La Cornue

In 1908, in the heart of Paris, Albert Dupuy ignited the flame of elite cuisine. It was there that Dupuy premiered the world’s first convection oven. At the time, most ovens were mere flat-topped cavities that held racks suspended over a fire. Most people simply considered cooking to be heating food to eat. But Dupuy pondered: “What does it really mean to cook?” He developed his oven with a vaulted ceiling to usher heat around the food, rather than trap it to burn beneath. To enable optimum precision, the oven drew upon the city gas lines that were winding their way to homes and streetlamps throughout the City of Light.

Dupuy christened the oven La Cornue after the French term cornue — the system for refining the gas that warmed the new creation.