Auguste Escoffier

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One of the world's first true celebrity chefs, Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935) is credited with helping to raise the status of cooking from a laborer's task to anartist's endeavor. Renowned as "the king of chefs and the chef of kings," Escoffier left a legacy of culinary writings and recipes that are indispensable to modern cooks, and remains perhaps the foremost name in French cuisine.

Georges Auguste Escoffier, later known simply as Auguste Escoffier, was born on October 28, 1846, in the small village of Villeneuve-Loubet, near Nice, in the Provence region of France. Among the key figures in the boy's life was his father, who worked primarily as a blacksmith yet also cultivated tobacco plants. His grandmother, an enthusiastic cook, was perhaps more responsible than anyone for instilling in the boy an appreciation for the delights of cooking.

Young Escoffier attended the local school until age 12, upon which time his father thought it necessary that the boy learn a trade. In school he had shown a flair for drawing, yet he was encouraged to pursue this art only as a hobby, and to find his career in a more practical vocation. Thus his father took him to Nice, where he would work as an apprentice in his uncle's restaurant, the reputable Le Restaurant Francais. The year was 1859 and Escoffier was to turn 13 years old, when he would begin what was for many a modest career, yet what became for him an illustrious one.

Apprenticed to a Restaurateur

At Le Restaurant Francais, Escoffier was not coddled as the nephew of the boss. Rather, he experienced a classically disciplined and strenuous apprenticeship. For this strictness of training he would later, in his memoirs, express gratitude. He started as a kitchen boy and commis-saucier (sauce boy), and was initiated into the basic tasks of restaurant upkeep, such as the selection of ingredients and the servicing of customers. During this time Escoffier also attended night school, and had to juggle his studies with the demands of a budding career.

When Escoffier was 19 and had taken on yet more responsibilities in his uncle's restaurant, a patron recognized his skills and offered him work in Paris. This was the owner of Le Petit Moulin Rouge, one of the finest restaurants in Paris, where Escoffier was to become a sous-chef. After three years in this position, he rose to the level of head chef, donning the esteemed chef's hat. A small man, Escoffier was said to have taken to wearing platform shoes in order to better work the restaurant's stoves.

Escoffier remained in Paris, leaving his position briefly for military training, until 1870, when he was called for army duty at the onset of the Franco-Prussian War. Appointed Chef de Cuisine, he applied his talents to the daily fare of the French army. Faced with the challenge of creating meals that would preserve well, Escoffier was one of the first chefs to seriously study the techniques for canning meats, vegetables, and sauces. After the war he returned to Le Petit Moulin Rouge, where he remained head chef until 1878.

Among Escoffier's subsequent endeavors in Paris was his management of the Maison Chevet, a restaurant at the Palais Royal that specialized in banquet dinners, often prepared for officials and dignitaries. Later he managed the kitchens at La Maison Maire, owned by the famed restaurateur Monsieur Paillard. But perhaps Escoffier's most notable achievement during this period was his marriage in 1880 to Delphine Daffis, the daughter of a publisher. Their marriage would last 55 years, and they would bring into the world two sons and a daughter.

In their early years together, the couple spent their summers in Lucerne, Switzerland, where Escoffier managed the kitchens at the Hotel National, and their winters in Monte Carlo, where he served as Director of Cuisine of the Grand Hotel. It was in Lucerne that Escoffier met the Swiss hotelier Cesar Ritz, who would figure prominently in his life, and with whom he would enter into a celebrated partnership. Ritz, who came from a small village in the Swiss Valais, had started his career as a hotel groom and had risen through the ranks, from headwaiter to hotel manager. It was Ritz who hired Escoffier as chef at the Hotel National, and the two would continue to combine their talents throughout their remarkable careers.

Teamed with Ritz

Among Escoffier and Ritz's first successes was their joint venture at the Savoy Hotel in London, the first modern luxury hotel, where from 1890 to 1898 Escoffier served as Head of Restaurant Services and Ritz took the position of General Manager. When Ritz opened his own hotel in Paris, the ultra-modern Hotel Ritz, Escoffier brought his culinary expertise. But he soon returned to London to make a legend of the posh Carlton Hotel, where patrons included such luminaries as the Prince of Wales. It was here, where Escoffier presided over the kitchens for more than twenty years, that the French chef gained worldwide attention for his superior haute cuisine. It was also at the Carlton that, on the day the hotel opened in 1899, Escoffier unveiled a new dessert, Peach Melba, created and named in honor of the Australian opera singer - and former Savoy Hotel resident - Nellie Melba.

At the Savoy and the Carlton, Escoffier created some of his most famous recipes; Peach Melba was among these, as was Chaud-Froid Jeannette and Cuisses de Nymphe Aurore, a frogs' legs dish named after the Prince of Wales. Also during this time the French chef introduced and perfected some of his many innovations to cookery, restaurant service, and kitchen organization. Departing from the style of previous chefs, Escoffier strove to simplify the art of cooking, doing away with excessive garnishes, heavy sauces, and elaborate presentations. As the most prominent French chef of his day, he succeeded the culinary artist Marie Antoine Careme (1784-1833), and he sought to modernize his predecessor's complex approach to cooking, in effect altering the standards of his national cuisine.

Escoffier's preference for simplicity also extended to restaurant menus; here, he reduced the number of courses served, and took credit for introducing, at the Carlton, the first a la carte menu. At large banquet-style meals, Escoffier abandoned a practice called service a la francaise (service in the French style), in which collections of dishes of all kinds were served at table simultaneously; instead, the French chef chose to standardize service a la russe (service in the Russian style), in which each course is presented in the order that it appears on the menu.

In the kitchen, Escoffier's innovations again tended toward simplification. As head chef at the Carlton he faced the challenge of having to prepare superb dishes quickly for the hotel's high-powered clientele, and he found many inefficiencies in the organization of the standard restaurant kitchen. In Escoffier's day, the restaurant kitchen was composed of separate units in which groups of chefs worked on their own, often duplicating each other's tasks and creating more work than was necessary. Escoffier insisted on unifying and streamlining the restaurant kitchen, so that his staff of about sixty chefs could work together seamlessly and quickly, serving as many as 500 dishes at a typical Sunday dinner at the Carlton.

The working conditions of kitchen laborers also begged improvement, and Escoffier recognized and answered these needs. In the French chef's day, the atmosphere of the kitchen - loud, chaotic, overheated with wood- or coke-fired stoves, and rife with powerful cooking odors - created working conditions that were sometimes intolerable, and chefs often took to drinking while they toiled. Escoffier aimed to curb these excesses, which often compromised the health of kitchen workers; he even hired a doctor to help concoct a comforting and healthful beverage, made with barley, that cooks could drink in place of alcohol. Through these and other improvements, Escoffier helped to raise the esteem of a profession that had once been regarded as lowly and coarse.

Wrote Le Guide and Other Works

The turn of the century brought some changes for Escoffier. His partnership with Ritz came to an end in 1901, when Ritz fell ill with a nervous breakdown. Yet some happier changes came in the following years, when Escoffier began publishing his culinary works, opening a new avenue in his career. His first book, Le Guide culinaire (1903), was an exhaustive resource, including about 5,000 recipes and garnish preparations. Le Guide, known to English speakers as The Escoffier Cook Book, remains an invaluable reference for contemporary cooks. Books published subsequently by Escoffier include Le Carnet d'epicure (1911; "Notebook of a Gourmet"), Le Livre de menus (1912; "The Book of Menus"), and Ma cuisine (1934; "My Cuisine").

An energetic and inexhaustible man, Escoffier took the time to begin new endeavors in addition to his work at the Carlton and his manuscript preparations. In 1904 a German shipping company, Hamburg-Amerika Lines, invited the French chef to plan a restaurant service to be offered to passengers on its luxury liners. Called the Ritz-Carlton Restaurants, the service was unveiled in 1912 amid great fanfare. Yet Escoffier did not concern himself only with the lifestyles of the wealthy and privileged clientele of posh restaurants and cruise ships. A philanthropist at heart, he organized programs to feed the hungry and to give financial assistance to retired chefs.

Passing into old age yet retaining his youthful enthusiasm, Escoffier continued to direct the kitchens of the Carlton Hotel until 1919, the year he turned 73. His plan was to retire with his wife to Monte Carlo, yet not long after arriving in this city he was presented with yet another irresistible business opportunity. An old friend, the widow of his former Petit Moulin Rouge colleague Jean Giroix, invited Escoffier to collaborate with her in the administration of the Hotel de L'Ermitage. The French chef accepted, eluding retirement, and even went on to help develop another hotel, the Riviera, in Upper Monte Carlo.

The aged chef, whose name had become synonymous with superlative cuisine, in his late years enjoyed worldwide renown. In 1920 the French government recognized Escoffier for his work in elevating the status of French cuisine and culture by making him a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur, and again by making him an Officer of the Legion d'Honneur in 1928.

By 1921 Escoffier had finally retired from restaurant life, though he continued to write about his work and experiences. The French chef died in Monte Carlo at age 89, on February 12, 1935, only days after the death of his wife.

Escoffier left behind a legacy still enjoyed by professional chefs, home cooks, and gastronomes in France and abroad. He invented some 10,000 recipes, and culinary institutions around the world continue to teach his methods. In 1966 the French transformed the house in which he was born into a culinary museum; as a result his birthplace of Villeneuve-Loubet, once not even a dot on the map of the Provence region, is now well marked on the road from Nice to Cannes. These and other tributes serve to honor the master of French cooking, to whom the Kaiser Wilhelm II was said to have once remarked: "I am the emperor of Germany, but you are the emperor of chefs."

Online

"Auguste Escoffier," http://members.aol.com/acalendar/October/Escoffier.html (January 3, 2001).

"Auguste Escoffier, 1846-1935," http://www.1dei.org/aug.html (January 3, 2001).

"Escoffier, Auguste," http://www.comptons.com/encyclopdedia/ARTICLES/0050/00616704_A.html (January 3, 2001).

"Escoffier, (Georges) Auguste," http://www.britannica.com/seo/g/georges-auguste-escoffier (January 3, 2001).

"Escoffier, (Georges) Auguste," http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?ti=05272000 (January 3, 2001).

"Georges-Auguste Escoffier," http://www.frenchfood.about.com/food/frenchfood/library/weekly/aa022100.htm (January 3, 2001).

"History: Georges Auguste Escoffier," http://www.geocities.com/NapaValley/6454/escoffier.html (January 3, 2001).

Georges-Auguste Escoffier (1846–1935) was born in Villeneuve-Loubet in France, a village located between Nice and Cannes. During his lifetime he was proclaimed "the finest cook I ever met" by César Ritz of the world-famous Ritz Hotels. Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany praised Escoffier's exceptional culinary talent, telling him "I am the emperor of Germany, but you are the emperor of chefs." Escoffier was more than just a great chef. He is credited with simplifying the complex French haute cuisine of the day—he favored less elaborate dishes, prepared lighter sauces, and used more seasonal ingredients. His reorganization of the professional kitchen eliminated duplication of efforts and resulted in more efficient operation.

Growing up, Escoffier's chief interest was art; he loved to draw and yearned to be a sculptor. However, his grandfather and his father, who was a blacksmith and also grew tobacco, decided otherwise; they said he needed a trade, and they arranged his apprenticeship at age thirteen in his uncle's Restaurant Français in Nice.

At age eighteen, Escoffier was cooking at the Hotel Bellevue in Nice and making an impression on those who ate his food. At nineteen, he became commis rôtisseur and then saucier at the Petit Moulin Rouge in Paris. At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Escoffier was drafted into the military and became chef de cuisine, first at the headquarters of the general of the Army of the Rhine in Metz, and then for a variety of other regimental commanders. Five years later, he was appointed head chef at the Petit Moulin Rouge, where he fed such dignitaries as the Prince of Wales and Sarah Bernhardt. At the age of thirty, he opened Le Faisan Doré in Cannes.

Escoffier's experience in the military taught him the importance of preserving food, and he began working on methods of canning meats, vegetables, and sauces, and developed a way to preserve tomato sauce in champagne bottles. In his restaurant cooking, he experimented with techniques for simplifying meals and sauces and encouraged the use of seasonal foods. Other accomplishments included helping to found the successful review L'Art Culinaire (Culinary art). In this publication, he reflected on problems of feeding the military, published an item about portable stew for soldiers, and wrote about other artistic and practical matters.

In 1884, César Ritz invited Escoffier to become chef de cuisine at the Grand Hotel in Monte Carlo in the winter and at the Grand National in Lucerne in the summer. While at these hotels, he designed many things including serving-dishes, some of which bear his name. In 1885 he published Le Traité sur l'Art de Travaille les Fleurs en Cire (Treatise on the art of creating wax flowers). In time, Ritz moved on and managed hotels in Cannes and Baden-Baden, while Escoffier stayed behind and thought more about large, complex kitchens. At this time, he also started collecting, recording, and making available his recipes for cooks and headwaiters to use.

In 1890, César Ritz took over the management of Richard d'Oyly Carte's Savoy Hotel in London and invited Escoffier to develop an elegant restaurant there. The Savoy's restaurant quickly became the delight of its clientele, including the Duke of Orleans, one of the hotel's first royal residents, and the Prince of Wales, a frequent guest. Escoffier and the Savoy became known worldwide, and it was there that Escoffier perfected the codification of French haute cuisine. One of the dishes he invented was pêche Melba, created in 1894 for Australian opera diva Nellie Melba, who lived at the hotel while singing at Covent Garden. Another was cherries jubilee, invented three years later to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

Escoffier also wrote many books that became bibles in their field, including Le Guide Culinaire (1903), a compendium of about five thousand recipes, Le Carnet d'Epicure (1911), and Le Livre des Menus (1912). In 1920, Escoffier retired to his family home in Monte Carlo where he continued to write many books, including Le Riz (1927), La Morue (1929), and Ma Cuisine (1934). That same year, he was awarded France's Legion of Honor.

Bibliography

Escoffier, Georges-Auguste. The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery. Translated by H. K. Cracknell and R. J. Kaufman. London: Heinemann, 1979.

Flandrin, Jean-Louis, and Massimo Montanari. Food: A Culinary History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Herbodeau, Eugène, and Paul Thomas. Georges Auguste Escoffier. London: Practical Press, 1955.

Trager, James. The Food Chronology: A Food Lover's Compendium of Events and Anecdotes from Prehistory to the Present. New York: Henry Holt, 1995.

—Jacqueline M. Newman

Auguste Escoffier
Born	28 October 1846(1846-10-28) Villeneuve-Loubet, France
Died	12 February 1935 (aged 88) Monte Carlo, Monaco

Georges Auguste Escoffier (28 October 1846 – 12 February 1935) was a French chef, restaurateur and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods. He is a legendary figure among chefs and gourmets, and was one of the most important leaders in the development of modern French cuisine. Much of Escoffier's technique was based on that of Antoine Carême, one of the codifiers of French Haute cuisine, but Escoffier's achievement was to simplify and modernize Carême's elaborate and ornate style.

Alongside the recipes he recorded and invented, another of Escoffier's contributions to cooking was to elevate it to the status of a respected profession, introducing organized discipline to his kitchens. He organized his kitchens by the brigade de cuisine system, with each section run by a chef de partie.

Escoffier published Le Guide Culinaire, which is still used as a major reference work, both in the form of a cookbook and a textbook on cooking.

Contents 1 Early life 2 César Ritz and the Savoy 3 Ritz Hotels 4 Légion d'Honneur 5 Death 6 Publications 7 References

Early life

Escoffier was born in the village Villeneuve-Loubet, near Nice. The house where he was born is now the Musee de l'Art Culinaire, run by the Foundation Auguste Escoffier. At the age of thirteen, despite showing early promise as an artist, he started an apprenticeship at his uncle's restaurant, Le Restaurant Français, in Nice. In 1865 he moved to Le Petit Moulin Rouge restaurant in Paris. He stayed there until the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, when he became an army chef. His army experience led him to study the technique of canning food. Some time before 1878 he opened his own restaurant, Le Faisan d'Or (The Golden Pheasant) in Cannes. In 1880 he married Delphine Daffis. In 1884 the couple moved to Monte Carlo, where Escoffier took control of the kitchen at the Grand Hotel.

César Ritz and the Savoy

The Savoy Hotel, London

During the summers, Escoffier ran the kitchen of the Hotel National in Lucerne, where he met César Ritz (at that time the French Riviera was a winter resort). The two men formed a partnership and in 1890 accepted an invitation from Richard D'Oyly Carte to transfer to his new Savoy Hotel in London together with the third member of their team, the maître d'hôtel, Louis Echenard.^[1] Ritz put together what he described as "a little army of hotel men for the conquest of London", and Escoffier recruited French cooks and reorganised the kitchens. The Savoy under Ritz and his partners was an immediate success, attracting a distinguished and moneyed clientèle, headed by the Prince of Wales. Gregor Von Görög, chef to the Royal family at the time, was an enthusiast of Escoffier's zealous organization. Aristocratic women, hitherto unaccustomed to dine in public, were now "seen in full regalia in the Savoy dining and supper rooms".^[1]

At the Savoy, Escoffier created many famous dishes. In 1893 he invented the pêche Melba in honour of the Australian singer Nellie Melba, and in 1897, Melba toast. Other Escoffier creations, famous in their time, were bombe Néro (a flaming ice), fraises à la Sarah Bernhardt (strawberries with pineapple and Curaçao sorbet), baisers de Vierge (meringue with vanilla cream and crystallised white rose and violet petals) and suprêmes de volailles Jeannette (jellied chicken breasts with foie gras).^[2][3]

Ritz Hotels

In 1897, Ritz and Escoffier were both dismissed from the Savoy. Ritz and Echenard were implicated in the disappearance of over £3400 of wine and spirits, and Escoffier had been receiving gifts from the Savoy's suppliers.^[4] By this time, however, Ritz and his colleagues were already on the point of commercial independence, having established the Ritz Hotel Development Company, for which Escoffier set up the kitchens and recruited the chefs, first at the Paris Ritz (1898), and then at the new Carlton Hotel in London (1899), which soon drew much of the high society clientèle away from the Savoy.^[1] In addition to the haute cuisine offered at luncheon and dinner, tea at the Ritz became a fashionable institution in Paris, and later in London, though it caused Escoffier real distress: "How can one eat jam, cakes and pastries, and enjoy a dinner – the king of meals – an hour or two later? How can one appreciate the food, the cooking or the wines?"^[5]

Ritz gradually moved into retirement after opening The Ritz Hotel in 1906, leaving Escoffier as the figurehead of the Carlton until his own retirement in 1920. He continued to run the kitchens through World War I, in which his younger son was killed in active service.^[1] Recalling these years, The Times said, "Colour meant so much to Escoffier, and a memory arises of a feast at the Carlton for which the table decorations were white and pink roses, with silvery leaves – the background for a dinner all white and pink, Bortch striking the deepest note, Filets de poulet à la Paprika coming next, and the Agneau de lait forming the high note."^[6]

Légion d'Honneur

An officer's cross of the Légion d'Honneur

For Escoffier's work in promoting French cuisine, President Poincaré personally presented him with the cross of the Légion d'Honneur (Legion of Honour) in 1919, the first chef to receive such an award.^[1] In 1928 he was promoted to Officier (Officer) of the Legion at "a remarkable banquet at the Palais d'Orsay."^[5]

Death

Escoffier died on 12 February 1935 at the age of 88 in Monte Carlo, a few days after the death of his wife.

Publications

• Le Traité sur L'art de Travailler les Fleurs en Cire (Treatise on the Art of Working with Wax Flowers) (1886)
• Le Guide Culinaire (1903)
• Les Fleurs en Cire (new edition, 1910)
• Le Carnet d'Epicure (A Gourmet's Notebook) monthly magazine published from 1911 to 1914.
• Le Livre des Menus (Recipe Book) (1912)
• L'Aide-memoire Culinaire (1919)
• Le Riz (Rice) (1927)
• La Morue (Cod) (1929)
• Ma Cuisine (1934)
• 2000 French Recipes (1965, Translated to English by Marion Howells) ISBN 1-85051-694-4
• Memories of My Life (1996, from his own life souvenirs published by his grandson in 1985 and translated into English by L. Escoffier, his great granddaughter in-law), ISBN 0-471-28803-9
• Les Tresors Culinaires de la France (2002, collected by L. Escoffier from the original Carnet d'Epicure)

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e} Ashburner, F."Escoffier, Georges Auguste (1846–1935)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, May 2006, accessed 17 September 2009
2. ^ The Times, 13 February 1935, p. 14; and 16 February 1935, p. 17
3. ^ Escoffier, Auguste, A Guide to Modern Cookery, p. 405 (English translation of Le Guide Culinaire, by H. L. Cracknell and R. J. Kaufmann) ISBN 0471290165
4. ^ Brigid, Allen. "Ritz, César Jean (1850–1918)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edition, May 2006, accessed 18 September 2009
5. ^ ^{a b} The Times, 13 February 1935, p. 14
6. ^ The Times, 16 February 1935, p. 17

• Chastonay, Adalbert. Cesar Ritz: Life and Work (1997) ISBN 3-907816-60-9.
• Escoffier, Georges-Auguste. Memories of My Life (1997) ISBN 0-442-02396-0.
• Shaw, Timothy. The World of Escoffier. (1994) ISBN 0-86565-956-7.

Persondata
NAME	Escoffier, Georges Auguste
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	French chef, restauranteur and culinary writer
DATE OF BIRTH	28 October 1846
PLACE OF BIRTH	Villeneuve-Loubet, near Nice
DATE OF DEATH	12 February 1935
PLACE OF DEATH	Monte Carlo

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