0:08

Hello, and welcome to Savor production of iHeartRadio.

0:10

I'm Annie Reese, an unlearned vocal bum and today

0:12

we have an episode for you about august

0:14

Escoffier.

0:16

Yes, another biography

0:18

and deliciousness. Yes. Was

0:22

there any particular reason this was on your

0:24

mind?

0:25

Again, I was just feeling real ambitious

0:27

towards the end of last year and I was

0:30

planning out some episodes and I

0:33

was trying, we hadn't done a

0:35

biography episode in a minute, and I was

0:37

like, who who have I been thinking

0:39

about? Who have I

0:41

been putting off talking about? And

0:44

Escaffie was kind on top of the list.

0:47

It is indeed very ambitious. He

0:50

was very ambitious. This episode is very

0:52

ambitious. A lot of people have

0:54

a lot to say about this person,

0:58

and we have talked about him before

1:00

in several episodes. I would say

1:02

you could see our episode on French cuisine specifically,

1:07

I believe we talked about him Gelatine.

1:09

Yeah, related Canning

1:13

maybe or or the can opener

1:15

I suppose is our big episode Canning?

1:18

Yeah, yeah, an open.

1:23

Still still struggle, still

1:25

traumatized.

1:28

Yes, you can also see our past

1:31

biography episodes, but yeah, this one is

1:33

a lot and very fun, it goes

1:36

places, it does, it does.

1:39

But I suppose that brings us

1:41

to our question. No, I suppose, so Scoffier,

1:48

what or who is it? Uh?

1:52

Well, and forgive my French y'all

1:56

George Auguste Escer,

1:59

Sure, let's well, let's say that great. He

2:02

was a chef, restauranteur and writer from

2:04

France who came up in the late eighteen

2:06

hundreds and really changed

2:08

the way that restaurants work, from

2:11

the experience of dining to kitchen

2:13

management, and furthermore

2:15

popularized French cuisine as

2:18

an international standard of luxury.

2:21

He was running some of the

2:23

most influential high end kitchens

2:26

of the turn of the century, and he made

2:28

them hierarchical, efficient, clean

2:30

and organized. He was

2:33

just like the right person at the

2:35

right places at the right time to

2:38

change the commercial culinary world and

2:41

threw a trickle down effect change the way that people

2:43

eat, or perhaps the way that people aspire

2:46

to eat in Europe and the rest of the

2:48

West. He was

2:51

so passionate about good food, and

2:53

for as much as he was a shellman, he was

2:55

also meticulously practical and

2:57

seemed to really want everyone to eat

2:59

well. He also inspired a lot

3:01

of loyalty in his kitchen staffs because he was

3:04

firm, but calm and and really took

3:06

care of his people. He

3:08

is the grandfather of fine dining. It's

3:12

it's like if you've if you've ever

3:14

been frustrated going to a nice restaurant and

3:16

having no idea how to pronounce half the many because

3:18

you don't speak French.

3:20

It's his fault. I

3:22

feel like this is coming from a personal place, Laura.

3:28

I'm always like, I know what that is, but I know I'm gonna

3:30

say it's wrong and it's going to be embarrassing. Oh

3:33

jeez, you.

3:34

Know half the dining experience is being embarrassed.

3:39

I don't think that should be the case.

3:42

Yeah, okay, well

3:45

what about the nutrition? And don't

3:48

eat dead people.

3:52

Or I mean, I guess, don't eat living peoplener.

3:57

You know, I can't tell you what to.

3:58

Do, interesting,

4:00

Lauren, I shall

4:03

file that away for later thought.

4:06

Goodness. Okay,

4:10

so we don't have too many numbers for you, but

4:13

I have to say when I first started

4:16

researching this, the first

4:18

note I typed was how

4:20

many societies can there possibly

4:23

be?

4:25

Because there are so many

4:28

organizations and societies

4:31

dedicated or inspired by.

4:34

A scoff named after Yeah, yes,

4:36

it's a bunch, And most

4:39

of the Google results when you're

4:41

just kind of getting into it before you really start

4:43

refining your search terms, are about

4:45

all of those organizations. And yes,

4:49

yeah, I

4:51

love a good fun with search terms episode and

4:53

this was definitely one of those, indeed.

4:56

But yeah, a couple of numbers for you. Scoffier

4:59

trained over to thousand chefs during

5:01

the course of his career, which was about sixty

5:03

ish sixty ish years. One

5:06

of them wound up opening a museum in the

5:08

home where Escaffie was born, and

5:10

it serves as a as a history of the culinary

5:13

technologies of a Scaffie's time and

5:15

also a research center on the

5:17

greater world of astronomy. It

5:19

has a collection of over three thousand menus

5:22

from the eighteen twenties through today.

5:24

Who okay,

5:27

that's pretty cool. Yeah,

5:29

well we do have

5:32

quite a history for you.

5:34

Oh yes, oh absolutely, and

5:36

we are going to get into that as soon as we get back

5:38

from a quick break for a word from our sponsors.

5:49

Error back, thank you sponsor.

5:51

Yes, thank you, okay.

5:53

So Auguste Escaffier was

5:56

born in eighteen forty six in the Provence

5:58

region of what's now. I don't

6:00

know why put what's never because that was kind

6:02

of recent. But anyway, France, when

6:05

he was twelve or thirteen, I saw a couple

6:07

different ages. He began apprenticing

6:10

at a restaurant that his uncle owned

6:12

in nearby Nice. Over

6:15

the next seven years he really honed

6:17

his skills and people took notice, and

6:19

he was taken on at the restaurant over at the Patit

6:22

Moulin Rouge in Paris.

6:24

He was their assistant roaster. Apparently

6:27

assistant roaster.

6:29

Okay, yes again,

6:32

you can see our episode on French cuisine. But

6:34

at this time, being a chef wasn't really seen

6:36

as anything to write home about. It wasn't necessarily

6:38

respected. Whote cuisine didn't

6:41

exist yet. Most

6:43

people ate at home unless they

6:45

were traveling. There weren't the

6:47

standards around the industry yet.

6:51

So it could be dirty, it could be chaotic, it

6:53

could be unorganized, often dangerous

6:55

and very brutal places to work

6:57

in Escoffier was

7:00

instrumental in changing that whole thing. He

7:03

was in part inspired to insert

7:05

some organization in his kitchens

7:07

after briefly serving as an army

7:09

chef. After the start of the Franco

7:11

Prussian War in eighteen seventy. During

7:14

this time, he learned

7:16

about the importance of canning in

7:18

terms of preserving foods and keeping those foods

7:21

fresh. He started experimenting

7:23

with different methods of canning with

7:25

meats and sauces, and innovated

7:27

a way to store tomato sauce so

7:30

that it would stay fresh in champagne

7:32

bottles.

7:33

This was when canning was still

7:35

a relatively new technology. It had only come about

7:37

around eighteen ten.

7:38

Or so, right, and

7:41

he also observed how effective military

7:43

organization was in terms of a kitchen

7:46

of coordinating and working together to get

7:48

things done. So what he

7:50

eventually came up with is often called

7:53

the brigade system. Yes,

7:55

so, once the war ended, Ascafier returned

7:58

to the kitchen and started to implement

8:00

the things he observed during his time with

8:03

the military. Chefs were assigned

8:05

roles, locations, responsibilities, and

8:07

answered to supervisors, people

8:09

who ensured that all the pieces were working

8:11

together in harmony, and through this

8:13

a Scaffier came up with the titles and roles

8:16

that we still used today in a lot of places

8:18

like Sioux Chefs Saussier and chef

8:20

de cuisine.

8:23

Apparently He had very specific

8:26

rules that were meant to lower

8:28

stress, including no yelling

8:31

and no alcohol. From

8:33

a couple sources, I read a lot of times people

8:35

would just drink throughout So

8:39

his staff allegedly called him Papa, and

8:42

he really fought for their rights when it came

8:44

to things like benefits. After

8:46

members of his staff died on the Titanic,

8:49

he had designed the menus for the Titanic.

8:52

He campaigned for widows and children

8:55

of them to be taken care of.

8:57

So yes. By the mid eighteen seventy

9:00

he was back at the Petito mo La Rouge, and

9:02

he also bought a food company and

9:04

opened a restaurant in the very posh can.

9:08

He left the Petite Molong Rouge to run

9:10

other kitchens around Paris in eighteen seventy

9:12

eight, which is also the year that he married

9:15

Delphine Dafis.

9:16

Dafis I

9:19

don't know Lauren well

9:23

either way. The story goes

9:26

that he won his wife's hand in

9:28

a game of pool, and

9:30

she was a poet, and she left him after

9:32

the birth of their third childs

9:36

lots of drama, I see, yes, yes,

9:39

Well, after this he

9:42

started collaborating with the founder of the

9:44

Ritz Carlton Hotels cesar Ritz.

9:47

Ritz was managing the Grand Hotel in Monte Carlo

9:49

and hired Scaffie on in eighteen

9:52

eighty four under the advice of the head chef

9:54

there.

9:55

In eighteen ninety, Ritz became the manager

9:57

of London Savoy Hotel and he named Scott

10:00

the head chef of the kitchen.

10:02

The Savoy was and still

10:05

is a kind of like ridiculously luxury

10:07

hotel. Both Ritz

10:09

and Escoffier had worked in other high end hotels

10:12

around Europe, but the Savoy was

10:14

this brand new, like gleaming

10:16

beacon of end of century modernity,

10:19

and they were brought there with

10:21

salaries in the equivalent of millions

10:23

of dollars. Ritz's motto

10:26

was the best is not too good?

10:30

Well, yes, the Savoy. Perhaps

10:33

because of that, add a lot of high profile, famous

10:36

patrons, and to build

10:38

up the profile of the hotel and his own, Escafaier

10:41

started coming up with his own dishes

10:43

to make the hotel's restaurant unique.

10:46

According to popular lore, he created

10:48

the Peach Melba in honor of guest

10:51

Nelly Melba, an opera singer.

10:53

I feel like we've talked about this story before.

10:55

I think so.

10:55

Yeah, I think it was somehow in the

10:59

Pavlovie. I don't know,

11:01

listeners. I

11:04

feel like we've talked about it before the

11:06

story goes. He also came up with Cherry's

11:08

Jubilee for Queen Victoria's Jubilee,

11:11

which is one of those funny things I read where it's like,

11:13

oh, okay, yeah,

11:16

and Dauphine Potatoes for the French Court

11:19

of Dauphine. Yes.

11:21

Yeah.

11:22

This was the kind of place where like,

11:24

if you had the money, old or new

11:27

money, you could be treated

11:29

like royalty. Like want

11:32

to throw a Roulette themed dinner party

11:34

for thirty of your closest friends for a little

11:36

under two grand ahead because you just want

11:38

a bunch of money playing Roulette and betting on red.

11:41

Yeah, they can do that for you. They

11:44

draped a private dining room in red.

11:46

They put red shades on the lamps, set the

11:48

tables with giant bouquets of red

11:50

geraniums, dressed to the waiters and

11:52

red ties and gloves, and put red buttons

11:54

on their shirts. The dinner menu

11:57

included consumme of red partridge

12:00

and paprika jila and lamb

12:02

with red bean puree.

12:04

Wow.

12:05

Yeah, and I really

12:07

like want to emphasize here

12:10

that this was a very new

12:12

thing. You know, up until this time,

12:16

the only people who had access to

12:18

this kind of food were probably

12:21

royalty. But the Industrial

12:23

Revolution was changing the way

12:25

that money worked, and so for

12:27

the first time you had these like international

12:30

celebrities and moguls

12:33

who who had

12:35

the money, and what they wanted to do was

12:38

kind of replicate the wild feasts

12:40

of medieval Europe. And people

12:43

like Escafaier were such history nerds

12:46

and and so

12:48

excited to put on parties

12:50

like this at Rits as well.

12:52

Yeah, that it was.

12:54

And both of them had come from from working

12:56

class families too, So it's

12:58

I don't know, it's it's really it

13:01

was what a time.

13:01

To be alive. Yes, and

13:04

we're going to make this point throughout, but

13:06

definitely left an impact Escoffier

13:10

and his influence. But we

13:13

must mention both

13:16

the Scaffier and Ritz were

13:18

fired from the Savoy on charges of

13:20

extortion, and it

13:22

caught international attention.

13:24

It eventually caught international attention. It

13:27

was so scandalous that they

13:29

kept it quiet. The hotel

13:31

kept it quiet for almost a century.

13:34

Okay, in eighteen

13:36

ninety seven, the hotel's profits

13:39

dropped by like forty percent. The

13:41

kitchen was running at a loss despite

13:44

being busier than it ever had been, and

13:46

so the hotel ran an audit and turned

13:49

up around the equivalent

13:51

of a million dollars in wine

13:53

and booze having been comped to guests,

13:56

including some potential investors

13:58

in a new competitor to the Savoy that

14:00

Ritz and Escaffier were planning, London's

14:03

Carlton Hotel. Furthermore,

14:06

Escaffier had worked out an embezzlement scheme

14:08

with some of the Savoy suppliers, and he

14:11

wound up making like the modern equivalent

14:13

of over two million dollars in commissions

14:15

over the course of about ten years. None

14:18

of this came out publicly until

14:21

I guess an intern at the hotel came

14:24

across signed confessions from Ritz

14:26

and Escoffier in nineteen

14:28

eighty three.

14:32

Wow.

14:32

The intern was an anonymous informant

14:35

who left the confessions on the

14:37

desk of this reporter working at The Observer,

14:40

And when the reporter wrote

14:42

about it, he gave he gave the informant

14:44

the name Deep Palette.

14:46

Oh my gosh, why is this not a movie?

14:50

I absolutely want the movie about this. Apparently,

14:55

apparently the pair were forced to

14:57

sign these confessions when they tried

14:59

to sue for unfair termination.

15:02

Wow wow

15:05

what love

15:09

it? Love it?

15:11

But yeah, basically that the pair got away

15:13

with it, like socially speaking, because

15:16

the Savoy's board and shareholders

15:19

were so dang embarrassed that it had happened

15:21

that they didn't want anybody to know about it. Also,

15:26

apparently Ritz had

15:28

dirt on the Prince of Wales and

15:31

the Savoy didn't want that coming

15:33

out. Again, this was right around Victoria's

15:36

jubilee and they didn't

15:38

want to like cause scandal

15:40

for royalty.

15:42

Again, where's this

15:45

movie telling

15:47

you? It is very funny. A lot of the sources

15:50

you look up for Scaffie don't mention this at

15:52

all.

15:53

And the ones that do mention it are whooh,

15:56

juicy juicy. But

15:59

yeah. Hotel management

16:01

was in a tizzy over the whole thing, Like they

16:03

were afraid that the kitchen staff were

16:05

so loyal to a Scaffier that they would riot

16:07

when they learned that he had been fired, Like

16:09

they had police on hand to help

16:11

keep the peace. A

16:14

bunch of the staff did wind up following a Scoffier when

16:16

he went.

16:17

Wow wow, Well

16:22

from there, Scaffier

16:24

continued to work with Ritz, including

16:27

at the Ritz Paris. In

16:29

eighteen ninety nine, they opened the Girlton

16:31

Hotel in London. He

16:33

continued to exert influence, and not just

16:36

in the kitchen but in the front of house too, including

16:38

the now common practice of

16:41

ordering a la carte

16:43

because previously all

16:45

the food items came out at once,

16:48

So this instituted a

16:50

new thing where the dishes started coming

16:52

out as they were ordered, and guests

16:54

ordered off a menu. It's strange

16:56

to think about these things we take for granted so much

16:58

these days, but totally Yeah. Yeah,

17:01

during lunch service he could serve

17:04

five hundred plates an hour.

17:05

I read, Yeah, he had a team of sixty cooks

17:07

there.

17:08

I also read he lobbied

17:11

to make it legal for women to dine in

17:13

public. I couldn't find too much about it, but I would

17:15

love to dig into that. Yeah, oh, or at

17:18

a later date.

17:18

Sure, sure, right, because the practice of women

17:21

dining in public was Yeah, it

17:24

was certainly socially and

17:26

sometimes legally not allowed at.

17:29

This, especially in certain places.

17:30

Yeahah, yeah, but

17:33

yeah. He was always looking

17:35

to promote French products, and

17:38

at the Carlton he imported

17:40

like French asparagus, and duck and

17:42

peaches and butter some forty

17:45

five hundred pounds a month. That's

17:47

two thousand kilos of butter a

17:50

month. WOA, and

17:53

tinned tomatoes. He hecking loved a tomato

17:55

sauce. Legend

17:57

has it that he sort of tricked a ball

18:00

room of six hundred diners into

18:02

eating frog's legs, which were like not a popular

18:04

protein in London, by calling

18:06

them nymph's legs. And

18:10

apparently the aforementioned Prince

18:12

of Wales was kind of in on it because

18:15

he really liked frog's legs.

18:17

I'm going to have to look up this Prince of Whales guy

18:20

I going on.

18:22

I think I think the dirt was that he had been

18:25

having this affair and Ritz,

18:27

as the hotel manager, knew

18:29

about it, and

18:31

the reason that the Prince of Wales followed

18:34

them from the Savoy

18:36

to the Carlton was that he

18:38

didn't want to open himself up to blackmail from

18:40

Ritz Wow.

18:42

So maybe he was in on this nymph leg

18:45

scheme because of blackmail.

18:49

I think I think it was.

18:51

I don't know. I'm not entirely

18:54

speculations. All speculation here, I

18:57

do, I do want to say, speaking

18:59

of speculation, We've

19:03

read in like one source that I'm

19:05

not sure the quality of the Discolfier

19:07

refused to ever learn English,

19:10

even though he was working so much in London

19:12

and later in the United States, because

19:16

he didn't want it to negatively influence

19:18

his cooking. Yep, he

19:22

was like, if I start learning English, I'll start to

19:24

think like the English and I.

19:25

Cannot have that.

19:27

Yes, the most French thing

19:29

I've ever heard of in my life, and I

19:31

love it.

19:34

I also, from reading about his work during

19:36

this time, got the idea that he

19:38

was an absolute micromanager,

19:41

Like he designed every menu, oversaw

19:44

every service, like racked

19:46

the kitchen every night to take stock and prevent

19:49

waste.

19:51

And it is really

19:53

difficult to express like exactly

19:55

how posh and popular

19:58

and influential all this was

20:01

Ritz and Escoffier. We're building a

20:04

new idea or ideal

20:06

maybe of luxury

20:08

and service in hospitality.

20:12

Yeah, and that was an all

20:14

that Scaffaier helped innovate, especially

20:16

in that area. He was key in designing how

20:19

kitchens worked on twentieth century

20:21

Transatlantic cruises.

20:23

He would apparently usually go on every

20:25

new ship's first voyage to make sure that the kitchens

20:28

were up to standards, So I

20:30

guess it's lucky that he wasn't on the Titanic.

20:32

Cool yukes.

20:34

He ran the kitchen on enormous ocean

20:37

liner designed for guest of Kaiser Wilhelm

20:39

the second of Germany, called the ss Imperator

20:42

Imperator inheritor.

20:46

I don't know, it's probably very

20:48

grand sounding. Well,

20:52

speaking of Wilhelm

20:54

apparently called Escoffier the

20:56

King of chefs and the Chef of

20:59

kings, and allegedly said of him,

21:02

I am the Emperor of Germany, but you

21:04

are the Emperor of the chefs.

21:06

Wow.

21:07

Yeah, Also,

21:11

no big deal. He helped modernize

21:13

the Five mother sauces. We've definitely talked

21:15

about this before, but

21:17

briefly, Escafier's predecessor,

21:20

Antonin Karim had outlined

21:22

four grand sauces of French cuisine,

21:25

and these were bechamel Espanol, belute,

21:28

and Alamande. Escafier

21:31

went on to drop the Alamant from this

21:33

whole thing since it was related to belote,

21:36

and added tomato sauce yes, and

21:38

hollandais Yes.

21:42

During World War One he kept running

21:44

kitchens and he was a prolific author

21:46

as well. He published the guide

21:49

Coulonaire in nineteen oh three, the

21:51

Livre des Menux in nineteen twelve,

21:54

a monthly chefs magazine that ran from nineteen

21:56

twelve to nineteen fourteen, and leis

21:58

Memoir Colonaire in nineteen

22:01

nineteen and Laguide

22:03

Culinaria in particular was hugely

22:05

influential. Of his alleged

22:08

six hundred egg recipes, it

22:10

had two hundred and fifty six of them. In

22:12

my mind when I saw six hundred

22:15

egg recipes, couldn't

22:17

fab Yeah, couldn't do it.

22:19

Yeah, I think I've got four, So

22:22

I'm like, yep, oh wait, maybe five,

22:25

Okay, anyway, but

22:27

cool, cool, yeah, And this is still

22:30

considered an essential like

22:32

Chef's cookbook today. Also

22:36

during the war, he organized aid

22:38

for the families of his cooks who were enlisted.

22:41

Right.

22:42

Yes, and he was

22:44

the first chef to receive a French

22:47

Legion of Honor distinction in nineteen

22:49

eighteen and was promoted

22:52

raised I'm not sure of the terminology. He was raised

22:56

from a Knight in the Legion of Honor

22:58

to an officer in nineteen

23:00

twenty eight.

23:03

He was a big proponent of several charitable

23:05

causes. During the eighteen nineties, he donated

23:07

unserved food to the little sisters

23:10

of the poor. He ran all kinds

23:12

of fundraisers, including those centered around

23:14

aiding retired chefs. In

23:16

nineteen twenty eight, he helped found the World

23:19

Association of Chef's Societies

23:21

and served as the first organization

23:23

president.

23:24

He retired heavy Scare Quotes

23:26

to Money Carlo in nineteen twenty but

23:29

Yeah, continued to travel for another ten years

23:31

or so to attend hotel openings,

23:33

cooking competitions, and other events, and

23:35

he continued writing, aiming three

23:38

cookbooks toward home cooks of more

23:40

modest means, which at that point in

23:42

his.

23:42

Life he was.

23:45

Apparently he was really bad at managing

23:48

money and never

23:51

really had that much towards towards the end of

23:53

his life.

23:56

He died on February twelfth, nineteen

23:58

thirty five, at the age of eighty eight, and

24:00

his wife had died just days prior,

24:03

and the parent only just recently

24:05

reunited.

24:07

Yeah, I think she had been living in

24:09

Monte Carlo pretty much that

24:11

whole time, and he,

24:15

Yeah, he joined her there when he retired.

24:18

But yeah, it's it's

24:20

a it

24:23

seems like an interesting story. A

24:25

novelist recently wrote

24:28

a semi fictional romance about their last

24:30

decade there together called White Truffles

24:32

in Winter.

24:34

Good name. Yeah,

24:37

but Ascaffier's legacy does

24:39

live on. A fraternity of

24:41

male chefs, restauranteurs and hotel

24:43

owners formed in nineteen

24:45

thirty six what they called

24:48

Les Amise Descoffier Society,

24:50

which still exists. A

24:53

sister society made of women formed in nineteen

24:55

fifty nine called Lais Dames des

24:57

Amis Discoffier. Seventy

25:00

three they do Discoffier New York opened

25:03

again. This is something I would love to come back to

25:07

because kind of the history of at

25:10

first, like there weren't women that much

25:12

in this industry, or if they were, they weren't recognized

25:14

and couldn't be in these things. And

25:17

so the steps of what separated

25:19

these two groups is interesting.

25:22

Yeah, y, yes, but

25:24

there's a lot of them now oh

25:27

yeah, oh yeah.

25:30

Yeah. Oh and I and I and I wanted to put in about

25:33

the money situation. He apparently

25:35

supported and paid

25:38

for the education of like a really large

25:40

extended family and of

25:43

his and so so that was part

25:45

of why it wasn't just like oops, I was gambling

25:48

or something like that, but like it was more yeah,

25:50

like he was just giving a lot of money away to

25:52

people.

25:54

Yeah, I mean part of his legacy too. He was

25:56

really invested in people

26:00

being able to have lives in

26:02

this industry. Yeah yeah,

26:06

and it is very

26:11

It took me aback how

26:13

much he has had influence that

26:15

last.

26:17

That.

26:17

I was like, oh, yeah,

26:20

yeah, that's just how I thought, like

26:22

restaurants always were.

26:23

Yeah. No, it was basically created

26:27

during his time. I

26:31

mean we've talked about this before in some

26:33

of our holiday related

26:35

episodes about Thanksgiving

26:37

and like Christmas dishes, but a

26:41

lot of our concept of

26:44

traditional dining comes

26:47

from this era and he

26:49

was so influential during this era that

26:52

yep, that's just what it is.

26:54

Yeah, And it kind of cracks me up how many times

26:57

when we'll travel together for savor otherwise

27:02

and I do my anything

27:04

where I'm like, where do we go, and

27:06

it'll like a hotel will pop up

27:10

and it will be like this experience

27:12

that we described and here essentially, so

27:15

I feel like that was also he had a big

27:18

hand in that. Oh yeah, and it's still

27:20

around.

27:21

Yeah. Yeah. He was also

27:24

a co director

27:26

maybe of the ritz

27:28

Like Corporation around the time.

27:31

So yep,

27:33

yep, you

27:37

know this is a very selfish

27:40

thing. But one of my one

27:42

of my regrets about the pandemic,

27:44

Lauren, is that I had a free room to

27:46

the Ritz Carlton. It's

27:49

a long story as to how but I have a

27:51

free room and the

27:54

pandemic comes in and I lost it. But apparently

27:56

I was going to get like free drinks and free

27:59

food and all stuff. I was so

28:01

excited. Well maybe

28:03

one day. Ah

28:09

well, I think that's what we have to say about

28:11

Escaffier for now.

28:12

I think it is we do. We

28:14

would love to hear from you if if

28:17

you, I don't know how many of y'all

28:19

listeners are are in the industry, but

28:22

but but if you have any kind of experience

28:24

with the brigade style of kitchen

28:27

management or or

28:29

anything like that, we would love to hear about it. And we

28:31

do have some listener mail already prepared for you. But

28:34

first we've got one more quick break for word from our

28:36

sponsors.

28:45

And we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you,

28:48

and we're back with listeners sauce.

29:01

Yeah, yeah, I didn't want to shout

29:03

at you.

29:04

Oh thank you.

29:05

Oh yeah, we try to make these nice.

29:08

Yeah. Yes, we were

29:10

just having a conversation I'm

29:13

sure we'll revisit about shouting

29:15

in kitchens.

29:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah, because

29:18

a scaffier write, you know, like like like meticulous,

29:20

militaristic a little bit, but also

29:23

quiet.

29:24

No shouting, Yeah yeah, I don't need to shout at

29:26

people unless you can't. They need to hear you, but

29:28

not like in anger. Sure no, anyway,

29:31

all right, all right, Barbie

29:33

wrote, as always, your episode

29:36

about special holiday food marketing cracked

29:38

me up. I don't buy those things, and

29:40

since I haven't shopped in a grocery store in

29:42

three years, I haven't seen them on the shelves.

29:45

You asked about holiday meal stories,

29:48

and I remembered a favorite of mine. I

29:50

got married the year after my father died,

29:52

and the first Thanksgiving I hosted with my mother,

29:55

my husband, and his two teenage children

29:57

was important to me. I wanted it to be

29:59

a great occasion for all of us in this blended

30:02

family, so I asked each one to tell

30:04

me what they wanted most to

30:06

be included in the holiday meal. I

30:08

wanted to include special foods that my husband

30:11

and his children treasured from the family

30:13

they had before me, and that they

30:15

would be disappointed to not find on the

30:17

table. The answers

30:19

included some things I might not

30:21

have included. Black

30:24

olives to stick on their fingers was the

30:26

one that was new to me. Sweet

30:29

potatoes with marshmallows was

30:31

one that was one that one

30:34

of them loved and didn't appeal to me at all. Finally,

30:37

I asked my mother, with whom I had celebrated

30:39

Thanksgiving for forty years. Her answer

30:42

was, you have to have a green vegetable,

30:44

you have to have a yellow vegetable, and

30:47

you have to have a salad. I

30:50

never did find out what

30:52

she really wanted, only what

30:54

she thought was obligatory. This

30:57

year, my husband and I celebrated together

31:00

with no family or friends. To complicate things.

31:03

Since we're not eating in restaurants, our

31:05

choices were takeout or cook

31:08

at home. Restaurant take out for Thanksgiving

31:10

was full meals, including a lot of food we don't

31:12

like, so we chose cooking at home. Our

31:15

dinner was a twelve pound roast turkey

31:17

put in the oven early am and ready

31:19

to eat by noon. Pre made mashed potatoes,

31:21

just put them in the microwave. Homemade gravy.

31:25

Dessert was bin in Jerry's ice cream and luscious

31:27

flavors. We had one meal

31:30

of turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, one meal

31:32

of leftovers, one meal of turkey sandwiches,

31:35

and turned everything else into turkey soup with

31:37

vegetables for the freezer for later. It

31:39

took a lot of years, but we finally figured

31:41

out how to make the holidays exactly

31:44

what we want. May twenty twenty

31:46

four be a great year for you? Oh,

31:50

I mean honestly, like, Okay,

31:53

first of all, I do love you

31:57

asking what people want responses

32:01

you aren't anticipating.

32:02

I mean, I mean, ay, that's so sweet

32:04

and totally totally understandable, Like of course,

32:07

like like holidays can be so like like

32:09

stressful and it's all new and you're trying to,

32:11

you know, to to write to make

32:13

it so good.

32:15

But yeah, like black

32:20

alves to stick on fingers is excellent.

32:24

That is such a specific age.

32:27

That's an amazing teenage

32:30

kid response. Yeah, I

32:32

mean, but also like like your your

32:35

mother's equally cantankerous

32:38

kind of or like cantankris is

32:40

the wrong word?

32:41

What am I looking for?

32:42

Like confounding?

32:45

I yeah, just like it's

32:47

green vege yellow vege salad, which

32:53

hats off.

32:53

To her because my usually

32:56

my holiday traditions have one

33:00

they have like a potato based thing maybe,

33:02

but one vegetable. I would say,

33:06

So, there you go. That's

33:08

pretty good. But yes, confusing

33:11

for sure, but

33:14

it's very nice.

33:15

Like I love that you've found you

33:18

know, this is what you do. That sounds great, that's

33:20

what you want? Yeah, no, exactly,

33:22

no need, no need to muck it up with anything

33:24

else. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I

33:26

love it.

33:27

I love it. Yeah.

33:29

No, Now now I just want mashed potatoes and gravy.

33:31

But I mean, I guess I usually want that, Okay,

33:35

Kate wrote, I'd been planning to write to you for

33:37

a while after listening to your Fanny Farmer

33:39

episode. Then yesterday I heard your call

33:42

for non Western perspectives on three meals

33:44

a day in the listener mail at the end of the Rosewater

33:46

episode, which nudged me to actually sit

33:48

down and write. I'm Canadian and

33:51

grew up with the idea of three meals a day, a breakfast,

33:53

lunch, and supper, with the last meal of the day usually

33:55

being the heaviest, except when visiting grandparents

33:57

for the weekend, when we would have dinner at

34:00

on Sunday before all of the aunts, uncles, and cousins

34:02

would drive home in the afternoon. My

34:05

thinking about meals shifted though, when I lived in Tanzania

34:07

in East Africa for three years. A

34:09

heavy meal is eaten by Tanzanian families

34:12

right before bedtime, so when you wake up

34:14

in the morning, you're still feeling full from the night before

34:16

and not in need of breakfast right away. This

34:19

is a good thing, especially if you're living in an area

34:21

with no electricity or running water. It

34:23

takes a lot of energy to fetch water, build

34:25

a fire or light a charcoal stove, clean

34:28

the dishes from the night before, and boil water.

34:31

Tea is often taken mid morning, consisting

34:33

of strong tea with lots of sugar and milk when

34:35

available, along with some sort of snack chop.

34:38

Patti Mandazi never

34:41

heard of that one. It's deep fried bread dough. They

34:43

add a roasted peanuts or an egg,

34:46

and then a heavy meal is eaten in the early afternoon,

34:48

like one to three pm to keep you going until

34:50

the bedtime meal. I tended to keep

34:53

my North American eating habits of breakfast, lunch,

34:55

and dinner when I was at home, but when I was visiting

34:57

Tanzanian friends, I adapted to the Tanzanian

35:00

meal cycle, and I also learned

35:02

that I was considered to be a better hostess when

35:04

I had Tanzanian house guests if I served a

35:06

large meal mid afternoon and shifted supper

35:08

hour much closer to bedtime. In

35:12

terms of Fanny Farmer, this is the

35:14

cookbook in my family on my mother's

35:17

side, and I loved learning more about it

35:19

in your episode. I wasn't even aware of joy

35:21

of cooking until I was a fully fledged adult. My

35:23

granddad always said that he liked Fanny Farmer because

35:26

it assumed no kitchen knowledge, so if

35:28

you needed to look up how to boil beans, he

35:30

could look it up in Fanny Farmer and she would tell

35:32

him. The first time I ever roasted

35:34

a chicken, I looked it up in Fanny Farmer, then

35:37

called my mother to confirm that Fanny Farmer

35:39

was correct. The only stipulation,

35:41

though, is that it has to be a pre nineteen

35:44

seventy nine edition, that is, before Marian

35:46

Cunningham came on as editor. Apparently

35:49

some of the best recipes were left

35:51

out of newer editions. Though since

35:53

this is received wisdom from my elders, I couldn't

35:55

tell you which recipes they were referring to. Granddad

35:59

loved second hand, and anytime

36:01

he came across an older addition of Fanny Farmer,

36:03

he picked it up to give to one of his grandchildren.

36:06

I have a nineteen sixty five Bantam

36:08

paperback edition, now held together with an

36:10

elastic band. I still referred to it a couple

36:12

times a year that I've roasted chicken, and I love

36:14

owning a cookbook that includes the

36:16

following instructions. Modern

36:19

markets sell poultry ready to cook, so

36:21

that the old, an tedious task of plucking and

36:23

cleaning a bird is over for most of us. However,

36:26

the United States Department of Agriculture and State

36:28

Extension Services have bulletins describing

36:31

the process and also telling how to cut up

36:33

a bird for fricka seeing or broiling. If

36:36

all the feathers have not been removed, pull them out with

36:38

tweezers or a small sharp knife, and burn off

36:40

the fine hairs over the gas flame or with burning

36:42

paper. Though

36:45

related to the previous topic, I will say

36:47

that getting a chicken from the chicken coop to the

36:49

dinner table is one skill that I acquired

36:52

in Tanzania. Even if I don't have occasion

36:54

to practice it here in Canada.

36:59

Oh well, so much to say.

37:01

I love I am

37:03

loving hearing about these different

37:06

these alternatives to our typical

37:09

three meals a day that we talked about. I

37:11

think it's fascinating.

37:12

Oh yeah, yeah, and this makes so much

37:15

sense, right, you know, just like yeah,

37:17

like like like breakfast, big

37:20

midday meal and then heavy dinner. That

37:23

sounds terrific.

37:26

Yes it

37:28

does. Although

37:30

I will say I recently

37:32

have been having a big lunch and I've noticed

37:35

that it tires me out. I

37:37

wasn't anticipating, but

37:40

it could be because I'm new to it this. I just find

37:42

this so so interesting,

37:44

So please listeners keep these coming. Hearing

37:47

about this and about kind of the foods

37:50

that are typical for these meals.

37:54

Also, yes, all of the stuff about cookbooks

37:56

that you've written in is amazing.

38:00

H I love that. I

38:03

you know, I'm almost on board with your grandfather. I love

38:05

a book. But it'll just be like, look, I

38:08

don't know anything, tell.

38:11

Me explain it to me like I'm five.

38:13

Yeah, just just just front to back, assume

38:16

I know nothing and let

38:18

me know what's up. Yeah, totally totally,

38:21

yes, right, I didn't need

38:24

to know the thing about chicken

38:26

feathers or

38:28

the fine hairs. But

38:31

because I am so completely divorced from

38:34

the reality of

38:36

proteins.

38:38

But uh, true

38:42

though, like that is part

38:44

of the charm of

38:47

reading a cookbook from before,

38:51

like where we've become so modernized. Yeah,

38:54

yeah, industrialized it it is I

38:57

think I think I talked about it Enjoyed Cooking episode.

38:59

But my mom will just flip through and read cookbooks.

39:02

Oh she's not necessarily

39:05

looking for a recipe. If she finds one, then

39:07

share, yes, but she's kind of just reading

39:09

that.

39:10

Oh yeah, no, I do that too.

39:12

Yeah.

39:13

I'm setting up my new home and

39:16

uh and kind of figuring out where everything goes.

39:19

And uh, one of my bookcases,

39:21

like a kind of big one, the one that

39:24

used to live in producer Jerry's

39:26

office in our

39:29

old offices, uh, wound

39:31

up in my dining room and it

39:34

is I'm not going

39:36

to say, like like brimming over,

39:38

but it's full up with my collection

39:41

of cookbooks, which

39:44

is wild. I didn't I

39:47

didn't know that I had that many.

39:50

That is the thing about moving is you're like, oh, it

39:54

puts things into a bit of perspective.

39:57

Oh yeah, yeah, that's

39:59

fun. That's fun. I've

40:03

actually been thinking about doing maybe

40:05

a shorter episode, maybe not about

40:08

just the

40:13

kind of those award winning recipes that we look

40:15

back on now and are like, what is

40:17

it talking about? But

40:19

it totally makes sense when you put it in context of

40:21

the time and everything. But

40:24

cookbooks and companies publishing

40:27

those cookbooks or publishing pamphlets or stuff or

40:29

stuff like that. That was very a

40:31

big part of that, and I'm

40:33

really interested in it. So maybe

40:37

maybe.

40:40

Yes.

40:41

But in the meantime, thanks

40:43

to both of these listeners for writing in. If

40:45

you would like to write to us, you can our

40:47

emails Hello at savorpod dot com.

40:50

We're also on social media. You

40:52

can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

40:55

That's the other one at saver Pod,

40:57

and we do hope to hear from you. Save is production

40:59

off I Heart Radio. Four more podcasts from iHeartRadio.

41:02

You can visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple

41:04

Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite

41:06

shows. Thanks as always to our super producers

41:09

Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to

41:11

you for listening, and we hope that lots more good things are

41:13

coming your way.