Toque roots are sometimes traced to the "casque à meche" (stocking cap) worn by 18th-century French chefs. The colour of the "casque à meche" denoted the rank of the wearer. Boucher, the personal chef of the French statesman Talleyrand, was the first to insist on white toques for sanitary reasons. The modern toque is popularly believed to have originated with the French chef Marie-Antoine Carême (1784–1833), who stiffened the "casque à meche" with cardboard . The pleated, low, round hat worn in French universities the equivalent of the mortarboard or tam at British and American universities is also called a toque.
A Kind of Anger his past anger at his business failure and at his unfaithful girlfriend, was now driven by 'a new kind of anger', anger against Lucia's enemies. Towards the end of the book Sanger revises his opinion. He now thinks that what drives Piet isn't new but as old as the hills: he has discovered his vocation as a crook. Following his suicide attempt, instead of prescribing pills and electro-shock treatment, his psychiatrists should just have told him to go rob a bank. The title itself thus adds to the numerous comments throughout the text which help to create the novel's comically