ESCOFFIER’S SARDINES

I have been obsessed with Escoffier since I was sixteen as a boarder at King’s College School in London. My drama teacher gave me Ma Cuisine for having played Algernon Moncrieff in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest. I thought it a curious choice, but I read it every night under the bed covers with a flashlight after lights out. And was entranced. Later, in Harvard College and cooking for friends, I graduated from Ma Cuisine to his main work, Le Guide Culinaire. I worked through it enough so that when I moved to a little house in Cambridge in my senior year, the first dinner I gave was pure Escoffier.

Dinner for Friends, Cambridge, 1965

Caviar Blinis

Frozen Zubrovka

Consommé Madrilène

Salmon en Gelée aux truffles

Pouilly-Fume 1962

Filet de Boeuf perigourdine

Chateau-Neuf-du-Pape 1957

Pêches Rose-Chèri

Asti Spumante

Coffee

Sercial Madeira 1884

August Escoffier, perhaps the most famous Western chef, often made the point that “Great danger leads to firm resolution.” When I started my career as head chef at Chez Panisse, I knew I was facing the former and had to find the latter.

On graduating in from Harvard College in1965, I had bought the Vyvyan Holland English translation of Ma Cuisine.

I thought it fitting that its translator was the son of the author of the play in which I appeared eight years before and for which I had been given the original book. Now, translated, I could read and understand all the technical bits in French that I had not understood before.