Art Culinaire

HEART AND SOUL - The heart and soul of any self-respecting kitchen devoted to the culinary arts is without doubt the stove. The stove must of course be aesthetically pleasing and must play its full part in the decoration of this important living space. But it must also incorporate the finest cooking qualities so that the cook can express himself or herself with all the brio of a top-class chef. As it happens, a high-performance and timeless-aesthetic approach to stoves was adopted in the factories of Lacanche, a tiny village in the hills above Beaune, where the famous stoves bearing the villages name are manufactured. The factory site dates back to an 18th century Burgundian gentleman by the name of Richard de Curtil, who decided to put the iron contained in his subsoil to good use by creating an iron foundry at Lacanche. In 1796, Jacques-Etienne Caumartin took control of the ironworks and the company remained in the hands of the Coste-Caumartin family until 1972. The Lacanche Iro...