A HARTE APPETITE: KING OF CHEFS ESCOFFIER'S RECIPES SPAN THE YEARS

It was aboard the liner Imperator shortly before the start of World War I, as the Larousse Gastronomique tells it. The Kaiser, Emperor William II, was so impressed with the job that the supervisor of the ship's imperial kitchens had done that he turned to him and said, "I am the Emperor of Germany, but you are the Emperor of chefs."

And so he was. He was the "king of chefs" and the "chef of kings." At his death he was hailed as "the most famous cook in the world." He was Georges Auguste Escoffier.

Escoffier was born in France in the village of Villeneuve (now Villeneuve-Loubet) near Nice, 152 years ago on this very date, the son of a blacksmith, and grew up to be the first cook in French history to receive the cross of the Legion of Honor. Along the way he transformed our ideas about fine dining and revolutionized the professional kitchen. One of his biographers, Timothy Shaw, says, "He was the presiding genius of a whole gastronomic epoch."

Though Escoffier had originally intended to be a sculptor, he had always been interested in food, even as a young boy. His grandmother was an excellent cook and at the age of 10 Escoffier would spend hours in the kitchen observing her cooking techniques. Sometimes he would experiment on his own.

But it was not until his uncle Francois agreed to take him on as a kitchen apprentice at his successful restaurant in Nice that Escoffier became serious about cooking as a profession. (He was too small to work in the family trade as a blacksmith. In fact, as a youth he had to wear elevator shoes in the kitchen to avoid getting burned or being overcome by the intense heat.) He would recall later, "They just told me I was going to be a cook, and that was that!"

And that he did. As Shaw notes, his career was "one of the most illustrious in food history." After a six-month stint at his uncle's restaurant he went to work at other local establishments and in his spare time learned the art of pastry making at a nearby patisserie. During this time he so impressed a visiting restaurateur from Paris that he recommended Escoffier for a job in that city, a significant career move.

From there he served as a cook in the army (where he learned that "horse meat is delicious when you are in the condition to appreciate it"), joined with Cesar Ritz to open great hotel restaurants in Monte Carlo, Rome, Paris and London (at the Savoy he invented the revolutionary concept of background music by bringing in Johann Strauss), became the Edwardians' favorite chef (catering to the likes of the Prince of Wales, Sarah Bernhardt and Oscar Wilde), wrote books (his "Le Guide Culinaire," containing some 5,000 recipes, is still a standard reference work), and eventually, after 62 years (perhaps the longest professional career in cooking in history, his rival Prosper Montagne notes in the Larousse Gastronomique), retired. And even in retirement, he remained active, writing "Ma Cuisine," a cookbook focusing on bourgeois cooking for chefs working in private homes and featuring, among others, recipes that hearken back to his birthplace, such as Poulet Grand-mere, a simple chicken dish like his grandmother used to make.

Escoffier changed the very way we eat today with his innovations. Previously, ostentation was the standard for dinner service, a tradition dating back to the medieval banquet. A large number of different dishes would be set on the table at once and changed during the meal. The purpose was to impress by lavish display. Escoffier helped change the practice to the style we know today where dishes are served consecutively instead of all at the same time. He also introduced the fixed-price menu. Moreover, he disliked excessive garnishes and aimed for a balance of a few good ingredients as opposed to a glut of too many. He believed such simplification represented an advancement in cooking rather than a decline.

Still, a typical Escoffier meal would be considered opulent by today's standards. For example, a representative dinner at the Carlton Hotel in London, Escoffier's last post, might include blini and caviar, consomme, sole in white wine sauce, partridge and noodles with foie gras, lamb noisettes with artichoke hearts and peas, champagne sorbet, turkey with truffles, endive and asparagus salad, and a variety of desserts. Believe it or not, this is a far smaller number of courses than might have been served at a typical meal in the previous century.

Behind the scenes, in the kitchen, Escoffier instituted significant changes too, perhaps in reaction to the terrible conditions he remembered when he was a kitchen apprentice in an era when, according to medical reports, cooks were more vulnerable to occupational diseases than miners. Among the hazards of the profession were tuberculosis, varicose veins, chronic alcoholism and asphyxiation (the common practice was to seal the kitchen so the dishes would not cool as they were being served, thus exposing cooks to undiluted gas from the open charcoal burners). Add to that the serf-like conditions under which most cooks worked and the professional kitchen was a fairly brutal place. Escoffier, in contrast, insisted on a more civilized atmosphere in keeping with his inherently gentle demeanor and completely reorganized the kitchen into independent stations to promote efficiency, essentially the system still in use. As Shaw notes, Escoffier is remembered today as much for what he did to elevate the status and working conditions of the ordinary cook as for his recipes.

And throughout it all, Escoffier managed to create recipes which are still famous today, many of them named for the most prominent celebrities of his era. He was the inventor of Coupe Yvette, Poularde Adelina Patti, Consomme Favori de Sarah Bernhardt, Salad Tosca, Tournedos Rossini, Souffle Rothschild, Sole Alice, Fried Eggs a la Verdi, and the most famous of all, Peches Melba, named after opera singer Nellie Melba who also inspired, during one of her recurrent diets, Melba toast.

So happy birthday, Georges Auguste Escoffier. Surely this day calls for a celebration of what Shaw calls "the longest and most influential career in the whole of culinary history." Wolfgang Puck and Julia Child have nothing on you. And what could be more appropriate at this or any other birthday party than the following recipes, all originally devised by the master himself?

Puree Crecy (Cream of Carrot Soup)

Though waiters had it better during Escoffier's day than cooks, they too experienced occupational hazards. One account tells of a waiter who spilled soup down the front of a woman's dress and then frantically began blotting it with a cloth whereupon her outraged male companion chivalrously knocked him to the floor, an incident similar to one which Escoffier recalled as his greatest culinary mishap, only in that story it was a plate of peas that was upset. Whatever the case, this Escoffier recipe for soup, modernized by Anne Willan in her informative book on great cooks, makes a dish you'll want to take care not to spill. It's too good to waste.

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons butter, divided

5-6 medium carrots, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

salt

pinch of sugar

4-5 cups beef or chicken stock

1/2 cup rice

3/4 cup heavy cream

Directions:

Melt 2 tablespoons butter and add carrots, onion, salt, and sugar. Cover and cook over low heat for 5-7 minutes until butter is absorbed and vegetables are soft. Add 4 cups of stock and the rice, bring to a boil, cover and simmer 25-30 minutes until rice and carrots are tender. Puree soup in a blender, bring just to a boil, and add more stock if necessary to achieve the consistency of thin cream. Add cream, bring back to boil, remove from heat and stir in remaining 2 tablespoons butter. Serve with croutons. Serves 6.

Tournedos Rossini

There couldn't be a more elegant way to celebrate a special occasion than this classic dish, though it's quite a splurge. This recipe, based on one from Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins of Silver Palate fame, calls for serving the beef on a bed of celery root instead of the traditional crouton and puts the truffle slices in the sauce. For such an aristocratic entree the preparation is really quite simple and easy.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

2 small bulbs celery root

1 tablespoon butter

2 beef tournedos (5-6 oz.)

2 slices foie gras, 1/4-inch thick

1 cup Madeira sauce (use bottled or your own recipe)

3 small truffles, sliced

Directions:

Peel celery root and cut into 1/4-inch slices, placing into mixture of lemon juice and water to keep from turning brown. Simmer in boiling water until tender, then drain and saute in butter until golden. Arrange slices overlapping on two dinner plates. Season tournedos with salt and pepper and saute over medium heat until medium-rare (about 4 minutes per side). Place on sliced celery root and keep warm. Saute foie gras over medium heat about 1 minute per side and place a slice on each tournedos. Whisk Madeira sauce into skillet, scraping up brown bits, add truffle slices, bring to a boil, and spoon over fillets.

Peches Melba

Escoffier first served this dish at the Hotel Savoy in London in 1892 to honor the Australian soprano, Nellie Melba, after her performance in Lohengrin. Thus, it was originally served in an ice swan reminiscent of the swan in the opera. It was not until several years later, however, that Escoffier added the raspberry sauce. The dish is now so well known that recipes for it can be found in almost any good basic cookbook. This easy version comes from Pillsbury's. Fresh peaches and raspberries, of course, make the most authentic version.

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1/2 cup currant jelly

1 (10 oz.) package frozen sweetened raspberries

6 fresh peach halves (or a 29 oz. can peach halves)

1 quart vanilla ice cream

Directions:

Thaw and drain raspberries. Combine with cornstarch and jelly and cook over medium heat until mixture boils and thickens, stirring frequently. Place peach halves in individual serving dishes, top with ice cream, and spoon cooled sauce over.

Got a recipe you'd like to share with our readers? Are you looking for a recipe for something in particular? Send your recipes and requests to A Harte Appetite, c/o The Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, MO., 63702-0699 or by e-mail to tharte@semovm.semo.edu.

~Tom Harte is a professor at Southeast Missouri State University and writes a food column every other week for the Southeast Missourian.