making a name for herself preparing dishes like crayfish in mayonnaise, roast pigeon and country-style peas and carrots shelater moved to a larger restaurant on Rue Royale in central Lyon, which is the site of the present-day La Mère Brazier.
In 1928 she opened a second restaurant, also called La Mère Brazier, with a farm and cookery school, in the hills 19km outside Lyon at Col de la Luère.