The chef of kings was fired from the Savoy for supplier kickbacks
Auguste Escoffier gave the world peach Melba, the five codified mother sauces and the kitchen brigade system restaurants still use. He also confessed to pocketing supplier kickbacks at London's Savoy, where eggs ordered by the hundred arrived short and the hotel's losses ran past £16,000. He settled his share for £500.
Escoffier was born on 28 October 1846 in Villeneuve-Loubet, near Nice, in a house that is now a museum of culinary art. At twelve his father pulled him out of school, despite his talent for drawing, and sent him to his uncle's restaurant in Nice. The boy was bullied and so short he could not safely open the ovens, so he took to wearing heeled boots. At 19 he moved to a Paris restaurant as an apprentice roast cook, then spent nearly seven years in the army, ending as chef at Metz after the Franco-Prussian War began in 1870. That service got him interested in canning.
He carried military order into kitchens that had been noisy, boozy places, insisting on silence, cleanliness and discipline and organising staff into a strict chain of command. From 1884 he ran kitchens for the hotelier César Ritz, and in 1890 the pair moved to Richard D'Oyly Carte's new Savoy Hotel in London. It became a magnet for the Prince of Wales and high society. For the Australian soprano Nellie Melba he created pêche Melba in 1893 and Melba toast four years later.
Then came the audit. Private investigators tailed the managers for six months, and on 8 March 1898 Ritz, Escoffier and the maître d'hôtel Louis Echenard were dismissed; police helped remove defiant cooks, some brandishing knives. In confessions signed on 3 January 1900 and kept private, Escoffier admitted taking kickbacks worth up to 5% of purchases. By then the team was already running the Paris Ritz and London's Carlton, which lured the Savoy's wealthy diners away.
His Le Guide Culinaire remains a standard reference. Legend has Kaiser Wilhelm II telling him in 1913 that he was the emperor of chefs. He kept the Carlton's kitchens going through the First World War, which killed his younger son, and retired in 1920. Escoffier became first president of the World Association of Chefs' Societies in 1928 and died on 12 February 1935, aged 88.
Source: Auguste Escoffier
