November 28, 2018 • 31 mins
Any chefs in our listening audience undoubtedly know about Auguste Escoffier, but people who haven’t studied cuisine may not realize that this one man revolutionized food preparation and restaurant dining in ways that are still part of almost any meal you may be served today.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Okay, so
we are officially into fall and winter at least in
our hemisphere. Yep. Uh, and it for a lot of cultures.
(00:23):
This is this season where there are a lot of
holidays and celebrations that often involve super delicious things. So
this seemed like a good time to finally do the
episode that I had more or less promised that I
was going to do back when we talked about Chef
Marie Antoine Karem. So we are delving into the man
who followed right after Karam and became known as the
(00:44):
King of Chef, Chef of Kings, Augusta Scoffier. And if
there are any chefs in our listening audience, they already
know about a Scoffier. Uh. He is that important to
basically everything involving professional cooking at this point. But people
who haven't studied cuisine may not realize that this one
man really revolutionized food preparation and restaurant dining in ways
(01:07):
that are still part of just about any meal that
you would be served today. George Auguste Escoffier was born
on October eighteen forty six and Villeneuve, Lube, France, and
that's in the country's southeastern shore. His parents were Jean
Baptiste Escoffier, was a blacksmith, and Madeleine Savat. Although Jean
Baptiste had no formal education, he and the other children
(01:30):
of the village had been taught to read and write
from a priest, and then in turn, Jean Baptiste shared
that knowledge with the children of the community and his
own children once he became an adult. Yeah, I sort
of love that tradition of teaching that they had in
their family, even if it wasn't formal education. The young
august Escouvier did not initially want to cook. His dreams
as a kid where that he was going to be
(01:51):
an artist and specifically a sculptor, but there was sum
early indication that he was curious about things that happened
in the kitchen. The happened when he watched his grandmother
make herself coffee. This is at a time when coffee
was not guzzled at the rate for example, that I
guzzle it today. It was more of like a a
special drink you would have from time to time. But
after he watched her, he waited until everyone had left
(02:13):
the house so he could try making it himself, which
he did, and he was just ten at the time.
At the age of thirteen, Scoffee began working for his
uncle as an apprentice at a restaurant in Nice, which
was just northeast of where they were living. So basically
his career choice had been made for him. He would
go into cooking, and so he headed into the restaurant
(02:33):
Francais to begin learning in eighteen fifty nine, and he
stayed at his apprenticeship there until eighteen sixty three, and
early on he realized that while cooks weren't especially highly regarded,
he also saw the potential of the job and he
decided also very early on, that he was going to
work as hard as he could to quote improve the
standing of the kitchen chef. I will also point out
(02:55):
that this is a time when the word chef did
not have the connotations it had today. It meant chief
like the person that runs the kitchen, although he wrote
that particular line much later on, when it also had
the connotation of being in the kitchen I just want
to make clarity for that. Uh. He started writing menus
very very early on in his apprenticeship. He took a
great interest in menu writing specifically, and he carefully selected
(03:18):
words to name and describe dishes that he thought would
sound quote, gentle and pleasing, and when it came to
menus for special occasions, he described them as a sort
of poem recalling the happy hours spent. After his apprenticeship,
August was very busy with the whole series of jobs. First,
he was hired as first assistant at a restaurant called
(03:39):
Circle Massanna in November of eighteen sixty three. When that
kitchen closed for the summer in April of eighteen sixty four,
he moved on to Le Frere Provenceau and Nice as
kitchen chef. He trained there for six months before being
hired at Sa Philip, and then in the spring of
eighteen sixty five, he moved to Paris to work as
a kitchen aid at a restaurant called Le Petit Mulin Rouge,
(04:03):
which catered to the high society, including the royal families
of Europe. Yeah, he basically was always kind of jumping up,
even though the rankings of those positions as we know
them today may sound lower in some cases. When he
went from one to another, he was going to a
bigger restaurant, so it was still a move up. And
a little more than a year into his Paris job,
Escoffier was called up for mandatory military service. So from
(04:27):
September eighteen sixty six until the following spring he served
in the active Army reserves at vinfran chamer and as
soon as his military service was complete, he returned to
Lepertine Mulan Rouge. A few years later, military service called again.
The Franco Prussian War had begun, and in July of
eighteen seventy August was selected to be chef de cuisine
(04:50):
at the Ryan Army headquarters. He was feeding the chief officers,
and his accounts of providing meals during this time show
how really committed he was to his ideals as a
f Even while he was camping in mud with the
rest of the men, he wrote out menus for every
day the night before. Sometimes he would start food prep
at night. He became really adept at improvising to create
(05:12):
these multi course meals, even in very rough circumstances. The
men who he served a roast, beef, potato salad, soft
boiled eggs, and sauteed rabbit, along with fresh sausage that
he and his assistant made themselves. In camp. He would
catch wild animals, sometimes procure things like eggs from nearby farms,
always with a mind towards creating very filling, balanced meals. Yeah,
(05:35):
he really was quite nutritionally minded at a time when
people weren't really thinking about nutrition necessarily and how they
put together meal menus and literally when you're in the military,
that's probably not always your first priority. But he really
took great care and great pride and how he handled things,
and Escoffier saw this work as making room in the
(05:56):
minds of officers so that they could worry about more
important things than what they would He was like, I
will take care of your nutritional needs, you worry about
the other stuff. But he also saw the horrors of
war during this time. He for example, watched the injured
being carried into a makeshift hospital that was set up
on the same farm where he and his regiment camped
during the Battle of Gravelotte, and he hurried to bring
(06:19):
what he could to the men who needed treatment. Well.
Continue talking about his experiences during the war. But first
we're going to pause for a little sponsor break. As
the war stretched into months, rationing began to impact the
men used that Escoffier prepared. Horse Meat was used to
(06:42):
supplement because beef was unavailable, but even so the chef
was keenly aware of the drop in his ability to
provide for the nutritional needs of the men that he
cooked for. On October eighteen seventy, which was his twenty
four birthday, august A Scoffier became a prisoner of war
when the French surround undered after the Siege of Metz.
He remained a pow until the end of the war,
(07:04):
although his skills let him move out of the camp
proper and into a kitchen role. Yeah, there's a great
story in his memoir about how even though he was
kind of in like a better situation than the men
he had left behind in Camp uh, at Christmas that year,
he made a point to take as many things as
he could from the kitchen that he was allowed to
take and bring them back to them so they could
(07:25):
have sort of their own little celebration and he could
try to help them have a better Christmas than they
would otherwise have had, and after the war ended, A
Scoffier moved into the role of chef de cuisine at
the Hotel Luxembourg in Nice. But in spring of eighteen
seventy three he was back at Le Petit Boulan Rouge
as Chef de cuisine, and he parlayed his success there
(07:47):
into a side business for himself when he bought a
small grocery in can called Andre that means golden pheasant,
and he bought that in eighteen seventy six and over
the next two years while he continued to work at
Timulin Rouge, he renovated the store and added a winter
dining room to it. He moved into running his new
business full time in eighty eight after the end of
(08:09):
the summer season at Leptine Mulin Rouge. That August was
really busy for him. He got married to his fiancee,
Delphine Daffist, and he did that in between the two jobs.
But after only two months and his new venue and
his new marriage, his father in law suddenly died. That
meant that he took on a lot of responsibility and
to help the family get through the strain of this period.
(08:32):
A Goost gave up his little fledgling shop and can
to take more stable work in Paris. He became the
general manager of Le Maison Cheves, but he worked there
only eight months before a new opportunity presented itself, and
that was Chef de cuisine at the new Cafe Restaurant
du Casino, which was, as the name suggests, part of
a larger luxury casino property, and the scoffier had been
(08:56):
hired simply to get the restaurant up and running, and
he did this job admirably. This is something he did
throughout his career after this, where he would kind of
come in and set up a new restaurant and then
he would go back to his regular thing and the
restaurant would continue on its own. But he did this
so well with the casino and restaurant that when they
had a press event to promote this new luxury entertainment complex,
(09:18):
all of the reporters there were way more interested in
a scoffier's food than any other aspect of the business
that they were trying to talk about. After the casino,
while working as the restaurant manager of the Grand Hotel
in My Carlo, August Escoffier met Swiss business in Caesar.
Ritz was four and Ritz was already a successful hotelier,
but he didn't quite have the name recognition that he
(09:42):
would have later. Ritz wanted an expert in the food
service end of the hotel industry, and a scoffier really
fit that bill. So when Ritz began managing the Hotel
Nacional in lucer And Switzerland, he eventually hired a scoffier
on there, but their partnership in business truly cement did
when Ritz became the manager of London's Savoy Hotel, and
(10:03):
he brought a goost right along with him, so in
eighteen ninety Escoffier took charge of the kitchens at the
Savoy Hotel. Ritz was hired at the Savoy to fix
its problems. It had only been opened since eighteen eighty nine,
and while it was glamorous and beautiful, it was managed
really terribly and was facing bankruptcy. The hotel offered an
(10:24):
ola carte menu in the restaurant, but the chef that
had been in charge had really only managed fixed price
menus where all the courses were part of one order,
handling the different supply and prep needs. Of a kitchen
that had more items in play on the menu was
a really different skill set and it just had not
gone well. Escoffier, though, was excellent at this and he
(10:47):
walked into a mess, but he straightened it all out. Yeah,
he claimed that the day that they got there and
he was like, I can't imagine why anyone would do this,
but I'm like, maybe angry on the way out that
all of the kitchen equipment had been broken and all
of the food stores had been damaged in some way.
Like basically, someone was really angry on their way out
the door. Um. And so he had to call around
(11:08):
to chef friends and be like, do you have stuff
I can borrow today? And so he got through that
first day. Uh, he said he didn't even have salt
to begin with, But he got through that first day
with the help of of the chef community. And then
the next day he kind of got all of his
contacts with suppliers and got everything right and could move
forward from there. And a Scoffier instituted a number of
processes to get the hotel's restaurant running smoothly. So often
(11:31):
when high profile London clients would want to book a
dinner party, for example, they relied on the Metro d'hotel
to make decisions on the food because the French menus
were sometimes a little daunting for them, and A Scoffier
began keeping copious records of what they served at each
meal like this so that if the same person booked
another high end dinner party with them at a later date,
(11:52):
they could be sure that they would never serve them
the same meal twice and they would always be getting
different dishes. Everything about the restaurant was amond and optimized
to attract the best possible clients. Hell, even the lighting
was really carefully designed to be soft and glowing so
that their customers would look their absolute best while they
were eating their Royalty, heads of state, the wealthy, and
(12:14):
the famous all flocked there as Ritz and A Scoffier
put their mark on the place. It was during his
early years at the Savoy. In eighteen ninety three that
august Escoffier invented the dessert peach Melba in honor of
prior podcast subject Dame Nellie Melba, although it didn't appear
on a menu for a number of years. Yeah, we'll
talk about when it pops up, but he made it
(12:36):
basically especially for her one night, and then he always
remembered it uh and used it later. And it was
also early on in his Savoy days that a scoffier
made charity a priority for his kitchen. So when he
first started working there, he was visited each morning by
two nuns from a group called Little Sisters of the Poor,
asking for things like coffee grounds or tea that could
(12:57):
potentially be brewed a second time, or a crusts of bread,
and these they would take back to what was essentially
a poor retirement house, and the chef was inspired by
them to incorporate giving into the kitchen's normal routine. So
first he always made sure that he had some good,
clean supplies to give to them. He would always make
sure the food was as as high end as he
(13:20):
could possibly manage, and always very clean, but he also
instructed his staff to save any cuts of meat that
they could during preparations for banquets and set it aside
just for the Little Sisters. For example, when they served
a dish like quail to a large group, they'd normally
only be serving the breast, and that meant the legs
could be given to the nuns, along with instructions on
(13:40):
how to prepare it for the people they were feeding.
Since the Savoys banquets were often really huge affairs, this
was a substantial amount of food to donate, but it
was also a substantial amount of food to otherwise be wasting. Yes,
he was not a fan of that kind of waste.
People were hungry, as Scoffy a continued to do this
through his whole career. Yeah, he basically instructed his people
(14:01):
like any cut of meat that was edible but was
not considered like high end enough for some of their
fancy meals he was. He would be like, okay, you
know where to put it, and they just had a
place in the kitchen where they would always put those things.
At the end of every night, everything that was edible
went to the poor and then they started each new
day fresh. A. Scoffier also engaged in this wonderful little
(14:23):
bit of devious ingredient renaming while he was at the Savoy,
So he had prepared frog legs many times as a
chef in France, but he also knew that the English
thought this whole idea was gross and that they often
mocked the French for eating frog, and he was adamant
that frog meat was a very fresh and light tasting
option and it was easy to digest. So during a
(14:45):
large banquet again remember that often these people would just
order a banquet and let them select the menu. One
of the dishes that he served was called nymph a
la rour or Nymphs at Dawn, and the nymphs were
in fact frog and his English guests ate them up
in a chaufroise sauce, with Paprika declaring the dish absolutely delicious.
(15:10):
This sounds appalling to you. I encourage you. If you
see things on your menu that you don't recognize, ask yes.
It makes me laugh so hard. And there were cases
where he particularly I think it was the Prince of
Wales at the time, who was well traveled in New
French food, recognized what it was and what was going on,
and it was like their little shared secret of like
(15:31):
we're kind of pulling one over on these people. While
the Savoy years of A. Scoffey's career were overall really
happy and they made him very well known, he didn't
finish the nineteenth century there, and we will talk about
his next career shift. After another quick sponsor break in.
(15:55):
Things started to unravel at the Savoy for Rits and A. Scoffier.
So throughout their time with the hotel, both men had
worked side jobs opening new hotels and restaurants, and per
Escoffier's memoir, a misunderstanding over the nature of these side
businesses led to him and his partner Rits being fired.
In recent years, journalist Paul Levy has made the case
(16:17):
based on documents which he's come into the possession of,
that in fact, the two men were taking kickbacks from
suppliers and stealing from the hotel supplies to an exorbitant degree.
Part of this was because Ritz was also working on
some other projects and he would have potential business partners
from those projects come to the Savoy and they would
feed them sumptuous, very very expensive meals without charging of
(16:42):
course for them. And so that was kind of considered
part of this theft. Because Ritz was also signing agreements
that made him in charge of like large development projects,
some that would bear his name eventually. Uh So this
is part of the problem. Uh Descendants of Escoffier have
challenged these claims, but we wanted to make sure we
mentioned it at least, and regardless of the reason for
(17:02):
their sacking, A Scoffier and Rits moved into a new venue,
the Ritz Hotel in Paris, named for Caesar Ritz, which
opened on June five. This is all the same kind
of stuff that if you work for a big company
today when you have to take your business ethics and
compliance training, absolutely similar to all that kind of stuff. Yeah.
(17:24):
Once the Paris Ritz was up and running, A Scoffier
and Rits both returned to London in eight to work
at the brand new Carlton Hotel. While A Scoffier's career
before this involved constant shifting around, either seasonally or just
to take better jobs, he stayed at the Carlton for
over twenty years, and on the menu for the opening
of the new hotels restaurant was Peach Melba appearing Autumn
(17:47):
You for the first time and for the record, a
lot of the clientele from the Savoy chose to follow
Ritz and A Scoffier over to the Carlton. In nineteen
o three, Escoffier wrote what is probably his most famous book,
lagid Cullinaire, which he co wrote with Phileas Julbert, and
this book which is still in print, by the way,
(18:08):
became the Bible of French cooking, but really cooking in
general in terms of restaurant cooking, and it features recipes
for all possible courses. It's laid out in the narrative
form that shows dishes and the order that they should
be prepared and served. And August saw the need for
such a book because he saw that the restaurant industry
was growing and that it was increasingly important for chefs
(18:30):
to be able to manage kitchens that served huge numbers
of guests, and there was not at this point formal
training for it. He saw this writing as quote a
work tool more than a book. He was adamant that
even though it had more than five thousand recipes, it
was incomplete. He knew that the industry would always be
evolving and progressing, and that any new edition of the
book would need to be updated to reflect all those changes.
(18:54):
He also thought the basics would remain constant, and he
thought he could write what would be in essence of
foundation document that chefs could use for years and years
to come. And he was correct, because most chefs that
run restaurants today have a copy of this book. Somewhere.
When the fiftieth anniversary of A. Scoffier's professional career loomed
(19:14):
in nineteen o nine, his colleagues took up a collection
with the intent that they would use the money to
buy him a piece of art with it. But when Augusta.
Scoffier was told how much money had come in and
that they were planning to do this, it was about
six thousand francs, he asked that it instead be donated
to a retirement home that took care of elderly chefs
who had little or no money, and on the night
(19:36):
of the celebration of his career, he was gifted with
a silver cup from the hotel rather than a lavish
piece of art. In Escoffier published a pamphlet on suppressing poverty.
He felt that if every person followed the adage to
love your neighbor as yourself like really truly followed it,
that poverty would be erased. He advocated for a universal
(19:59):
old age pension system, particularly citing the people who had
worked their whole lives and jobs that just hadn't allowed
them to put money aside for retirement. Yeah because he
had worked in the service industry, his entire life. He
had been very keenly aware that the people that were
kind of at the lowest levels in any organization, and
we're getting paid the least, we're often working the hardest.
And he thought their work was just as honorable as
(20:21):
anyone else's, and that they should not have to rely
on charity in their elder years to get by, and
that there should be some sort of system put in
place to make sure that all people had an equal
shot at a lovely retirement. Starting in nineteen eleven, A
Scoffee started publishing a magazine which came out monthly called
Le cow ne depucu That's a Gourmet's Notebook. And he
(20:42):
published that magazine for three years, and his hopes were
that it would spread knowledge of French cooking to other
countries and in turn would help French tourism. But when
World War One began, the magazine which put aside. Also
in nineteen eleven, a fire started in one of the
elevators at the Carlton Hotel that had an estimated two
million franc's worth of damage. There weren't any fatalities, but
(21:04):
all of the rooms were damaged. A Scoffier rallied the staff,
and the restaurant was immediately open and serving meals. Yeah,
the the rooms that they could run out to guests
could not be filled for a while while they fixed
things up, but the restaurant at least could continue to
bring in a little bit of money. In Escoffier participated
in what I think is a fabulously interesting dinner with
(21:27):
his friends from a club that he had formed called
Lalage de gament, and Escoffier created a menu that was
served simultaneously to club members in restaurants throughout Europe. So
each kitchen prepared all of the dishes as outlined by
the famous cook, and then, according to A. Scoffier's memoirs,
throughout the continent at the same time, four thousand people
(21:50):
were eating the same meal. And during this event called
the DNA Depucu, Escoffier received telegrams from friends and fellows,
some of whom were very famous, taking part in this
celebration and marveling at what a wonderful thing it was.
While his magazine was underway, Escoffier also published a book
titled Lalvra de Menu or the Book of Menus in
(22:11):
nineteen twelve, and as we said, uh. Once the war
began in nineteen fourteen, things changed. His magazine ceased publication,
but Escoffier also faced ration ng and shortage issues, not
unlike when he had been a cook in the military,
but this time it was his job not two feed soldiers,
but to keep a luxury restaurant running despite those shortages.
(22:31):
And to that end, he once again got very creative
with menus. So he increased the use of venison, eggs
and bacon, among other non ration food ingredients, and he
made contact directly with fisherman so that he could get
fresh seafood without having to go through the rationed markets.
And he substituted cocoa butter for dairy butter, which was
not available at the time. He kind of through this
(22:55):
really started getting a sense of what we would call
today farm to table, where he was like, oh, yes,
fresh directly from the supplier is the best way to go. Uh.
And he had always been excellent and improvising when faced
with problems of supply, and it really served him well
during these lean times because he created some very very
beloved dishes. He also kept on with his philanthropic work
during the war. He created a support committee to help
(23:17):
raise the funds for the families of staff that had
been sent to the front to fight, and he distributed
the funds that were raised on a weekly basis. He
also hired more staff than he really needed to try
to keep families afloat, and he worked to make sure
that when men returned from fighting they could once again
find a position at the Carlton. On November eleventh, nineteen eighteen,
(23:37):
when the armistice was announced, the hotel's restaurant was almost
immediately booked to capacity with reservations for people who were
eager to celebrate the end of the war. And so,
with seven hundred and twelve seats booked for the night
and food restrictions still emplace that limited his options, Escoffier
got very very creative, indeed, so for the main dish
(23:58):
that night, he combined all of the areas meats he
had on hand in a mentser because he didn't have
a whole lot of any one meat, and then he
mixed that result with a patte and bread and that
had been soaked in cream so it was soft, and
he made what he called little mignonetts, so they were
almost like a French meatball on the one year anniversary
of the armistice, Escoffier was orded the Legion of Honor
(24:19):
and he became an officer of the Order in nineteen yeah.
He described uh becoming part of the Legion of Honor
as one of the greatest honors of his life and
Augusta Scoffier, after the war was tired and he retired
from running kitchens in nine He has this unique distinction
of having never worked for a private household in his
(24:40):
career as a cook or chef. But even after he
and his wife, Delphine moved to Monte Carlo for their retirement,
he continued to write books about cooking and running a
kitchen professionally, and in his writing he codified a lot
of the innovations that he had implemented during his long career.
He wrote about the importance of sanitation and kitchen safety,
and his brigade the cuisine system of kitchen management, which
(25:03):
is organized military style, with the chef de cuisine, which
is the chief of the kitchen, as the leader, and
all the other positions ranked below that one. He also
wrote about something that we mentioned earlier in UH his
first book of serving meals one course at a time,
because prior to that the standard practice had been everything
hitting the table at once, and then people just knew
(25:23):
to eat them in order. Uh. And he also outlined
his method of canning vegetables, which was new that was
something he had pioneered in response to rationing during his
time in the military. And he also was entirely ahead
of his time when it came to helpful cooking. I
mentioned already that he thought about nutrition in a much
broader way than most people did, and as you may
(25:45):
recall from our Marie Antoine Carime episode, France had shifted
to less decadent cooking trends over time after the French Revolution,
and Escoffier took that idea even farther by extolling the
virtues of the freshest possible ingredients obtained erectly from farms
and fisherman. He felt and wrote that everyone should have
access to good, healthy food and what he called a
(26:07):
courteous style of living, meaning meals shared among friends and
loved ones using fine cooking traditions and shared from one
generation to the next. Yeah, he thought like fine cooking
should not be something that only someone who ran a
professional kitchen should know. But that families should know it
and share it with one another, and that it should
just be part of life. And when you went to
(26:28):
a restaurant it was just so you didn't have to
do that, but you had the knowledge. Uh. And of
course Escoffier built on the four mother sauces established by
Marie Antoine, and the result ended up being a little
bit of a rework that landed at five mother sauces,
which remains standard in French cooking. So those are Beshema, tomat, velute,
(26:49):
espanol and hollidaise. Thank you, Missieur Scofier, because they have
all given me great joy. Augusta Scoffier died in Monte Carlo,
Monico and his home on February twelfth n just a
few days after his wife died. He was eighty nine.
His remains were buried in the town where he was born,
(27:10):
in his family's vault. Escoffier's memoirs were published well after
his death. When he died, his son Paul had assembled
all of the notes and documents that he had gone
and collected from the Monte Carlo house, as well as
a Scoffee's apartment that he kept in Paris, and those
notes included a memoir that the chef had written, and
those works were finally published by A. Scoffey's grandson in
(27:33):
Nive in French, and those were expanded and translated beginning
in nineteen to mark Augusta Scoffier's hundred and fiftieth birthday. Today,
the Augusta Scoffier Foundation runs the Escoffier Museum of Culinary
Arts at his birthplace. The august Escoffier School of Culinary
Arts offers training at several campuses and online courses as well,
(27:56):
and Michel Escoffier, who was the great grandson of the
Chef of King's, sets on the advisory board for the school.
And in Escovis memoir, which is a great read, uh
and really easy to read because it's the chapters are short,
but it's also very fun because you really do get
a sense that he could not stop talking about how
to make food, because he'll be in the middle of
telling a story and then be like, let me give
(28:17):
you the recipe, uh, and it will just drop in
like in the middle of sort of a paragraph of
of a narrative. But there was a passage in that
memoir that struck me that he wrote about when he
first entered the cooking profession as a teenage apprentice and
how he began to look at cooking, and it really
nicely encapsulates his ideology about the importance of this career.
(28:41):
He wrote, quote at the time, high society held little
esteem for the profession of cook This should never have
been the case, for cooking is a science and an art,
and one who puts all his heart into satisfying his
fellow man deserves recognition. French food, which is always a
(29:02):
big favorite of mine. Uh And I just love his story.
I love how he has h impacted so many meals
that you know, you and I and everyone who has
ever eaten in a restaurant has had, as well as
just sort of bringing French cooking to a wider audience
in some ways. You know, we talked about in the
modern era Julia Child being a person that really really
(29:25):
disseminated information about French cooking to the masses, and he
was sort of her precursor in that they have a
little overlap in their lifetimes, but they did not actually meet.
I don't think for listener, Mail, I have a thank
you for a lovely gift from our listener, Darren So
Darren wrote, Uh, dear Holly and Tracy, just a quick
note to say thanks for the show you do, which
helps keep me saying during long drives when I'm working.
(29:47):
An extra thank you for the show's featuring Australian history,
as you have taught me a couple of things about
my country that I did not know. And then here's
the cool thing, Tracy, we have gifts that you're gonna love,
what he said. I have enclosed a couple of copies
of my friend Luna odd freest fabulous, awesome, Awese Women
of History coloring book as a thank you. Unfortunately, he says,
I think it's sold out, but she has other great
(30:07):
stuff celebrating women on her Etsy page. This is like
the cutest. The art style is really really fun. I
can't wait. It's one of those things where I never
want to color in these coloring books, so I'm gonna
photo copy pages and color though, because that's how I do. Uh,
and I will make sure that Tracy gets her copy
when she is next in the office. Thank you, thank you,
(30:28):
Thank you again, Darren. I really appreciate it. I appreciate
all of the many things people send to us. They're
always so lovely and we feel very spoiled. If you
would like to write to us, you can do so
at History podcast at how stuff works dot com. You
can also find us as Missed in History pretty much
anywhere on social media, and you can find our website
at missed in History dot com. You can also subscribe
(30:48):
to the show on Apple Podcasts or the I Heart
Radio app or anywhere you get podcasts. For more on
this and that's of other topics, visit how staff works
dot com. HM, HM,
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Okay, so
we are officially into fall and winter at least in
our hemisphere. Yep. Uh, and it for a lot of cultures.
(00:23):
This is this season where there are a lot of
holidays and celebrations that often involve super delicious things. So
this seemed like a good time to finally do the
episode that I had more or less promised that I
was going to do back when we talked about Chef
Marie Antoine Karem. So we are delving into the man
who followed right after Karam and became known as the
(00:44):
King of Chef, Chef of Kings, Augusta Scoffier. And if
there are any chefs in our listening audience, they already
know about a Scoffier. Uh. He is that important to
basically everything involving professional cooking at this point. But people
who haven't studied cuisine may not realize that this one
man really revolutionized food preparation and restaurant dining in ways
(01:07):
that are still part of just about any meal that
you would be served today. George Auguste Escoffier was born
on October eighteen forty six and Villeneuve, Lube, France, and
that's in the country's southeastern shore. His parents were Jean
Baptiste Escoffier, was a blacksmith, and Madeleine Savat. Although Jean
Baptiste had no formal education, he and the other children
(01:30):
of the village had been taught to read and write
from a priest, and then in turn, Jean Baptiste shared
that knowledge with the children of the community and his
own children once he became an adult. Yeah, I sort
of love that tradition of teaching that they had in
their family, even if it wasn't formal education. The young
august Escouvier did not initially want to cook. His dreams
as a kid where that he was going to be
(01:51):
an artist and specifically a sculptor, but there was sum
early indication that he was curious about things that happened
in the kitchen. The happened when he watched his grandmother
make herself coffee. This is at a time when coffee
was not guzzled at the rate for example, that I
guzzle it today. It was more of like a a
special drink you would have from time to time. But
after he watched her, he waited until everyone had left
(02:13):
the house so he could try making it himself, which
he did, and he was just ten at the time.
At the age of thirteen, Scoffee began working for his
uncle as an apprentice at a restaurant in Nice, which
was just northeast of where they were living. So basically
his career choice had been made for him. He would
go into cooking, and so he headed into the restaurant
(02:33):
Francais to begin learning in eighteen fifty nine, and he
stayed at his apprenticeship there until eighteen sixty three, and
early on he realized that while cooks weren't especially highly regarded,
he also saw the potential of the job and he
decided also very early on, that he was going to
work as hard as he could to quote improve the
standing of the kitchen chef. I will also point out
(02:55):
that this is a time when the word chef did
not have the connotations it had today. It meant chief
like the person that runs the kitchen, although he wrote
that particular line much later on, when it also had
the connotation of being in the kitchen I just want
to make clarity for that. Uh. He started writing menus
very very early on in his apprenticeship. He took a
great interest in menu writing specifically, and he carefully selected
(03:18):
words to name and describe dishes that he thought would
sound quote, gentle and pleasing, and when it came to
menus for special occasions, he described them as a sort
of poem recalling the happy hours spent. After his apprenticeship,
August was very busy with the whole series of jobs. First,
he was hired as first assistant at a restaurant called
(03:39):
Circle Massanna in November of eighteen sixty three. When that
kitchen closed for the summer in April of eighteen sixty four,
he moved on to Le Frere Provenceau and Nice as
kitchen chef. He trained there for six months before being
hired at Sa Philip, and then in the spring of
eighteen sixty five, he moved to Paris to work as
a kitchen aid at a restaurant called Le Petit Mulin Rouge,
(04:03):
which catered to the high society, including the royal families
of Europe. Yeah, he basically was always kind of jumping up,
even though the rankings of those positions as we know
them today may sound lower in some cases. When he
went from one to another, he was going to a
bigger restaurant, so it was still a move up. And
a little more than a year into his Paris job,
Escoffier was called up for mandatory military service. So from
(04:27):
September eighteen sixty six until the following spring he served
in the active Army reserves at vinfran chamer and as
soon as his military service was complete, he returned to
Lepertine Mulan Rouge. A few years later, military service called again.
The Franco Prussian War had begun, and in July of
eighteen seventy August was selected to be chef de cuisine
(04:50):
at the Ryan Army headquarters. He was feeding the chief officers,
and his accounts of providing meals during this time show
how really committed he was to his ideals as a
f Even while he was camping in mud with the
rest of the men, he wrote out menus for every
day the night before. Sometimes he would start food prep
at night. He became really adept at improvising to create
(05:12):
these multi course meals, even in very rough circumstances. The
men who he served a roast, beef, potato salad, soft
boiled eggs, and sauteed rabbit, along with fresh sausage that
he and his assistant made themselves. In camp. He would
catch wild animals, sometimes procure things like eggs from nearby farms,
always with a mind towards creating very filling, balanced meals. Yeah,
(05:35):
he really was quite nutritionally minded at a time when
people weren't really thinking about nutrition necessarily and how they
put together meal menus and literally when you're in the military,
that's probably not always your first priority. But he really
took great care and great pride and how he handled things,
and Escoffier saw this work as making room in the
(05:56):
minds of officers so that they could worry about more
important things than what they would He was like, I
will take care of your nutritional needs, you worry about
the other stuff. But he also saw the horrors of
war during this time. He for example, watched the injured
being carried into a makeshift hospital that was set up
on the same farm where he and his regiment camped
during the Battle of Gravelotte, and he hurried to bring
(06:19):
what he could to the men who needed treatment. Well.
Continue talking about his experiences during the war. But first
we're going to pause for a little sponsor break. As
the war stretched into months, rationing began to impact the
men used that Escoffier prepared. Horse Meat was used to
(06:42):
supplement because beef was unavailable, but even so the chef
was keenly aware of the drop in his ability to
provide for the nutritional needs of the men that he
cooked for. On October eighteen seventy, which was his twenty
four birthday, august A Scoffier became a prisoner of war
when the French surround undered after the Siege of Metz.
He remained a pow until the end of the war,
(07:04):
although his skills let him move out of the camp
proper and into a kitchen role. Yeah, there's a great
story in his memoir about how even though he was
kind of in like a better situation than the men
he had left behind in Camp uh, at Christmas that year,
he made a point to take as many things as
he could from the kitchen that he was allowed to
take and bring them back to them so they could
(07:25):
have sort of their own little celebration and he could
try to help them have a better Christmas than they
would otherwise have had, and after the war ended, A
Scoffier moved into the role of chef de cuisine at
the Hotel Luxembourg in Nice. But in spring of eighteen
seventy three he was back at Le Petit Boulan Rouge
as Chef de cuisine, and he parlayed his success there
(07:47):
into a side business for himself when he bought a
small grocery in can called Andre that means golden pheasant,
and he bought that in eighteen seventy six and over
the next two years while he continued to work at
Timulin Rouge, he renovated the store and added a winter
dining room to it. He moved into running his new
business full time in eighty eight after the end of
(08:09):
the summer season at Leptine Mulin Rouge. That August was
really busy for him. He got married to his fiancee,
Delphine Daffist, and he did that in between the two jobs.
But after only two months and his new venue and
his new marriage, his father in law suddenly died. That
meant that he took on a lot of responsibility and
to help the family get through the strain of this period.
(08:32):
A Goost gave up his little fledgling shop and can
to take more stable work in Paris. He became the
general manager of Le Maison Cheves, but he worked there
only eight months before a new opportunity presented itself, and
that was Chef de cuisine at the new Cafe Restaurant
du Casino, which was, as the name suggests, part of
a larger luxury casino property, and the scoffier had been
(08:56):
hired simply to get the restaurant up and running, and
he did this job admirably. This is something he did
throughout his career after this, where he would kind of
come in and set up a new restaurant and then
he would go back to his regular thing and the
restaurant would continue on its own. But he did this
so well with the casino and restaurant that when they
had a press event to promote this new luxury entertainment complex,
(09:18):
all of the reporters there were way more interested in
a scoffier's food than any other aspect of the business
that they were trying to talk about. After the casino,
while working as the restaurant manager of the Grand Hotel
in My Carlo, August Escoffier met Swiss business in Caesar.
Ritz was four and Ritz was already a successful hotelier,
but he didn't quite have the name recognition that he
(09:42):
would have later. Ritz wanted an expert in the food
service end of the hotel industry, and a scoffier really
fit that bill. So when Ritz began managing the Hotel
Nacional in lucer And Switzerland, he eventually hired a scoffier
on there, but their partnership in business truly cement did
when Ritz became the manager of London's Savoy Hotel, and
(10:03):
he brought a goost right along with him, so in
eighteen ninety Escoffier took charge of the kitchens at the
Savoy Hotel. Ritz was hired at the Savoy to fix
its problems. It had only been opened since eighteen eighty nine,
and while it was glamorous and beautiful, it was managed
really terribly and was facing bankruptcy. The hotel offered an
(10:24):
ola carte menu in the restaurant, but the chef that
had been in charge had really only managed fixed price
menus where all the courses were part of one order,
handling the different supply and prep needs. Of a kitchen
that had more items in play on the menu was
a really different skill set and it just had not
gone well. Escoffier, though, was excellent at this and he
(10:47):
walked into a mess, but he straightened it all out. Yeah,
he claimed that the day that they got there and
he was like, I can't imagine why anyone would do this,
but I'm like, maybe angry on the way out that
all of the kitchen equipment had been broken and all
of the food stores had been damaged in some way.
Like basically, someone was really angry on their way out
the door. Um. And so he had to call around
(11:08):
to chef friends and be like, do you have stuff
I can borrow today? And so he got through that
first day. Uh, he said he didn't even have salt
to begin with, But he got through that first day
with the help of of the chef community. And then
the next day he kind of got all of his
contacts with suppliers and got everything right and could move
forward from there. And a Scoffier instituted a number of
processes to get the hotel's restaurant running smoothly. So often
(11:31):
when high profile London clients would want to book a
dinner party, for example, they relied on the Metro d'hotel
to make decisions on the food because the French menus
were sometimes a little daunting for them, and A Scoffier
began keeping copious records of what they served at each
meal like this so that if the same person booked
another high end dinner party with them at a later date,
(11:52):
they could be sure that they would never serve them
the same meal twice and they would always be getting
different dishes. Everything about the restaurant was amond and optimized
to attract the best possible clients. Hell, even the lighting
was really carefully designed to be soft and glowing so
that their customers would look their absolute best while they
were eating their Royalty, heads of state, the wealthy, and
(12:14):
the famous all flocked there as Ritz and A Scoffier
put their mark on the place. It was during his
early years at the Savoy. In eighteen ninety three that
august Escoffier invented the dessert peach Melba in honor of
prior podcast subject Dame Nellie Melba, although it didn't appear
on a menu for a number of years. Yeah, we'll
talk about when it pops up, but he made it
(12:36):
basically especially for her one night, and then he always
remembered it uh and used it later. And it was
also early on in his Savoy days that a scoffier
made charity a priority for his kitchen. So when he
first started working there, he was visited each morning by
two nuns from a group called Little Sisters of the Poor,
asking for things like coffee grounds or tea that could
(12:57):
potentially be brewed a second time, or a crusts of bread,
and these they would take back to what was essentially
a poor retirement house, and the chef was inspired by
them to incorporate giving into the kitchen's normal routine. So
first he always made sure that he had some good,
clean supplies to give to them. He would always make
sure the food was as as high end as he
(13:20):
could possibly manage, and always very clean, but he also
instructed his staff to save any cuts of meat that
they could during preparations for banquets and set it aside
just for the Little Sisters. For example, when they served
a dish like quail to a large group, they'd normally
only be serving the breast, and that meant the legs
could be given to the nuns, along with instructions on
(13:40):
how to prepare it for the people they were feeding.
Since the Savoys banquets were often really huge affairs, this
was a substantial amount of food to donate, but it
was also a substantial amount of food to otherwise be wasting. Yes,
he was not a fan of that kind of waste.
People were hungry, as Scoffy a continued to do this
through his whole career. Yeah, he basically instructed his people
(14:01):
like any cut of meat that was edible but was
not considered like high end enough for some of their
fancy meals he was. He would be like, okay, you
know where to put it, and they just had a
place in the kitchen where they would always put those things.
At the end of every night, everything that was edible
went to the poor and then they started each new
day fresh. A. Scoffier also engaged in this wonderful little
(14:23):
bit of devious ingredient renaming while he was at the Savoy,
So he had prepared frog legs many times as a
chef in France, but he also knew that the English
thought this whole idea was gross and that they often
mocked the French for eating frog, and he was adamant
that frog meat was a very fresh and light tasting
option and it was easy to digest. So during a
(14:45):
large banquet again remember that often these people would just
order a banquet and let them select the menu. One
of the dishes that he served was called nymph a
la rour or Nymphs at Dawn, and the nymphs were
in fact frog and his English guests ate them up
in a chaufroise sauce, with Paprika declaring the dish absolutely delicious.
(15:10):
This sounds appalling to you. I encourage you. If you
see things on your menu that you don't recognize, ask yes.
It makes me laugh so hard. And there were cases
where he particularly I think it was the Prince of
Wales at the time, who was well traveled in New
French food, recognized what it was and what was going on,
and it was like their little shared secret of like
(15:31):
we're kind of pulling one over on these people. While
the Savoy years of A. Scoffey's career were overall really
happy and they made him very well known, he didn't
finish the nineteenth century there, and we will talk about
his next career shift. After another quick sponsor break in.
(15:55):
Things started to unravel at the Savoy for Rits and A. Scoffier.
So throughout their time with the hotel, both men had
worked side jobs opening new hotels and restaurants, and per
Escoffier's memoir, a misunderstanding over the nature of these side
businesses led to him and his partner Rits being fired.
In recent years, journalist Paul Levy has made the case
(16:17):
based on documents which he's come into the possession of,
that in fact, the two men were taking kickbacks from
suppliers and stealing from the hotel supplies to an exorbitant degree.
Part of this was because Ritz was also working on
some other projects and he would have potential business partners
from those projects come to the Savoy and they would
feed them sumptuous, very very expensive meals without charging of
(16:42):
course for them. And so that was kind of considered
part of this theft. Because Ritz was also signing agreements
that made him in charge of like large development projects,
some that would bear his name eventually. Uh So this
is part of the problem. Uh Descendants of Escoffier have
challenged these claims, but we wanted to make sure we
mentioned it at least, and regardless of the reason for
(17:02):
their sacking, A Scoffier and Rits moved into a new venue,
the Ritz Hotel in Paris, named for Caesar Ritz, which
opened on June five. This is all the same kind
of stuff that if you work for a big company
today when you have to take your business ethics and
compliance training, absolutely similar to all that kind of stuff. Yeah.
(17:24):
Once the Paris Ritz was up and running, A Scoffier
and Rits both returned to London in eight to work
at the brand new Carlton Hotel. While A Scoffier's career
before this involved constant shifting around, either seasonally or just
to take better jobs, he stayed at the Carlton for
over twenty years, and on the menu for the opening
of the new hotels restaurant was Peach Melba appearing Autumn
(17:47):
You for the first time and for the record, a
lot of the clientele from the Savoy chose to follow
Ritz and A Scoffier over to the Carlton. In nineteen
o three, Escoffier wrote what is probably his most famous book,
lagid Cullinaire, which he co wrote with Phileas Julbert, and
this book which is still in print, by the way,
(18:08):
became the Bible of French cooking, but really cooking in
general in terms of restaurant cooking, and it features recipes
for all possible courses. It's laid out in the narrative
form that shows dishes and the order that they should
be prepared and served. And August saw the need for
such a book because he saw that the restaurant industry
was growing and that it was increasingly important for chefs
(18:30):
to be able to manage kitchens that served huge numbers
of guests, and there was not at this point formal
training for it. He saw this writing as quote a
work tool more than a book. He was adamant that
even though it had more than five thousand recipes, it
was incomplete. He knew that the industry would always be
evolving and progressing, and that any new edition of the
book would need to be updated to reflect all those changes.
(18:54):
He also thought the basics would remain constant, and he
thought he could write what would be in essence of
foundation document that chefs could use for years and years
to come. And he was correct, because most chefs that
run restaurants today have a copy of this book. Somewhere.
When the fiftieth anniversary of A. Scoffier's professional career loomed
(19:14):
in nineteen o nine, his colleagues took up a collection
with the intent that they would use the money to
buy him a piece of art with it. But when Augusta.
Scoffier was told how much money had come in and
that they were planning to do this, it was about
six thousand francs, he asked that it instead be donated
to a retirement home that took care of elderly chefs
who had little or no money, and on the night
(19:36):
of the celebration of his career, he was gifted with
a silver cup from the hotel rather than a lavish
piece of art. In Escoffier published a pamphlet on suppressing poverty.
He felt that if every person followed the adage to
love your neighbor as yourself like really truly followed it,
that poverty would be erased. He advocated for a universal
(19:59):
old age pension system, particularly citing the people who had
worked their whole lives and jobs that just hadn't allowed
them to put money aside for retirement. Yeah because he
had worked in the service industry, his entire life. He
had been very keenly aware that the people that were
kind of at the lowest levels in any organization, and
we're getting paid the least, we're often working the hardest.
And he thought their work was just as honorable as
(20:21):
anyone else's, and that they should not have to rely
on charity in their elder years to get by, and
that there should be some sort of system put in
place to make sure that all people had an equal
shot at a lovely retirement. Starting in nineteen eleven, A
Scoffee started publishing a magazine which came out monthly called
Le cow ne depucu That's a Gourmet's Notebook. And he
(20:42):
published that magazine for three years, and his hopes were
that it would spread knowledge of French cooking to other
countries and in turn would help French tourism. But when
World War One began, the magazine which put aside. Also
in nineteen eleven, a fire started in one of the
elevators at the Carlton Hotel that had an estimated two
million franc's worth of damage. There weren't any fatalities, but
(21:04):
all of the rooms were damaged. A Scoffier rallied the staff,
and the restaurant was immediately open and serving meals. Yeah,
the the rooms that they could run out to guests
could not be filled for a while while they fixed
things up, but the restaurant at least could continue to
bring in a little bit of money. In Escoffier participated
in what I think is a fabulously interesting dinner with
(21:27):
his friends from a club that he had formed called
Lalage de gament, and Escoffier created a menu that was
served simultaneously to club members in restaurants throughout Europe. So
each kitchen prepared all of the dishes as outlined by
the famous cook, and then, according to A. Scoffier's memoirs,
throughout the continent at the same time, four thousand people
(21:50):
were eating the same meal. And during this event called
the DNA Depucu, Escoffier received telegrams from friends and fellows,
some of whom were very famous, taking part in this
celebration and marveling at what a wonderful thing it was.
While his magazine was underway, Escoffier also published a book
titled Lalvra de Menu or the Book of Menus in
(22:11):
nineteen twelve, and as we said, uh. Once the war
began in nineteen fourteen, things changed. His magazine ceased publication,
but Escoffier also faced ration ng and shortage issues, not
unlike when he had been a cook in the military,
but this time it was his job not two feed soldiers,
but to keep a luxury restaurant running despite those shortages.
(22:31):
And to that end, he once again got very creative
with menus. So he increased the use of venison, eggs
and bacon, among other non ration food ingredients, and he
made contact directly with fisherman so that he could get
fresh seafood without having to go through the rationed markets.
And he substituted cocoa butter for dairy butter, which was
not available at the time. He kind of through this
(22:55):
really started getting a sense of what we would call
today farm to table, where he was like, oh, yes,
fresh directly from the supplier is the best way to go. Uh.
And he had always been excellent and improvising when faced
with problems of supply, and it really served him well
during these lean times because he created some very very
beloved dishes. He also kept on with his philanthropic work
during the war. He created a support committee to help
(23:17):
raise the funds for the families of staff that had
been sent to the front to fight, and he distributed
the funds that were raised on a weekly basis. He
also hired more staff than he really needed to try
to keep families afloat, and he worked to make sure
that when men returned from fighting they could once again
find a position at the Carlton. On November eleventh, nineteen eighteen,
(23:37):
when the armistice was announced, the hotel's restaurant was almost
immediately booked to capacity with reservations for people who were
eager to celebrate the end of the war. And so,
with seven hundred and twelve seats booked for the night
and food restrictions still emplace that limited his options, Escoffier
got very very creative, indeed, so for the main dish
(23:58):
that night, he combined all of the areas meats he
had on hand in a mentser because he didn't have
a whole lot of any one meat, and then he
mixed that result with a patte and bread and that
had been soaked in cream so it was soft, and
he made what he called little mignonetts, so they were
almost like a French meatball on the one year anniversary
of the armistice, Escoffier was orded the Legion of Honor
(24:19):
and he became an officer of the Order in nineteen yeah.
He described uh becoming part of the Legion of Honor
as one of the greatest honors of his life and
Augusta Scoffier, after the war was tired and he retired
from running kitchens in nine He has this unique distinction
of having never worked for a private household in his
(24:40):
career as a cook or chef. But even after he
and his wife, Delphine moved to Monte Carlo for their retirement,
he continued to write books about cooking and running a
kitchen professionally, and in his writing he codified a lot
of the innovations that he had implemented during his long career.
He wrote about the importance of sanitation and kitchen safety,
and his brigade the cuisine system of kitchen management, which
(25:03):
is organized military style, with the chef de cuisine, which
is the chief of the kitchen, as the leader, and
all the other positions ranked below that one. He also
wrote about something that we mentioned earlier in UH his
first book of serving meals one course at a time,
because prior to that the standard practice had been everything
hitting the table at once, and then people just knew
(25:23):
to eat them in order. Uh. And he also outlined
his method of canning vegetables, which was new that was
something he had pioneered in response to rationing during his
time in the military. And he also was entirely ahead
of his time when it came to helpful cooking. I
mentioned already that he thought about nutrition in a much
broader way than most people did, and as you may
(25:45):
recall from our Marie Antoine Carime episode, France had shifted
to less decadent cooking trends over time after the French Revolution,
and Escoffier took that idea even farther by extolling the
virtues of the freshest possible ingredients obtained erectly from farms
and fisherman. He felt and wrote that everyone should have
access to good, healthy food and what he called a
(26:07):
courteous style of living, meaning meals shared among friends and
loved ones using fine cooking traditions and shared from one
generation to the next. Yeah, he thought like fine cooking
should not be something that only someone who ran a
professional kitchen should know. But that families should know it
and share it with one another, and that it should
just be part of life. And when you went to
(26:28):
a restaurant it was just so you didn't have to
do that, but you had the knowledge. Uh. And of
course Escoffier built on the four mother sauces established by
Marie Antoine, and the result ended up being a little
bit of a rework that landed at five mother sauces,
which remains standard in French cooking. So those are Beshema, tomat, velute,
(26:49):
espanol and hollidaise. Thank you, Missieur Scofier, because they have
all given me great joy. Augusta Scoffier died in Monte Carlo,
Monico and his home on February twelfth n just a
few days after his wife died. He was eighty nine.
His remains were buried in the town where he was born,
(27:10):
in his family's vault. Escoffier's memoirs were published well after
his death. When he died, his son Paul had assembled
all of the notes and documents that he had gone
and collected from the Monte Carlo house, as well as
a Scoffee's apartment that he kept in Paris, and those
notes included a memoir that the chef had written, and
those works were finally published by A. Scoffey's grandson in
(27:33):
Nive in French, and those were expanded and translated beginning
in nineteen to mark Augusta Scoffier's hundred and fiftieth birthday. Today,
the Augusta Scoffier Foundation runs the Escoffier Museum of Culinary
Arts at his birthplace. The august Escoffier School of Culinary
Arts offers training at several campuses and online courses as well,
(27:56):
and Michel Escoffier, who was the great grandson of the
Chef of King's, sets on the advisory board for the school.
And in Escovis memoir, which is a great read, uh
and really easy to read because it's the chapters are short,
but it's also very fun because you really do get
a sense that he could not stop talking about how
to make food, because he'll be in the middle of
telling a story and then be like, let me give
(28:17):
you the recipe, uh, and it will just drop in
like in the middle of sort of a paragraph of
of a narrative. But there was a passage in that
memoir that struck me that he wrote about when he
first entered the cooking profession as a teenage apprentice and
how he began to look at cooking, and it really
nicely encapsulates his ideology about the importance of this career.
(28:41):
He wrote, quote at the time, high society held little
esteem for the profession of cook This should never have
been the case, for cooking is a science and an art,
and one who puts all his heart into satisfying his
fellow man deserves recognition. French food, which is always a
(29:02):
big favorite of mine. Uh And I just love his story.
I love how he has h impacted so many meals
that you know, you and I and everyone who has
ever eaten in a restaurant has had, as well as
just sort of bringing French cooking to a wider audience
in some ways. You know, we talked about in the
modern era Julia Child being a person that really really
(29:25):
disseminated information about French cooking to the masses, and he
was sort of her precursor in that they have a
little overlap in their lifetimes, but they did not actually meet.
I don't think for listener, Mail, I have a thank
you for a lovely gift from our listener, Darren So
Darren wrote, Uh, dear Holly and Tracy, just a quick
note to say thanks for the show you do, which
helps keep me saying during long drives when I'm working.
(29:47):
An extra thank you for the show's featuring Australian history,
as you have taught me a couple of things about
my country that I did not know. And then here's
the cool thing, Tracy, we have gifts that you're gonna love,
what he said. I have enclosed a couple of copies
of my friend Luna odd freest fabulous, awesome, Awese Women
of History coloring book as a thank you. Unfortunately, he says,
I think it's sold out, but she has other great
(30:07):
stuff celebrating women on her Etsy page. This is like
the cutest. The art style is really really fun. I
can't wait. It's one of those things where I never
want to color in these coloring books, so I'm gonna
photo copy pages and color though, because that's how I do. Uh,
and I will make sure that Tracy gets her copy
when she is next in the office. Thank you, thank you,
(30:28):
Thank you again, Darren. I really appreciate it. I appreciate
all of the many things people send to us. They're
always so lovely and we feel very spoiled. If you
would like to write to us, you can do so
at History podcast at how stuff works dot com. You
can also find us as Missed in History pretty much
anywhere on social media, and you can find our website
at missed in History dot com. You can also subscribe
(30:48):
to the show on Apple Podcasts or the I Heart
Radio app or anywhere you get podcasts. For more on
this and that's of other topics, visit how staff works
dot com. HM, HM,
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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