There is usually only one person who has cooked thousands of times for each of today's leading chefs and that is their respective mothers. Few people play a more influential role in the development of a child's palate and its relationship with food than mum.

Most of us can recall a comforting family favourite cooked by mum or at some time or other have exhorted the supremacy of mum's roast dinner, her fish pie or cheesecake. Top chefs are no exception.

But many chefs showed a precocious talent in the kitchen and were eager, from an early age, to usurp mum's role and wear the apron rather than hang off its strings.

In interviews published in December’s olive magazine, Celia Blumenthal reveals that "by the time he was 14, Heston was cooking our Christmas dinner". In fact, Mrs Blumenthal couldn't cook anything much without her son sneaking by and dipping his finger in the pate or pie to taste it. A habit that his own kitchen staff today are well used to.

"I used to do a very good chicken liver pâté and there would always be a finger mark in it because he’d come in, open the fridge and try it," says Celia. "He’d try to cover it up sometimes, but I’d always know. Once he left a dustpan and brush in the fridge because he’d had them in his hand, put them down to get at the pâté and then completely forgot about them."

Heston confesses that he was "a terrible picker" with a penchant for his mum's Bolognese sauce sandwiched between two slices of Mother's Pride.

According to Celia: "When he really got into cooking he became very obsessive about it. He used to do ratatouille, but it was cut far too small for me – life’s too short to cut tomatoes any smaller than a fingernail."

Jamie Oliver's mum, Sally, seemed quite happy to pander to her son's foodie pretensions. "When Jamie’s school dinners got bad, he started taking a packed lunch. I used to give him a bag of celery sticks and peppers, a sandwich, and juice. I even used to get an orange and peel it, then put it back together and wrap it in Clingfilm. He was such a mummy’s boy. I’d also pack bananas and write things on them, like ‘love from Mum’. He liked that."

For his part Jamie admits that his mum's cooking has always informed his own culinary endeavours. "We were very lucky and Mum was famous for her cooking among my friends. Six young boys tearing around the house and then begging for her Bolognese was quite usual. She was a good mum, a really good mum."

Read more interviews from December’s olive magazine on sale now priced £3.40, below.

Helen Cosgrove and Gordon Ramsay

HELEN COSGROVE

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