French chef, restaurateur, and culinary writer Georges Auguste Escoffier was born on October 28, 1846. His main contribution to French cooking was to simplify and modernize the cuisine of Antoine Carême. He also streamlined kitchen organization into the militaristic style of the brigade de cuisine with each section responsible to a chef de partie. He set up the kitchens for César Ritz in Paris, London, and the Imperator ocean liner where he cooked for the Kaiser of Germany. This meeting led to Escoffier’s tag line, “roi des cuisiniers et le cuisinier des rois” (luh rwa day cwee-seen-e-ay ay luh cwee-seen-e-ay day rwa), which means “the king of chefs and the chef of kings.” He died on February 12, 1935, just a few days after his wife.
