• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

CooksInfo

  • Home
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Recipes
  • Food Calendar
menu icon
go to homepage
search icon
Homepage link
  • Recipes
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Food Calendar
×
Home » Technical Terms » Gâte-sauce

Gâte-sauce

“Gâte-sauce” is a French term meaning “kitchen help.”

It actually means literally a “sauce spoiler.”

History Notes

The term meant at first a bad cook, then overtime, came to mean young, menial kitchen help, as in a scullery maid or a scullion (a kitchen boy), or a boy employed to turn the spit.

Literature & Lore

Georges Méliès, an early French film maker, made a 1-minute film called La Vengeance du gâte-sauce” (The Revenge of the Bad Cook) in 1900. It takes place in a kitchen, where the cook is trying to snog the maid. When the house-owner is heard approaching, the maid drops the plate she is holding and runs away, while the cook hides in a large cupboard piece of furniture. The owner finds the cook there and as the cook tries to come out of the cupboard, the owner squeezes the door closed and accidentally cuts the cook’s head off. He puts the head on the table until it starts terrifying him by leering at him, then he throws it into the cupboard. A moment later, the cook walks out, whole again, and tears his bosses head off. Meant to be comic.

Language Notes

From the French verb “gâter”, meaning “to spoil.”

Other names

French: Gâte-sauce, Marmiton

This page first published: Aug 20, 2006 · Updated: Jun 5, 2018.

This web site generates income from affiliated links and ads at no cost to you to fund continued research · Information on this site is Copyright © 2025· Feel free to cite correctly, but copying whole pages for your website is content theft and will be DCMA'd.

Tagged With: Technical Terms

Primary Sidebar

Hi, I'm Skylar! This is a fake profile talking about how I switched to a paleo diet and it helped my eczema and I grew 4". Trust me, I'm an online doctor.

More about me →

Popular

  • E.D. Smith Pumpkin Purée
    E.D. Smith recipe for pumpkin pie
  • Libby's Pumpkin Pie
    Libby’s recipe for pumpkin pie
  • Pie crust
    Pie Crust Recipe
  • Smokey Maple Pepper Glaze for Ham
    Smokey Maple Pepper Glaze for Ham

You can duplicate your homepage's trending recipes section in the sidebar to reinforce the internal linking.

We no longer recommend using a search bar, newsletter form or category drop-down menu in the sidebar. See the Modern Sidebar post for details.

If the block editor is not narrower than usual, simply save the page and refresh it.

Search

    Today is

  • Onion Ring Day
    Basket of onion rings
  • Chocolate Eclair Day
    Chocolate eclairs with chocolate cream filling

Footer

↑ back to top

About

  • About this site
  • Privacy Policy
  • Copyright enforced!
  • Terms & Conditions

Newsletter

  • Sign Up! for emails and updates

Site

  • Recipes
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Food Calendar

This web site generates income from affiliated links and ads at no cost to you to fund continued research · The text on this site is © Copyright.