Good morning! Today I’d like to expand on something I talked about in a previous article, which was Georges Auguste Escoffier in my culinary museum post. For those of you who’d like to know more about him, you’re in for a treat!

Escoffier was born on October 28 1846, in France. When he turned 13, he started working at his uncle’s restaurant in Nice. He later moved to a restaurant in Paris until the Franco-Prussian war, when he was hired as a chef for the army. After the war, he married his wife Delphine Daffis, and moved to Monte Carlo four years later. Escoffier met Cesar Ritz in Lucerne. The two became great friends, and went on to work in the kitchen at the Savoy Hotel. There, if you recall from my previous article, he invented the kitchen brigade system, as well as coming up with fantastic new meals. These dishes included a flaming ice, strawberries with pineapple & Curacao sorbet, meringue with vanilla cream and crystallized white rose & violet petals, and jellied chicken breasts with foie gras. He even invented Melba toast, in honor of Australian singer Nellie Melba!

Escoffier once met Kaiser Wilhelm II on the SS Imperator to prepare a lunch and dinner for him. When the Kaiser ate his meal, he was so impressed that he told Escoffier, “I am the emperor of Germany, but you are the emperor of chefs.”

Well, there’s some more information on Georges Auguste Escoffier! Check out my other posts, and feel free to post a comment!