February 16, 2003

Chefs organize, cooks cook, and the master chef of the modern age is Auguste Escoffier whose books listing 50 sauces for a fillet of sole, 82 smashing ways of dealing with salt cod and 325 sautees for chicken have been the Pentateuch of chefs since his death in 1935.

Escoffier’s career is a paradigm of international cooking. Born on the Cote d’Azur, he graduated to Parisian restaurants by means of apprenticeship and application. Success in that city might merely have been crowned by purchase of his own restaurant back in his native region, but service in the Franco-Prussian war — his meals for officers under fire were miracles of improvisation — interrupted, and wider horizons were opened up by wealthy clients and his falling in with Cesar Ritz.

For 20 years they were partners in a succession of ventures across three continents until Ritz went into a mental decline after 1902 — perhaps accelerated by the cancellation of Edward VII’s coronation dinner (a dicky appendix) with 500 lunches on the hob. Ritz and Escoffier were lucky to be around at a time when the construction of giant hotels — palaces of the people as well as of royalty — had never been easier. And they had the management team as well as the chefs and culinary programme to make these monsters run like clock work. The Savoy, Claridges the Carlton, Ritzes here, there and everywhere, not to mention a useful sideline in cooking on ocean liners.

Escoffier was also more than a cook. He wrote books, promoted the art of French cooking, dabbled in politics (advocating national fund to relieve poverty), and commercialized himself in a range of sauces and canned goods. His consultancies presaged the modern chef’s career path. And he always worked in a frock coat and cravat: executive is, I think, the term.

Kenneth James canters us through this life with little deviation and a lot of menus. Every chapter has its interlude of gastro-history, inserted perhaps for the reader to draw breath after another half-dozen triumphant yet repetitious dinners. (Escoffier was a master at variations: 100 things to do with peaches — including laying them breast-like on a bed of vanilla ice-cream and calling it “Coupe Venus”). However, Escoffier’s emotional life was a zero, unless he had as mistress Sarah Bernhardt or Rosa Lewis (the duchess of Jermyn Street: a cook with style who ended owning the Cavendish Hotel). Lips have stayed sealed. As they have at the Savoy whence have emanated tales of him being on the take during his time there with Ritz as general manager. James is unwilling to take the claims of embezzlement too seriously, and certainly Escoffier was never a rich man. In fact for one so evidently intelligent, he seemed always to be gulled by business associates. Signs here too of the modern era, for who has not known chefs of undeniable brilliance who have yet been left like punchdrunk fighters in the gutter of despair as their working lives draw to a close? — Dawn/ Guardian news service

Escoffier: The King of Chefs
By Kenneth James
Hambledon and London
ISBN 185285 3964
320pp. £19.95

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