Le Cordon Bleu (French for "blue ribbon") is generally recognised as the world's largest hospitality education institution, teaching hospitality management and the culinary arts.
The origin of the school comes from L'Ordre des Chevaliers du Saint Esprit, an elite group of French knights that was created in 1578. Each member was awarded the Cross of the Holy Spirit, which hung from a blue ribbon. According to one story, the group became known for their extravagant and luxurious banquets, known as "cordon bleu." While these dinners ended with the French Revolution, the name remained synonymous with excellent cooking. Another theory has it simply that the blue ribbon became synonymous with excellence, and this was later applied to other fields such as cooking.
The name was adopted by the French culinary magazine, La
Cuisinière Cordon Bleu, founded by Marthe Distel in the early 19th century. The magazine began offering special lessons by some of the best chefs in France. This eventually grew to become a cooking school that opened in Paris in 1895 and quickly became one of the most elite cooking schools in the world.
In 1933, former student Dione Lucas helped to open a school under the Le Cordon Bleu name in London, England. In 1988, shortly after buying Le Cordon Bleu, president André J. Cointreau purchased the London school, and has since launched schools in Adelaide and Sydney, Australia; Seoul, South Korea; Ottawa, Canada; Tokyo, Kobe & Yokohama, Japan; Lima, Peru; and Bangkok, Thailand. Le Cordon Bleu is due to open a new school in Martinborough, New Zealand in early 2009. In total, over 18,000 students attend a Cordon Bleu school each year. Le Cordon Bleu has also expanded, issuing cookbooks and a line of kitchenware.
It also operates 14 cities under the Le Cordon Bleu name in the United States through a relationship with Career Education Corporation. As a company, CEC has come under scrutiny in its role as an on-campus for-profit business, and some students have complained that under the CEC ownership, the potential income in the culinary industry was not fully disclosed to some of its U.S. Le Cordon Bleu students.
Apart from the culinary programs, Le Cordon Bleu also offers hospitality management education with up to 2000 students studying Bachelor or Masters degrees. They have Masters degrees in France, Japan, Korea and Australia and an on-line gastronomy program. Their Bachelor programs in Hotel Management and Restaurant Management programs are delivered in the U.S., Mexico, Australia, and Korea.
While each Cordon Bleu school offers its own list of culinary short courses, matching local demand, the "Classic Cycle" is common to all. This consists of six ten-week courses: three in "cuisine" and three in "patisserie" (pastry making). Each course, if successfully completed, leads to the award of a certificate at basic, intermediate, or advanced level. Students who complete all three levels in the same field are awarded the Diplôme de Cuisine or the Diplôme de Pâtisserie. Those who complete all six courses are awarded the Grand Diplôme. The "Grand Diplome" is one of the few culinary credentials that signifies mastery of both pastry and culinary fundamentals.
In her memoir My Life in France (Knopf), Julia Child, aided by her husband's nephew Alex Prud'homme, discusses her experiences attending the school in the late 1940s. In 2007, an American writer, Kathleen Flinn, wrote the first insider's account of attending the modern Paris flagship school titled The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry (Viking/Penguin). The tale recounts the modern day-to-day trials of the program, and provides a further history of the school.
It is often assumed that the character Audrey Hepburn played in the 1954 film Sabrina attended Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, however the school's name is never mentioned in the film. She did visit the school for the film's launch.
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