Television's Oldest Cooking Show Premiered Over 80 Years Ago

We're bombarded with so much food-related content today that it's hard to remember a time when you could flip channels on your television set and not see someone cooking a meal. Food TV has come a long way from the instructional programming of the 1990s to travel shows that introduced us to a whole new world of flavors, and finally the highly competitive culinary coliseums of today. Martha Stewart's Cooking School, Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa, Rachel Ray's 30-Minute Meals, Jamie Oliver's The Naked Chef, the list of iconic cooking shows is never-ending (in fact, here are 16 classic Food Network shows we've forgotten over time). 

And the precursor to all of these was Marcel Boulestin's Cook's Night Out — the oldest cooking show in the world, which premiered on The BBC 89 years ago. The five-episode series aired on The BBC between January and March, 1937, and featured one dish per episode. "Marcel Boulestin will demonstrate before the camera the making of the first of five dishes, each of which can be prepared as separate dishes, while the whole together make an excellent five-course dinner," a TV listing from the day notes. "In his first talk, M. Boulestin will demonstrate the cooking of an omelette." The other episodes featured Boulestin making a Filet de Sole Murat, Escalope de Veau Choisy, Salads, and Crepes Flambes. 

Like many shows from that era, Cook's Night Out was broadcast Live. This means there are no recordings of the 15-minute episodes. The legend of Boulestin, however, has survived.

An interior designer by training and trade, Marcel Boulestin made a name for himself both as a prolific food writer and a restaurateur of repute. He wrote a food column for The Evening Standard, and also published a series of cookbooks. "Simple French Cooking for English Homes" put him on the map in 1920, while he also authored interestingly titled books like "One hundred & one ways of cooking Potatoes" and "One hundred and twenty ways of cooking eggs". He achieved all this without being a trained chef.

By all accounts, Boulestin was as big a personality as the biggest names in modern-day food television. Here's one anecdote from a feature about the chef in The Dinner Puzzle. His first restaurant — Restaurant Française in Leicester Square — didn't have a license to serve alcohol, so he'd shuttle bottles and glasses of wine from a pub next door. This came up before a bench for hearing, at which a representative of the pro-prohibition Temperance Society asked: "As an expert, M Boulestin, what do you think of a good meal without wine?" Boulestin's rather epic response was: "I don't think anything about it. I've never tried."

His second restaurant, Restaurant Boulestin in Covent Garden, was one of the most expensive restaurants in London at the time. But, as it turns out, Boulestin wasn't really able to make money from his restaurant business. In fact, it was because he needed money that he took on so many writing and television assignments. The original Boulestin only downed shutters in 1994, while a tribute restaurant of the same name came up in South-West London in 2013.

Boulestin's status as the OG TV celebrity chef is universally accepted. Was he also the OG food influencer? We can certainly make an argument. Apart from the cookbooks and TV shows for the BBC, Boulestin also featured in at least two gas-industry sponsored films in the 1930s. "A Party Dish by X. Marcel Boulestin" and "A Scratch Meal with Marcel Boulestin" were both directed by well-known documentary film-maker Arthur Elton. They aimed to persuade Britain's home cooks that cooking fancy food was easy in their shiny new gas cooker. You really could imagine Boulestin and his gas cooker fit right into this list of kitchen tools food bloggers love. 

He also authored a series of trade booklets in association with companies like Radiation Ltd., which sold gas cookers, and also (oddly) Jay's Furnishing Stores. And while Cook's Night Out was his first show, it wasn't his only one. According to Guinness World Records, Boulestin also presented shows such as Dish of the Month (1937) and Foundations of Cookery (1939) on the BBC. 

Closer to home, "I Love To Eat" hosted by America's first foodie James Beard is considered to be the first cooking show on American television. The show aired on NBC between 1946 and 1947 and, just like Cook's Night Out, no recordings of this one exist either.