People often think that gourmet cooking consists of a series of elaborate dishes of the kind that can only be found in top restaurants. It is thought of as a kind of cooking that is difficult to do and just as difficult to eat.
Gourmet cooking is felt to be something best avoided by the majority of people because it is too expensive and surrounded by social snobbery. Gourmet cooking is for the rich and those who have more money than sense.
That image of gourmet cooking dates back to the nineteenth century when French chefs dominated the