kamman closed chez la mère madeleine and the modern gourmet cooking school in 1980 to return to france, where she launched a cooking school in annecy. her time in france was brief: france's high taxes and what she saw as rampant sexism in france's professional kitchens led her to return to the united states, where she first opened auberge madeleine, a restaurant and cooking school in glen, a village of bartlett, new hampshire. a diagnosis of heart disease caused her to close the restaurant, and she moved to the napa valley in the late 1980s, where she opened the school for american chefs at beringer vineyards, a highly competitive two week training session for professional chefs. in addition to cooking classes, chef-students were given lessons in kitchen chemistry and science, culinary history, geology, and geography to increase their appreciation of menu planning and terroir. kamman retired to vermont in 2000 to pursue a graduate degree in german literature.