Posted on 10/28/2006 7:42:34 AM PDT by yankeedame
Auguste Escoffier was a French chef, restaurateur and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods.
He is a near-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, the founder 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, and to introduce discipline and sobriety where before there had been brutality and drunkenness.
He organized his kitchens by the brigade system, with each section run by a chef de partie. He also replaced the practice of service à la française (serving all dishes at once) with service à la russe (serving each dish in the order printed on the menu).
On February 12th, 1935 a few days after the death of his wife, Escoffier died at his home, La Villa Fernand, 8 bis Avenue de la Costa, Monte Carlo, in his eighty-ninth year. He is buried in the family vault at Villeneuve-Loubet.
Footnotes:
At the beginning of Escoffier's career, cooking was not a profession held in high esteem. This was due partly to the laxity which could so easily creep in and also to the rigorous conditions of work. The cook spends the greater part of his time around the stove in overwhelming heat and in the midst of the smell of cooking, which, when concentrated, is sometimes almost unbearable. He works continuously without a moment's respite.
For these reasons, in the mid-nineteenth century drinking was inevitably rife in the kitchen. Escoffier was quick to realise the risks in giving way to such excesses.
The cuisine suffered, the atmosphere in the kitchen suffered and the appearance of certain old cooks, undermined by years of work in such conditions and by their intemperance, gave his food for thought. He, with his small stature, was destined to suffer even more than others from the heat of the stoves. However, he never allowed himself to drink or smoke. He made it a point of honour to preserve his impeccable taste.
Later, when he had become a chef, he called upon a famous doctor to invent a pleasant and healthy drink which would relieve the discomfort of cooks working in such conditions.
Thus in all the hotel kitchens which he planned, there was always a vast kettle containing a barley drink. This allowed Escoffier to prohibit the drinking of alcohol in the kitchen.
Swearing and shouting were the norm then as was the brutal treatment of young apprentices. Escoffier fought first against professional slang and vulgarity of speech. Swearing and vulgar display of temper were no longer allowed and on his insistance there were to be no swearing and brutality of apprentices (as was the norm) and more thirst quenching drinks(non-alcoholic) were made available to combat the heat.
He himself would leave the kitchen rather than lose his temper with the staff.
Footnote site: http://www.geocities.com/napavalley/6454/escoffier.html
Maybe the creators of HBO's Deadwood could write about pre-Escoffier days in the kitchen. It would provide another supposedly legitimate (historically speaking) outlet for ridiculous amounts of profanity, which -- being pathologically obsessed with foul language as Deadwood's creators were, would be a good thing, right? :^ )
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