Escoffier

27th March 2022

(music)

Liz: Hello and welcome to Bread and Thread, a podcast about food and domestic history. I’m Liz

Hazel: And I’m Hazel. We are two friends who studied archaeology together and love history and all things food and domestic history, and today we are also joined by Nick, who is a fount of knowledge about these things

Nick: Sometimes

Hazel: Hello

Nick: Hello. It’s mostly ‘cause I listen to the podcast when I’m editing, it’s how I learn it all

Hazel: It’s all just revolving knowledge

Liz: I’m gonna ask you this time. What have you been making or baking Hazel?

Hazel: Oh you’re asking me

Liz: Well I know what Nick’s been doing

Hazel: (laughs) I would hope so, given that you live in the same house. What have I been doing? I haven’t managed to bake yet, but I plan. I’m gonna make some savoury flapjacks this weekend

Liz: Savoury flapjacks?

Hazel: Yes! Exactly, ‘cause I am back on campus, and I need snacks, so

Liz: Is that basically like an oatcake?

Hazel: I think it’s more like a flapjack. It’s a recipe I found in a BBC Good Food magazine, and it’s for cheese and chive flapjacks

Liz: Ooh

Hazel: Which is intriguing, so I’m gonna try that and see how it comes out. I don’t know what you put in in substitute for the syrup and sugar and stuff. Hold on, I think I can actually find the recipe, probably. What have we got? We’ve got butter, porridge oats, grated carrot, mixed seeds, cheddar cheese, oh eggs, ok eggs is the binder

Liz: I imagine the cheese would provide some binding as well

Hazel: Ok, that sounds doable, yeah. I’m gonna give that a go, having never had a savoury flapjack before, and I am still working on my improbably shaped hat, which is almost done now, actually

Liz: Can’t remember if you’ve explained on the podcast why the hat is improbably shaped

Hazel: Probably have not. It’s a Woolly Wormhead pattern, which, if you have not heard of this knitwear designer, she makes these…all she designs is hats, and they are all really interesting construction, there’s just something new about all of them. This one is knitted sideways, which is very interesting construction for a hat

Liz: Mmm

Hazel: And there’s some colourwork in it, and there’s a lot of short rows, when you knit a bit and then you turn around halfway through the row and you knit back, and you shape it that way. There’s been quite a few first time, for me, techniques, which has been fun. And I need a hat, because every hat I’ve ever knitted myself has either, either I’ve lost it or it’s turned out too big, because apparently I have a really small head

Liz: Send them to me, I have the opposite problem

Hazel: Oh nice, I’ll send you my really nice hat that I crocheted out of fancy Teeswater yarn or something, and it doesn’t fit. I’ll send you that. So that’s me, how about you guys?

Liz: I’ve finished my basketweave scarf

Hazel: Amazing

Liz: So now I have the hat glove scarf set

Hazel: You’ll be so matchy matchy

Liz: And Nick

Nick: Me?

Liz: You have been brewing

Nick: I have been brewing. At the moment I’ve got a honey beer going on, which is…a lot of people say “oh, like mead”, but it is distinct because there’s honey and hops, so it’s gonna taste quite different

Hazel: That sounds quite good, actually, because the contrast between the sweet and the sour hop taste

Liz: It smells amazing

Hazel: Mmm

Nick: Yeah, at the moment it’s a light beer, it’s still fermenting and everything

Liz: It’s about 2.9 at the moment

Nick: Yeah, so if it creeps just a bit over that it’ll be a nice light beer to have in the spring/summer

Hazel: Yum

Nick: So that’s pretty good. I only made a small amount, because you need a lot of honey for it, so it’s less

Hazel: How much?

Nick: We used a couple of jars, didn’t we?

Liz: Basically a pound per gallon of water, or thereabout

Hazel: Ok

Liz: It’s a lot of honey

Hazel: Yeah (laughs)

Liz: I was sat on the floor stirring honey into a bucket of water like some sort of weird gremlin

Hazel: Mmm beer wizard

Liz: (laughs)

Nick: Yep. I would also do distilling, but that may cause explosions, so I’m not allowed to do that in the house

Hazel: Isn’t that also illegal unless you have a licence?

Liz: Only if you sell it

Hazel: Oh right. In that case

Nick: I’d just be keeping all that

Liz: One day, when we have space for a shed, we will have a distilling shed

Hazel: Brilliant

Liz: Which feels very prohibition, just a still out back

Hazel: Yeah. And/or fantasy wizard

Liz: You could make them all pretty colours, and then it’d be like potions

Nick: I could indeed, and maybe have some fancy glasses

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: Definitely

Hazel: Get some goblets

Liz: You say that, we already own two goblets

Hazel: I know, but you can always have more goblets. When I worked in the fancy craft ale place, if anyone ordered the imported Belgian beer, we’d, with much ceremony and fanfare, we would go and get down one of the big goblets from the shelf and serve it in that, and it was the highlight of my shift

Nick: Well Belgian beer is worth celebrating

Liz: Yeah. Nick

Nick: Yeah

Liz: You are telling us about this week’s person

Nick: I am. He is one of the titans of French cuisine, who had a really huge role in modernising professional cooking, and generally the whole restaurant and hotel industry, alongside Mr Ritz, of The Ritz fame

Hazel: Oh wow. Somehow I didn’t connect The Ritz with being named after someone. There was actually a Mr Ritz, that’s amazing

Liz: I’ve had the same problem, because when I hear Ritz I think Ritz Crackers

Hazel: (laughs)

Nick: I can’t remember what it’s called now, it’s been the Ritz, the Ritz-Carlton, so that’s half after Mr Ritz and half after the guy from Fresh Prince who isn’t Will Smith. At least part of that is true, but I won’t say which. Anyway, it’s Auguste Escoffier, who has a great name

Hazel: I’ve heard that name

Liz: It’s got scoff in it, and that’s how you know he’s a good chef

Hazel: (laughs) It’s a good name for a chef

Nick: It’s a name for a cartoon snail

Hazel: Is that the name of a brand of biscuits, or am I misremembering?

Nick: Quite possibly, but in my head

Hazel: Oh no, that’s Biscoff

Nick: He’s just a little cartoon snail bobbing along in his life

Liz: See I always picture the chef from Ratatouille

Hazel: Brilliant. What’s the chef’s name from Ratatouille

Liz: I do not know

Nick: Which

Liz: Is it Gusteau? The fat one. I think it’s Gusteau

Nick: Mmm. I’ve been interested in the origins of fancy restaurant cooking for a while, and Escoffier was one of the big figures. I should go a bit back to before he was around to explain some of the context. Before him, the big guy was Marie-Antoine Carême

Liz: Oh, I’ve heard that name

Hazel: It rings a bell, yeah

Nick: He’s, if you see in a cartoon or something somebody piling up a ridiculous display of some kind of sugary confection that’s made like the Eiffel Tower, and people are all very impressed and they applaud, that’s the kind of cooking that he really perfected, essentially

Hazel: So like performance art

Nick: The showy stuff, and very much for big banquets and displays, cooking for hundreds of people

Liz: That’s still a fairly mediaeval thing, isn’t it

Nick: Yeah, he was sort of the apotheosis of that kind of thing, he really took that style as far as it could possibly go, but there were some drawbacks to his whole system of preparation and of serving, because it wasn’t necessarily the most efficient thing to cook all of that food and display it as it was, so it’d be, you just put it out there, and it was served. If you can get to that bit, you can have that bit, if you want to get to this other thing, it’d be a bit rude to reach across, so you’re probably going to go without

Liz: So it’s service à la française?

Nick: Yes. Carême was around the time of service à la française, and kitchens were not the most organised of places, so you may not get the particular bit of food you wanted at this feast, even though it all looked very nice, and also it might all be lukewarm or cold by the time it all came out

Hazel: Oh no

Nick: Which just sounds absolutely terrible to me

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: Yeah, especially the amount of fat that you’d have, that era of cooking. Just cold grease on everything

Nick: Yeah

Hazel: That’s not what you expect. You go to your fancy rich person banquet and everything’s cold

Nick: Mmm. Enter Monsieur Escoffier. He was born in what seems to be still quite a small town in the very coastal bit of France, Villeneuve-Loubet. Today it’s got a population of about 16,000

Liz: Oh wow

Nick: So you can imagine how tiny that was back in the day. It’s him and Maréchal Pétain, are the most famous residents, so it’s a real mixed bag there. That’s Mr Vichy France

Liz: Oh!

Nick: Yeah. Land of contrasts, is Villeneuve-Loubet, and that’s the last time I’m gonna try saying that. He worked from the age of 12 until 74, I think

Liz: Can we ask, what years is this?

Nick: He was born 1846, and he died in the 30s

Liz: Ok, so working from 12 isn’t ridiculous

Nick: Yeah, it was…he probably got…I didn’t focus too much upon his early years, but I get the impression it was kind of a “go out, get yourself a Saturday job, earn your keep a bit”, unless he had some kind of very tragic backstory, but I haven’t seen anything about that, just started working young, never stopped, because he was all about food, and all about the kitchen. Essentially, one of the most important things that he brought to dining, and to food preparation, was the professionalisation of the kitchen, because you would get, you’d still have sauciers and chefs de whatever. There would be various people with various skills working in the kitchen, but they didn’t necessarily communicate properly, they didn’t really have much of a plan going on. You’d all be in the kitchen, they’d be shouting and wearing and drinking and smoking, and then the waiter would come and yell. I think it was pretty much a guy who was called French for “the yeller” would come up and be like “oi, two covers of fish coming out”, have to shout over the din of all the chefs, and Escoffier hated that. He said “alright, we’re going to be really quiet in this kitchen. You’re not allowed to drink and swear, and also it’s not the yeller. It’s the announcer now. He will announce things at a normal volume, so you’ll have to be quiet to hear what your job is.” Which I think is fantastic, can you imagine. You couldn’t do that now

Hazel: (laughs)

Nick: ‘Cause being a chef is, partly, I think, because of media coverage, part of being a chef is being seen as being quite a tough and very sweary job

Hazel: Yeah, it is still quite a high-stress environment I think

Liz: Just trying to imagine showing Escoffier Kitchen Nightmares

Nick: It would certainly be an emotional experience for him, and the emotion would be sadness. I think…that was one of the big reforms he did, or a couple of them, was making sure that the chefs weren’t just getting drunker throughout the day, and making sure that they could actually communicate and everything, and he brought a whole new sense of discipline to the whole thing, because he’d say “Right, you are the saucier, and you’re on the meat, you need to be talking to each other all the time, because the sauce will go on the meat, you don’t want one hot while the other’s cold”, and it was that being able to communicate and everything meant that they could do things…cook to order and things like that, which wasn’t really as practical in Carême’s day, which was why you’d have all the lukewarm and cold food. You’d actually be able to say you’ve got all the onions chopped, you’ve got everything ready, you’ve got everything prepped, get cracking, and you’d actually have hot dishes for the whole table, and not just have what is actually such a nightmare that it’d make me cry, being served lukewarm food by a professional chef

Hazel: Nooo

Liz: Hazle lit up

Hazel: No, I was just making a noise of horror

Liz: (laughs)

Nick: I can imagine just being totally blown away, being a small party sat around a table, being brought out food like “How’s your food?” “It’s wonderful, it’s piping hot. Yours?” “Yeah, mine too” “What? Are you a witch? What is this magic?”

Liz: I guess there is also the thing of switching to courses, is it à la russe?

Nick: Yeah, service à la russe

Liz: Switching to that from à la française, just sitting there being given one plate of food, I can imagine kind of being like “where’s the rest of it?”

Nick: Alexander Kurakin, the Russian diplomat

Liz: That’s another name I’m gonna have to spell in the transcripts now

Nick: I’m afraid so. That was…everything can’t all be put down to Escoffier, I think that approach spreading to France was definitely a big change, a big reform, basically meant the end for that mediaeval banquet sort of cooking, which is really for the best, let’s be honest

Hazel: It does make sense in a restaurant, if a lot of things are meant to be eaten hot, you’re gonna want to bring them out when they’re hot, and not all at the same time

Nick: Yeah

Hazel: So that someone can experience them at perfectly cooked

Nick: You can also tell how much he refined things in terms of the actual dishes, because I was looking at some menus. It’s a wonderful thing, the New York Public Library, for some reason, has decided “We’ve got to digitise some old menus. Everybody gather round the photocopier, we gotta do this”

Liz: Well yeah, for history reasons

Hazel: I for one respect them

Liz: I’m just concerned they’re trying to digitise something with a photocopier

Hazel: (laughs)

Nick: Well they fired that guy

Liz: Ok

Nick: But I’m just very happy, because it’s like they’ve done it for me

Liz: (laughing) For you specifically

Hazel: (laughs)

Nick: For me specifically. I was just so happy when I came across it

Liz: I will try to put a link to that in the show notes

Nick: Fantastic. You can get some really horrible looking menus that are like…you know when you go to a really mediocre place that’s, you know, you’re really hungry and you pop into somewhere that’s just called La Restaurante on the high street, and it’s got seven things on the menu, and it’s that kind of

Liz: Think is when you do that, sometimes it’s gonna be awful, but sometimes it’s the best stuff you’ve ever had, ‘cause it’s just this one guy that’s really into food, and he doesn’t really know how to run a restaurant, but god damn does he know how to cook

Nick: That is true. It’s one of those times when you’re thinking it’s a front

Hazel: (laughs)

Nick: You’ve boiled some turkey, is what you’ve done there. That is one of the things I saw on quite a nice

Liz: Boiled turkey?

Nick: Restaurant menu. There were some boiled dishes, there were some roast dishes, I think the turkey was on the boiled side

Liz: That’s not right

Nick: And then after…I don’t want to be all great man of history about this, but I think you do…having these structural changes means you can have more interesting and more advanced food, because it must be easy to boil loads of meat to get it all ready

Liz: Boil loads of turkey

Nick: Yeah, boil all the turkeys, like the pilgrims would have wanted, and I think changing to actually be responsive to somebody’s needs means that doesn’t happen so much anymore, which is for the best. It’s the difference between something like that, and serving oysters as one of the starters, and things like that. You can really do a hell of a lot more. One thing I found interesting is how much he worked in collaboration with César Ritz, talking about how people respond to the whole environment, to the menus, to the everything like that. He found that some English people were confused or intimidated, and so guess what special kind of menu was born

Hazel: Is it the one where they describe what it is one the menu?

Nick: Partly that, but it’s the fixed price menu

Hazel: (gasps)

Nick: So you can…’cause they weren’t sure how to select

Liz: ‘Cause they were so used to the banquet style?

Nick: Possibly, possibly ‘cause there’s a lot of detail, they weren’t sure what would go together, what starters would follow on, because there would be likely a lot of new dishes for English travellers, ‘cause let’s be honest, historically speaking

Liz: We just eat the same thing wherever we go, yeah

Nick: It’s a mixed bag

Hazel: Of course the English are responsible for the set menu

Nick: Yeah

Hazel: That’s amazing

Nick: Basically went “alright, here’s what you might like, here’s some oysters leading into a nice bit of turbot for your main, and there’s this other thing for dessert” maybe a peach melba, because that’s another thing that you can thank Escoffier for

Hazel: Huh

Nick: Which I was surprised at, ‘cause it sounds…because of when I grew up and where I heard peach melba, I felt like that was something that was maybe big in the 70s, or something like that, because everything about it sounds very 70s

Hazel: It does

Liz: It really does

Nick: You have that after your main course, which is all in aspic

Hazel: (laughs)

Nick: It’s a real Abigail’s Party vibe. Special Mike Leigh deep cut for all you real ones out there

Liz: My question is, did they have ladies’ menus?

Nick: I have not seen ladies’ menus in the Ritz

Liz: For people that don’t know, ladies’ menus were basically the same menu, but without the prices, that you would give to the woman, because obviously she’s not paying, so she can just order whatever. She doesn’t have to worry about the price. Actually I will link to…there’s a good Atlas Obscura article on them. I was just curious, ‘cause I don’t know when they started, I just know when they finished

Nick: I haven’t…when I was looking at the menus in the places where Escoffier worked, which was mainly the Savoy and the Ritz

Liz: Mm-hmm

Nick: I couldn’t see any different menus, but it was a non-exhaustive search, because obviously they change menus a lot, and everything like that, so I can’t promise that there were no ladies’ menus in these places, but they certainly had quite a lot of variety. Not just Escoffier’s places, I think at this point generally, aside from him putting those reforms in place, I think there was a big movement towards a lot of variety, getting food quickly to the customer. I did see some menus with 70 or so options in them

Liz: Wow

Nick: This is looking at maybe starters, mains, some drinks and stuff like that

Liz: Even so

Nick: At the time, this is a really impressive logistical task, because when I’m thinking about quite a crowded menu with a lot of options, I’m maybe thinking, I think I’ve seen that kind of thing at maybe a chain pub, but a lot of that stuff is they’ve got a little packet

Liz: Mmm

Nick: And they can microwave it, or just warm it up somehow, but that’s absolutely not what could happen there, they could maybe make a big batch of one of the mother sauces, but that still means a lot of further preparation. I should probably clarify mother sauce

Liz: Probably

Hazel: (laughing) Yes

Nick: Mother sauces is something that I think, I think that’s from, it’s either from Carême or Escoffier. I feel like Carême talked a lot about sauces and was very much a sauce champion

Liz: Saucy boy

Nick: Yeah, unofficial title, bestowed by me, but it’s stuff like the béchamel, for instance, which is the milky one you get. You thicken milk, but in a nice way

Hazel: Delicious

Nick: Not like how I said it

Hazel: (laughs)

Nick: There’s the espagnole, which is a dark thing, velouté, which is, I think you use that one a lot with fish, it’s quite a, one of those ones that’s quite hard to put together, but it’s a silky texture

Liz: Yeah, it’s like a glossy stock, almost

Hazel: Ooh

Nick: Yeah, glossy stock is a perfect way of putting it, then you get tomato. I think those are the main ones I can think of off-hand

Liz: Is hollandaise not one?

Nick: Yes, hollandaise, that’s it

Hazel: You’re making me hungry

Liz: (laughs)

Nick: Carême talked a lot about those, and I think Escoffier really emphasised the mother sauces, and I think that’s another way that you can definitely cut down on the prep time, and also on thinking time, because if you see everything as part of that hierarchy in cooking, as well as in the arrangement of staff, I think you can really see clearly that he’s thinking the same way across the board there, just thinking “ok, with this sauce I can easily go left or right and either way, whatever happens, I’ll be prepared, whatever the customer wants”

Hazel: That’s really interesting, because I always think…most of those sauces I haven’t had yet, but I always think of them as the essence of French cuisine, really classic, and it’s interesting to know that was standardised at a certain point

Nick: Yeah absolutely. It’s one of those things where, I think, Escoffier took that focus, but also made sure to rebalance in some ways. He said “above all, do it simply”, that was his motto, so you get the refinement, but also you do get him going alright, let’s just do a nice simple dish with no fancy confectionary castles or whatever, but you’re gonna have a really nice version of that

Liz: Is that why haute cuisine, so much of it’s just “here’s 4 things on a plate”?

Nick: Yeah, pretty much. It’s just “I’m gonna do the nicest version of a steak that you’ve ever had, with a really nice, freshly made sauce”, and I love that as a goal. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, you just have to

Liz: Make a nice wheel

Nick: Yeah, make a nice wheel, and pour a nice little bit of sauce on it. An interesting thing is how, at the same time, I don’t wanna get too much into it, ‘cause I think he maybe deserves his own segment or episode, but Mr Ritz, our old pal, was doing a lot of the basic stuff that we take for granted as well, going “ok, we need to make sure that people aren’t waiting ages for service, and that the charges are simple”, because before this point, before this era, hotels were basically like a Ryanair flight, but you’re already there

Liz: What, like charging separately for every tiny thing, do you mean?

Nick: Yeah, you’d get…nowadays they just limit that to the minibar, whereas before it was “ah, you see you’ve used our fancy bathroom” or something like that, or various bits and pieces, so much so that there was, I can’t remember the name now, but there was a book around this time of somebody’s complaints about the hotel industry, and all of the ways you get fobbed off and robbed blind by it

Liz: I think we need to get hold of a copy of this book for a future episode

Hazel: Yeah

Nick: You do. Alongside the restaurant being made a much more hospitable place, even for the English

(Liz and Hazel laugh)

Nick: Ritz went “ok, on top of that, you’re not gonna have any complaints about the room, about your stay, because we’re just gonna keep things simple, you book, you pay, you come in, you have a pleasant stay where your needs are met nice and quickly, and you can eat at the restaurant, where things will be warm”

Hazel: That is all you need

(crosstalk)

Liz: What were you saying Hazel?

Hazel: No, I was saying go on

Nick: It’s one of those things that I thought was absolutely very much a Bread and Thread thing, because you kind of assume with, not so much about the particulars of cuisine, but with some basic stuff, like food should be hot, you should be able to eat anything that is available, not just what’s near you, and you shouldn’t have to pay extra for ridiculous things at a hotel. Those things you think well that’s just obvious, that’s how it’s always been, surely, but no, at some point somebody went “yeah, this is all fine, the food was…I was just by the cress”

Liz: (laughs)

Nick: “Actually the cress was the one hot thing, it was just steaming cress, but then I had to go wash my hands and we got charged for it”

Liz: Was this hypothetical person eating cress just by hand?

Nick: Pitchfork, I think. Tiny little pitchfork

Hazel: The sauce was just so sticky

Liz: (laughing) Sticky cress?

Hazel: Hot sticky cress

Liz: Hot sticky cress

Nick: Hot sticky cress

Hazel: Actually, I have gathered from novels and stuff that going, ordering dinner at, say, a tavern, was just, you would go, you would order your dinner, and it would just be ready when it was ready

Liz: Either that or you go a bit lower class and you have the forever soup

Hazel: (laughs) Yeah

Liz: Where they’ve just constantly got this pot of stew on the fire, and it’s like “oh you’re hungry? Have some soup. There’s something in it

Nick: There’s a rock, and we thought it was going to be terrible, but thankfully loads of other people turned up, and they each put a thing in

Liz: (laughs)

Nick: And a little bit later, bada-bing bada-boom, you’ve got a restaurant

Liz: And we’ve been cooking it for 30 years

Hazel: I read about, I didn’t read about it, but I saw on a food TV programme, one burger restaurant, in an American city, I forget which, that has been cooking with the same grease for 90 years

Liz: That’s gonna have some flavour

Hazel: They moved premises, and they has to get a police escort for the grease, because it was so valuable

Liz: My god

Hazel: They just kept topping it up

Liz: That’s…that’s something

Hazel: Anyway, back to the past

Nick: I have a wonderful little tidbit here, about Escoffier and Ritz. Apparently, they weren’t exactly good little lads

Liz: Did they do food crimes?

Hazel: Oh no

Nick: They did a little bit of embezzlement and fraud, Ritz more than Escoffier, it seems. Did a classic bit of skimming with one of the suppliers. Ordered 600 eggs, they delivered 650, pocketed some of the difference, the classic kind of scam

Liz: I assume pocketed the money, not the eggs

Hazel: (laughs)

Nick: Well, it was a long time ago

Liz: They had bigger pockets then

Nick: Yeah

Hazel: Suit just absolutely stuffed full of eggs

Nick: Well you know what they say, you can’t make an omelette without a suit full of eggs

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: Did he get caught by someone tapping him on the back and it just went squelch

Hazel: Oh no

Nick: That’s gotta be it. Now we’re getting into territory which I’m hoping to reserve for my historical novel, The Thief of Egg

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: I’d read it

Hazel: I’m imagining one of those Mills and Boon covers

Liz: Except he throws his shirt open, and instead of a big bare six-pack it’s just eggs taped to him

Hazel: It’s just eggs (laughs)

Nick: Which brings me to a question I didn’t even know I had before today. If you had to tape eggs to your person, what kind of tape would you use

Liz: I would use microporous tape

Hazel: Oh

Liz: Because it’s very sticky, but also designed to be on your skin for a long time. I feel like you’d need more of it than you would of other tapes, but it’d do the job well

Nick: Makes a lot of sense. Ok

Liz: What about you Hazel?

Hazel: (laughs) I’d probably go for a classic masking tape. Not too sticky, so you can get them off, but it’s gonna be gentle on the skin as well

Liz: That makes sense, ‘cause I think the immediate thought is duct tape, but

Hazel: No

Liz: That’s a really good way to smash the eggs as you stick it to your skin

Hazel: Listeners, please do not duct tape eggs to yourself

Liz: But if you do, send us a picture

Hazel: (laughs)

Nick: I’d go double-sided, because that raises the possibility of securing even more egg

Hazel: But at that point, wouldn’t it become conspicuous?

Nick: When you’ve got that many eggs strapped to you, no-one wants to ask questions

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: That’s probably true

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: I think there’s a certain level of weird where people actively avoid you

Nick: They’ll cross the street to get away from you, which really does good things for the security of those eggs

(Liz and Hazel laugh)

Hazel: If you can think of an easier way to steal eggs, please do write in to us

Liz: (laughs)

Nick: It’s like one of those special challenges in a science class, like “ok, you’ve got this egg, design a parachute” or something like that, because they knew about Ritz and Escoffier, they knew sometimes you’ve gotta steal some eggs

Liz: Are you suggesting that you make parachutes for the eggs so you can take them somewhere high up and then drop them to the person, to the egg fence?

Nick: Yeah

Hazel: I would have thought though, with The Ritz being a luxury hotel, he would have been making enough profit anyway, without needing to embezzle

Liz: Have you considered rich people?

Hazel: True

Nick: I can’t remember, I think this may not have been at a place where they actually had any ownership, this may have been at the Savoy or something

Hazel: Ah

Nick: Early career

Hazel: Ok. Well in that case, gotta do what you gotta do

Nick: Gotta raise capital somehow

Hazel: Yeah

Nick: I really hope that nobody is listening to this and doing something else, getting distracted, and then they go “oh ok, Escoffier and Ritz were egg thieves, they stole the eggs”, and then they repeat that to somebody else. Sure you can repeat it to somebody else, but don’t tell anyone where you heard it

Liz: In five years we’ll see a tumblr post detailing how Escoffier stole eggs

Hazel: History is written by the podcasters

Liz: Kind of is though, is the sad thing

Nick: Terrifying. I don’t want the weight of all this responsibility. It’s a terrible yolk upon me

(Hazel and Liz laugh)

Hazel: Let me just google how to kick someone out of a podcast

Liz: I think that is probably a good point to end the episode

Nick: And the podcast

Liz: If you want to send us your egg crime ideas, you can email us at breadandthreadpodcast @ gmail.com

Hazel: If you would like to send them to us by twitter, you can find us on twitter and breadandthread, and also the same name on tumblr and youtube, where we have youtube versions of our audio episodes

Liz: And if you want to support us, so we don’t have to resort to taping eggs to our bare flesh, you can go to patreon.com/breadandthread, where you can get access to a discord server, as well as monthly patron-exclusive recipes, and keep us out of egg-based penury

Hazel: (laughs) Thank you very much, Nick, for telling us all about Monsieur…Escoff-ee-yay or Escoff-eer?

Nick: Escoffiegg

Liz: Eggscoffier

Hazel: Whose entire legacy we have just butchered, but I really enjoyed learning about the way that he changed cooking

Liz: You wanna say the thing at the end?

Nick: Thank you for listening and we’ll see you next time?