FOOD RESOURCE COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
LAGUIPIERE
Excerpted and Adapted from Escoffier, A. and P.H. Gilbert. Edited by Charlotte Turgeon and Nina Froud. 1961. The World Authority. Larousse Gastronomique. The Encyclopedia of Food, Wine & Cookery.
was born in the middle of the eighteenth century and died in 1812. He was one of the great masters of French cookery. Careme described him as 'the most remarkable chef of our times.' Careme's tutor in all branches of cookery was, in fact, the great laguipiere, who accompanied Murat to Naples and later followed him to Russia and frozen to death at Vilno (now Vilnius) during the 1812 retreat from Moscow.
At the beginning of his book, Le Cuisinier Parisien, Carene wrote the follow words about his great master: 'Awake! Shade of Laguipiere. Listen to the voice of a pupil, a friend, a devotee!" (Careme, who was somewhat granddiloquent, never failed to express his feelings with great force). 'Your talents were extraordinary and earned you the hatred of those who ought to have admired your noble striving for perfection. You should have died in Paris, surrounded by the reverence evoked in all of us by the memory of yoru great work…Laguipiere, accept the pious homage of a fairthful discipline. I couple my works with your name. I have cited you with pride in all my books, and today, I invoke your memory and dedicate to you my finest work."
It is regrettable that so learned a practioner of the art of cooking as Laguipiere should not have left any written record for posterity of his culinary teachings.