Gourmet is a cultural

Culture

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

 ideal associated with the culinary art

Culinary art

Culinary art is the art of preparing and cooking foods. The word "culinary" is defined as something related to, or connected with, cooking. A culinarion is a person working in the culinary arts. A culinarian working in restaurants is commonly known as a cook or a chef. Culinary artists are...

s of fine food and drink, or haute cuisine

Haute cuisine

Haute cuisine or grande cuisine was characterised by French cuisine in elaborate preparations and presentations served in small and numerous courses that were produced by large and hierarchical staffs at the grand restaurants and hotels of Europe.The 17th century chef and writer La Varenne...

, which is characterised by elaborate preparations and presentations of large meals of small, often quite rich courses. The term and its associated practices are usually used positively to describe people of refined taste and passion.

Person

The term gourmet may refer to a person with refined or discriminating taste or to one that is knowledgeable in the art of food and food preparation. Gourmand

Gourmand

A gourmand is a person who takes great pleasure in food. The word has different connotations from the similar word gourmet, which emphasises an individual with a highly refined discerning palate, but in practice the two terms are closely linked, as both imply the enjoyment of good food.An older...

carries additional connotations of one who simply enjoys food in great quantities. An epicure is similar to a gourmet, but the word may sometimes carry overtones of excessive refinement.

Food

Gourmet may describe a class of restaurant, cuisine

Cuisine

Cuisine is a characteristic style of cooking practices and traditions, often associated with a specific culture. Cuisines are often named after the geographic areas or regions that they originate from...

, meal or ingredient of high quality, of special presentation, or high sophistication. In the United States, a 1980s gourmet food movement evolved from a long-term division between elitist (or "gourmet") tastes and a populist aversion to fancy foods. Gourmet is an industry classification for high-quality premium foods in the United States. In the 2000s, there has been an accelerating increase in the American gourmet market, due in part to rising income, globalization of taste, and health and nutrition concerns. Individual food and beverage categories, such as coffee, are often divided between a standard and a "gourmet" sub-market.

Gourmet pursuits

Certain events such as wine tasting

Wine tasting

Wine tasting is the sensory examination and evaluation of wine. While the practice of wine tasting is as ancient as its production, a more formalized methodology has slowly become established from the 14th century onwards...

s cater to people who consider themselves gourmets and foodies. Television programs (such as those on the Food Network

Food Network

Food Network is a television specialty channel that airs both one-time and recurring programs about food and cooking. Scripps Networks Interactive owns 70 percent of the network, with Tribune Company controlling the remaining 30 percent....

) and publications such as Gourmet

Gourmet (magazine)

Gourmet magazine was a monthly publication of Condé Nast and the first U.S. magazine devoted to food and wine. Founded by Earle R. MacAusland and first published in 1941, Gourmet also covered "good living" on a wider scale....

magazine often serve gourmets with food column

Food column

A food column is a type of newspaper column dealing with food. It may be focused on recipes, health trends, or improving efficiency. It is generally geared towards gourmets or "foodies". Since 1994, food writers have also written columns and blogs on the web...

s and features. Gourmet tourism is a niche industry catering to people who travel to food or wine tastings, restaurants, or food and wine production regions for leisure.

Origin of term

The word gourmet is from the French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 term for a wine broker or taste-vin employed by a wine dealer. Friand was the reputable name for a connoisseur of delicious things that were not eaten primarily for nourishment: "A good gourmet", wrote the conservative eighteenth-century Dictionnaire de Trévoux

Dictionnaire de Trévoux

The Dictionnaire de Trévoux, as the Dictionnaire universel françois et latin was unofficially and then officially nicknamed because of its publication in the town of Trévoux , appeared in several editions from 1704 to 1771...

, employing this original sense, "must have le goût friand", or a refined palate. In the eighteenth century, gourmet and gourmand carried disreputable connotations of gluttony

Gluttony

Gluttony, derived from the Latin gluttire meaning to gulp down or swallow, means over-indulgence and over-consumption of food, drink, intoxicants or wealth items to the point of extravagance or waste...

, which only gourmand has retained. Gourmet was rendered respectable by Monsieur Grimod de la Reynière

Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière

Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière , trained as a lawyer, acquired fame during the reign of Napoleon, for his sensual and public gastronomic lifestyle. Son of Laurent Grimod de La Reynière, he inherited the family fortune on the death of his father, a fermier général, in 1792...

, whose Almanach des Gourmands, essentially the first restaurant guide, appeared in Paris from 1803 to 1812.
Previously, even the liberal Encyclopédie

Encyclopédie

Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It was edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert...

offered a moralising tone in its entry Gourmandise, defined as "refined and uncontrolled love of good food", employing reproving illustrations that contrasted the frugal ancient Sparta

Sparta

Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...

ns and Romans of the Republic

Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...

 with the decadent luxury of Sybaris

Sybaris

Sybaris was an ancient city in Magna Graecia on the western shore of the Gulf of Taranto. The wealth of the city during the 6th century BC was so great that the Sybarites became synonymous with pleasure and luxury...

. The Jesuits' Dictionnaire de Trévoux took the Encyclopédistes to task, reminding its readers that gourmandise was one of the Seven Deadly Sins

Seven deadly sins

The 7 Deadly Sins, also known as the Capital Vices or Cardinal Sins, is a classification of objectionable vices that have been used since early Christian times to educate and instruct followers concerning fallen humanity's tendency to sin...

.

Related concepts

Foodie

Foodie

Foodie is an informal term for a particular class of aficionado of food and drink. The word was coined in 1981 by Paul Levy and Ann Barr, who used it in the title of their 1984 book The Official Foodie Handbook.- Distinguished from gourmet :...

is often used by the media as a conversational synonym

Synonym

Synonyms are different words with almost identical or similar meanings. Words that are synonyms are said to be synonymous, and the state of being a synonym is called synonymy. The word comes from Ancient Greek syn and onoma . The words car and automobile are synonyms...

 for gourmet, although it is a different concept (that of a food aficionado). The word foodie was coined synchronously by Gael Greene

Gael Greene

Gael Greene is an American restaurant critic, author and novelist. She became New York magazine's restaurant critic in fall, 1968 at a time when most New Yorkers were unsophisticated about food and there were few chefs anyone knew by name. She was a passionate early "foodie" before that word was...

 in the magazine New York

New York (magazine)

New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...

and by Paul Levy and Ann Barr, co-authors of The Official Foodie Handbook (1984).