Frequently asked questions

A sauté pan, 24 or 26 cm, with a lid. It has sides deep enough to braise, a base wide enough to sear, and it will do about seventy per cent of what a full batterie does. If you already own a decent frying pan, buy a saucepan instead — 18 cm, for sauces and reductions.

The set of shapes a kitchen needs, rather than a discount on pans. A typical batterie runs to two saucepans, a sauté pan, a frying pan, a rondeau and their lids. Buying it as a set means the handles, the finish and the wall thickness all match, and you are not adding mismatched pieces for a decade.

Copper if you cook things that can break — sauces, custards, caramel, fish — and you want the pan to respond the moment you move it. Stainless steel if the pan will be used hard by several people, go in the dishwasher, and live on a hob that is either on or off rather than modulated. Most serious kitchens end up with both.

Mass. The 2 mm M’Héritage 200 B holds more heat, so it recovers faster when cold food goes in and it forgives a distracted cook. The 1.5 mm M’Héritage 150 B responds faster to a change at the burner and is noticeably lighter to lift. If you cook a lot of meat, take the 2 mm. If you make a lot of sauce, the 1.5 mm is the better instrument.

Bronze is the traditional Mauviel handle: heavier, beautifully balanced, and it stays cool longer on the hob because bronze conducts poorly. It is rated to 250 °C in the oven. Cast stainless steel handles go to 300 °C, are lighter, and suit a kitchen where pans go under a grill. Both are riveted, never welded.

16 or 18 cm. It is the size that gets used daily — a sauce for two, a reduction, blanching, warming milk. A 20 cm is a second saucepan, not a first one.

Straight sides against sloped ones. A sauté pan holds liquid, so it braises, poaches and makes a pan sauce without it running out. A frying pan’s sloped sides let moisture escape and let you toss, so it browns better. If you can only have one, the sauté pan is more useful; if you want the better sear, take the frying pan.

Wide and shallow with two handles. It is the pan for braising something that has to lie flat — short ribs, chicken pieces, oxtail — where a deep pot would stack them and steam the top layer. Sear in it, then braise in it, then reduce in it.

For saucepans and sauté pans, yes. Mauviel lids are sold separately on many lines because a professional kitchen buys fewer lids than pans. Check the product page — where a lid is included the title says so.

The unlined M’Passion jam and sugar pans, unless you actually make jam or work sugar. They are magnificent at that one job and unsuitable for general cooking, because bare copper reacts with acidic food. Buy one because you make preserves, not because it is beautiful.

Thermal conductivity. Copper moves heat at 401 watts per metre kelvin; 18/10 stainless steel manages 16. In a pan that means the whole base reaches temperature together, with no hot ring over the burner and no cold rim at the edge, and it means the pan stops cooking almost as soon as you take it off the heat.

On every cooking piece except the jam and sugar pans, yes. M’Héritage and M’6 S are lined with 18/10 stainless steel. M’Tradition is lined with tin. The lining is what stops copper reacting with acidic food.

Tin is softer, slightly non-stick, and melts at 232 °C, so a tinned pan must never be heated empty or used over fierce heat. It also wears and needs re-tinning every ten to twenty years of hard use. Stainless steel lining is permanent, harder, tolerates any temperature, and is the sensible choice unless you specifically want the traditional pan.

The ratio of the bimetal: ninety per cent copper on the outside, ten per cent stainless steel lining inside. It is the standard for M’Héritage.

Five-ply: 18/10 stainless steel inside, three layers of aluminium through the body and base, and stainless steel outside. The aluminium does the conducting, the steel does the durability. It is dishwasher safe and induction ready.

The same five-ply construction as M’Cook, with a hammered exterior finish. The hammering is cosmetic on this line rather than structural — it is there because it looks like the copper.

Black carbon steel. Untreated, it rusts if you leave it wet, and it takes a seasoning like cast iron. In exchange you get a pan that reaches a higher searing temperature than anything else we sell, at a fraction of the price of copper. It is what French professional kitchens fry in.

Bare copper does, with anything acidic. That is exactly why every cooking piece is lined. The only unlined pieces we sell are the jam and sugar pans, where the reaction with sugar is beneficial and there is no acid problem at those concentrations.

Riveted, always. A rivet can be tightened or replaced; a weld cannot. It is one of the reasons a Mauviel pan can be repaired rather than binned.

No, and deliberately not on the copper and stainless lines. A stainless lining develops a working non-stick behaviour when it is properly preheated and the food is dry. If you want genuine non-stick for eggs, use carbon steel and season it.

Not plain copper. Induction needs a magnetic base, and copper is not magnetic. M’6 S is copper with a magnetic stainless base and is the only copper line here that works on induction. M’Cook, M’Cook B, M’Elite and M’Steel are also induction ready.

Hold a fridge magnet to the base. If it grips firmly, the hob will find it. Every product page here also lists hob compatibility in the specifications, and the shop filter lets you rule out everything that will not work before you look at anything else.

You can, and it works, but it undoes the point of the pan. The disc becomes the heat source, so you are cooking on a steel plate with a copper pot on it rather than using copper’s conductivity. If you are on induction, buy M’6 S.

Gas is what copper is for. Keep the flame within the base — a flame licking up the sides scorches the handle rivets and does nothing useful. Copper needs less heat than you think; start at about sixty per cent of what you would use on a steel pan.

Yes, all of them. Ceramic is slower to change than gas, so the pan’s responsiveness matters less, but the evenness still helps.

Yes. Bronze handles to 250 °C, cast stainless steel handles to 300 °C. Glass lids are lower — check the individual product page. Take the handle temperature seriously; it is the rivets and the finish that suffer, not the pan.

Cast stainless handled pieces, yes. Bronze handled pieces, briefly and not directly under the element. A grill will exceed 250 °C at the handle faster than you expect.

Every product page lists the diameter, the height, and the length including handles — that last figure is the one that decides it. Measure the internal width of your oven and compare against the with-handles dimension, not the pan diameter.

Hot water, a little washing-up liquid, a soft cloth or a nylon brush, and dry it immediately. Water left standing on copper is what causes marks. Never a dishwasher, never steel wool, never bleach.

No. Copper oxidises — that is chemistry, not damage, and the pan cooks exactly as well dull as it does bright. If you want the shine back, use a proper copper cleaner (we sell Copperbrill) or a paste of equal parts salt, flour and white vinegar. Rinse thoroughly and dry.

M’Cook and M’Elite, yes. Copper, no — dishwasher detergent is alkaline and will stain it badly and permanently dull the finish. Carbon steel, absolutely not; it will rust before the cycle ends.

Heat tint, from minerals in the water and normal heating. Harmless. A splash of white vinegar or a little Bar Keepers Friend removes it in under a minute.

Almost always the pan was not hot enough, or the food was wet, or you moved it too soon. Heat the dry pan until a drop of water skitters rather than sizzles, then add fat, then add food, then leave it alone. Protein releases itself when it has formed a crust.

Wash off the factory wax with hot soapy water, dry it, then heat it with a thin film of a high smoke-point oil until it just smokes. Let it cool and repeat three or four times. After that, cook fatty things in it for the first few weeks and never scrub it back to bare metal.

Scour the rust off with steel wool, wash, dry over heat, and re-season. Carbon steel is not delicate; it is just unforgiving about being left wet.

When you can see copper through the tin over an area larger than a coin, or when the tin has blistered. With home use that is usually ten to twenty years. Until then, small dark patches and dulling are normal and not a problem.

Re-tinning is done in France. Contact us with photographs of the interior and we will quote for the work and the freight both ways. It is worth doing on a good piece and it is one of the reasons to buy one.

On stainless lining and carbon steel, yes, within reason. On tin lining, no — use wood or silicone. Tin is soft enough to gouge.

Hanging, if you can. Stacked pans scratch each other; if you must stack, put a cloth or a felt pad between them. Never put a lid on a pan that is being stored damp.

Items we hold in Lanseria dispatch within two working days. Most copper is made to order in Normandy and typically takes six to eight weeks from order to delivery. The product page tells you which applies before you buy.

Because a copper batterie is a six-figure item and holding the full range as stock in South Africa would put that cost into every price. We would rather be slower and cheaper, and honest about which we are being.

Delivery is calculated at checkout on weight and destination. Orders above a threshold are delivered free within South Africa — the checkout shows you where you stand before you pay.

We ship within South Africa as standard. For Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique and Eswatini, contact us before ordering and we will quote freight and handle the export paperwork.

Yes. Everything travels insured by courier and is signed for. If a parcel arrives damaged, photograph it before you open it and tell us the same day.

Yes, from Lanseria by arrangement. Tell us at checkout or contact us afterwards and we will confirm when the piece is ready.

You get a tracking number by email when the parcel leaves us. For made-to-order pieces we will also tell you when production is complete and the piece is in transit from France.

Stock items may be returned within 7 days of delivery, unused, unmarked and in their original packaging. Made-to-order pieces cannot be returned once production has started, because they are made specifically for your order. This is the position the Consumer Protection Act allows for goods made to a consumer’s specification.

If the piece is faulty, damaged in transit or not what you ordered, we collect it at our cost and replace or refund it. If you have changed your mind about a stock item, you arrange and pay the return carriage. There is no restocking fee.

Mauviel guarantees its cookware against manufacturing defect for the lifetime of the product. That covers faults in materials and making. It does not cover normal wear, tin that has worn thin with use, warping from being heated empty, or damage from a dishwasher.

Usually not. Warping comes from thermal shock — an empty pan on high heat, or a hot pan into cold water. Send us photographs and we will look at it honestly; if it is a manufacturing fault we will say so.

Tell us. Rivets are repairable and a loose one on a pan in normal use is a manufacturing matter, not wear.

Photograph the packaging before you unpack any further, and email us the same day. We will collect it and replace it.

Handles, rivets and knobs can be replaced. Re-tinning is done in France. Contact us with photographs and we will tell you what is possible and what it costs.

Card, instant EFT, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Mobicred and Zapper at checkout. Everything is processed by the payment provider; we never see or store your card details.

All prices are in South African rand and include VAT at 15%.

Two millimetres of copper is a lot of copper, and the metal is a commodity. Add bronze cast and finished by hand, riveting rather than welding, French labour, air freight and duty, and the number is what it is. The honest defence is not that it is cheap but that you buy it once.

No. European prices exclude their VAT at the point you see them, and exclude the freight, duty and clearing that bring a pan to South Africa. Compare landed cost and we are competitive.

Yes, for restaurants, hotels and professional kitchens buying in quantity. Contact us with your details and we will set up an account.

Mobicred at checkout lets you pay a batterie off monthly. It is a credit facility from Mobicred rather than from us, and their terms apply.

Tell us at checkout and we will send the piece without pricing, with a handwritten card if you give us the words.

Yes. mauviel.co.za is operated by Culinary Equipment Company (Pty) Ltd, the official South African stockist for Mauviel1830. Every piece comes from the factory in Normandy.

Villedieu-les-Poêles in Normandy, where the company was founded in 1830. The town has worked copper since the twelfth century and is named for it.

The copper and the stainless steel cookware is made in Villedieu-les-Poêles. Some accessories and tableware are produced elsewhere in Europe; where that is the case the product page says so.

We are in Lanseria, Gauteng. It is a working warehouse rather than a showroom, so contact us first and we will make sure the piece you want to see is out and unpacked.

For a set, yes — tell us which and we will arrange it. For a single pan it is often faster to buy the stock item, look at it, and return it within 7 days if it is not what you wanted.

Every Mauviel piece is stamped on the base with the maker’s mark and, on the copper, the thickness. Buy from an official stockist and the question does not arise; buy a bargain from a marketplace and it might.

Through the contact page, or by email. We answer within one working day, and if the question is about which piece to buy we would genuinely rather you asked than guessed.