The small sisterhood of French grands chefs celebrated yesterday when the Michelin guide awarded three stars to a ground-breaking self-taught cook — the first French woman to win the culinary distinction since 1951.

Anne-Sophie Pic, 37, whose grandfather and father also held three stars at the family restaurant in southeastern France, was one of five newcomers to the elite 26-member group this year. Ms Pic, a business school graduate who came relatively late to cooking, won back the third star that was earned by her grandfather in 1933 but lost after her father’s death in 1992.

She told The Times of her pride in restoring the award to the Maison Pic, a Relais & Châteaux hotel-restaurant in the town of Valence. But she also hailed it as a victory for women in the male-dominated world of French cuisine.

“I had to fight because I was both the daughter of the boss and a woman,” she said. “I am an example for women who succeed in the kitchen. Cuisine has been a very male-chauvinist milieu for a long time in France but things are changing.

Women have a different sensibility from men in cuisine but we all have the same goal of excellence.”

Last year Ms Pic won a court case brought against her by one of her father’s former chefs who claimed that he had been denied his trade union rights.

Ms Pic, who specialises in fish and innovative cooking methods, was, with Hélãne Dar-roze, one of two French women with two stars. Her three predecessors, Eugénie Brazier, Marie Bourgeois and Marguerite Bise, were part of the so-called movement of Lyon grandmothers of the 1930s50s. Their prominence was often ascribed to the loss of so many men of that generation in the First World War.

Five women chefs hold the top Michelin award in Italy and Spain. The old school of French chefs deemed that women were as out of place in haute cuisine as at the controls of an aircraft or the baton of an orchestra. But Ms Pic, who learnt on the job and never received training from her father, scoffed at the adage that men cook with technique and women with their hearts. “I have always done everything possible to be technically strong. It was a way of showing those who mocked me that I could make it,” she said.

The recognition of Ms Pic’s adventurous cooking was seen as part of an attempt by the Michelin guide, guardian of the French culinary temple, to move with the times after criticism for its conservatism and its excessive demands on restaurateurs. This reached a low point with the suicide in 2003 of Bernard Loiseau, who was depressed about having lost a star.

Among five old restaurants demoted yesterday was Taillevent, the Paris establishment that had held three stars since 1973. Le Cinq, the restaurant of the Hotel George V in Paris, also lost its third star.

Le Monde said that Ms Pic’s award was highly symbolic because she had broken with the traditional methods that had made the Valence restaurant a legend for travellers on the “holiday road”, the old Route Nationale 7. While still specialising in fish, she had replaced its most famous dishes such as gratin d’écrevisses with pared-down modern dishes, including sea bass steamed over kelp, served with oyster bonbons, and milk mousse flavoured with rum. But the purists still disliked the hint of sugar in her fish, Le Monde said.

A taste of La Maison Pic

Starters

- Scallops from Dieppe and black truffle: scallops marinaded with slivers of celery, smoked eel, shellfish, black truffle

- Côte d’Émeraude shellfish with buttered seaweed and baby vegetables, light potato potage enriched with herring roe

Main course

- Sea bass caught in coastal waters steamed over wakame, special Gillardeau oyster bonbons and cucumber chutney, vodka and lemon butter sauce

- Classic best fillet of Charolais beef and duck foie gras from the Landes with endives and preserved quince, potato puffs, jus flavoured with Hermitage wine

- Velay sweetbreads roasted in frothy butter, caramelised Cévennes onions, black truffle puréed Agria potatoes flavoured with fresh mint, simple jus

Dessert

- Bartlett pear and salty toffee: pear preserve in a transparent tube, toffee cream made with salty butter, pear sherbet

- Granny Smith apple and champagne apple balls in jam, fine jelly, light cream sherbet and Champagne emulsion, sparkling crumble

Britain’s top female chefs

- Only eight women in Britain have a (single) Michelin star

- Two of the pioneers of female cooking in Britain are Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray, whose River Café, in West London, has a Michelin star

- Out of the 121 restaurants in the country with Michelin stars, only seven have female head chefs

- Other than the River Café’s and Angela Hartnett at the Connaught, the rest of Britain’s top female chefs are outside London, with Michelin-starred women in Kent, Lancashire, Yorkshire and Hampshire

- In 2005 Carme Ruscalleda became the first woman in Spain to get three Michelin stars. Her restaurant is near Barcelona

- Italy has three three-starred female chefs

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