Gaston Lenôtre

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gaston Albert Celestin Lenôtre (born May 28, 1920 in Saint-Nicolas-du-Bosc (today: Le Bosc du Theil ) in the Eure department in Haute-Normandie ; † January 8, 2009 in Sennely in the Loiret department ) was a French pastry chef , Chocolatier , entrepreneur and author of several baking books.

Experts and the media recognize Lenôtre as a fundamental innovator in the confectionery industry. In his "École Lenôtre" near Paris he formed with his fine and confectionery from several generations of pastry chefs and cooks. He freed the baked goods from fat and sugar and replaced them with lighter ingredients and fresh fruit.

life and work

Gaston Lenôtre and his brother Marcel were the sons of Gaston Lenôtre, a Chef Saucier at the Grand Hôtel de Paris , and his wife Éléonore (née Beauvais), who were one of the first French chefs for the banker Baron Pereire and for the family of the banker Baron Rothschild worked on their residences in Paris and Bordeaux .

In 1918 his parents married and settled on a farm of around fifty hectares in Normandy . His mother introduced him to the craft of fine bakery, which was also the beginning of his apprenticeship. Because of a serious illness in his father in 1930, the farm had to be given up and no training could be financed for him. Lenôtre later found this emergency a stroke of luck. As a clerk (assistant) he went to work at a good pastry shop in Pont-Audemer . In the 1930s, Gaston Lenôtre increased his pocket money by cycling to Paris , around 100 kilometers away , and selling homemade chocolates there. At the beginning of 1936, during the ongoing global economic crisis , he looked for work in Paris. In the Paris suburb of Pantin , after many unsuccessful efforts and warehouse work in the Quartier des Halles, he finally found a professional job because he knew how to make Easter eggs from chocolate.

In 1939 his former employer brought him back to Normandy. After the German army invaded France in 1940 , ten bakers left their hometown of Pont-Audemer. This allowed him to open a small pastry shop with his brother Marcel and his mother at the cash register. In 1943 he married Colette Courallet, who made the shop assistants stylish and designed the interior of the shop. He bought his first pastry shop in Pont-Audemer in 1947; it was his first job. One of his loyal customers was a lord of the castle in the vicinity of Pont-Audemer, who recommended that he settle in Paris and offered him his help.

Paris

In 1957 he and his wife Colette took over a pastry shop in the bourgeois 16th arrondissement of Paris that had been doing poorly up until then . At the time of the takeover there were four pâtisseries in rue d'Auteuil , after a year there were only Lenôtres pâtisserie left there. In addition to the good quality of his products, he also used sales-promoting means such as redirecting the bakery ventilation to the boulevard. He had ingredients such as butter and cream delivered fresh every day from a Norman farm near Bernay . The enterprising, sociable and friendly Lenôtre was soon able to establish contacts with the upscale Parisian society, for example supplying the Dassault , Robert Hersant and Lagardère families .

expansion

Lenôtre company logo until 2011

In 1960 he founded a catering service for pastries. The systematic use of freezing technology from 1964 made him one of the first caterers.

In 1968 Lenôtre opened his kitchens and his experimental kitchen in Plaisir . In 1971 he expanded his location with a master school, the "École Lenôtre", at which up to 3,000 amateurs, master pastry chefs and chefs, including such famous chefs as Alain Ducasse and Eckart Witzigmann, train . From 1982 to 1983 Johann Lafer worked for the Parisian pastry chef.

Lenôtre established his first foreign branch in 1975 in Berlin's Kaufhaus des Westens , shortly afterwards he expanded to Japan , the Middle East , South Korea , Las Vegas , Bangkok and later also Beijing . In 1982, together with Paul Bocuse and Roger Vergé, he opened the “Pavillon de France” with a restaurant and a boulangerie in Disneyworld , Epcot Center, Orlando ( Florida ).

In 1976 he took over the Paris three-star restaurant "Le Pré Catelan", a Second Empire building in the Bois de Boulogne and in 1985 the "Pavillon Elysée" on the Champs Élysées .

Sale to Accor

In the 1980s, the expansion of his catering group in Houston , Texas , suffered such high losses that he had to sell the entire company to the Accor hotel chain in 1985 . Accor continued to expand, so that in 2009 the Lenôtre brand had 52 branches in 13 countries, twelve of them in Paris and 1200 employees in France alone. He himself said goodbye to business life in the early 1990s and moved to Sologne in the Loire Valley with his second wife Catherine . He then continued to hold regular discussions with Patrick Scicard (* 1955), the son of a pastry chef and, since 1996, the chairman of the Accor Group, which continues to ensure that its recipes are adhered to and that its employees are trained. In 2008 the Lenôtre Group had a turnover of 162 million  dollars .

In September 2011, Accor sold its subsidiary Lenôtre to the international catering service provider Sodexo for EUR 75 million . Scicard should continue to do business with its employees. With the takeover of Lenôtre, Sodexo saw expansion opportunities in luxury catering and overlaps in the prestige, sports and leisure goods market.

From 1991 he bought the Château de Fesles in Bonnezeaux and the Château de la Roulerie in the Coteaux de Layon as well as other vineyards on the Loire . There he produced lovely white wines that go well with desserts. In Clos des Varennes he had a dry Savennières pressed. His wife owns the Château Meyre in the Médoc and other vineyards in Margaux near Bordeaux. After extensive investments and improvements, he sold the goods again in 1996.

To celebrate his 80th birthday in 2000, 80 apprentices and their masters from the “École Lenôtre” created a cake ten meters high and weighing two tons, which was tasted in the gardens of the Jardins du Trocadéro in front of the Eiffel Tower .

family

Lenôtre was a family man who attached great importance to the continuation of the family culinary tradition and who also introduced his children and relatives to his company. He leaves behind his younger brother Marcel, his second wife Catherine, whom he married in 1999, and three children who also became master chefs: Alain, Sylvie and Annie. Alain Lenôtre heads the Culinary Institute in Houston , Texas . Sylvie Lenôtre wrote 13 of his cookbooks, which reached a total circulation of over a million copies. Daughter Annie heads the gourmet gifts department at the Lenôtre Group. The culinary art of his nephew Patrick Lenôtre (Le Pré Catalan, L'Étoile) has now been awarded seven Michelin stars . Gaston Lenôtre was buried in a family grave in the cemetery of the Notre-Dame-de-la-Couture church in Bernay .

meaning

Lenôtre is recognized as a fundamental innovator in the confectionery industry, he relieved the previously common fat and sugar-heavy confectionery with lighter ingredients such as gelatine , mousse and egg whites . For example, he replaced the high-energy buttercream with a light biscuit mixture and reduced the amount of sugar in the icing, which was mandatory until then. The taste also improved , fruits and light creams in his bavarois , his charlotten with fruit, his fine baked goods (viennoiseries) and his macarons create a consistent mouthfeel . Well-known classics include the Cyriaque Gavillon (Dalloyau) Opéra cake , a sequence of biscuit layers soaked in Grand Marnier and filled with a ganache made from chocolate and coffee cream, or “Succès” made from macaroon dough and nougatine ( caramelized sugar with almond or Nut mass).

Above all, he enforced a precise and precise observation of the preparations, quantities, baking temperatures and times as the standard. His friend Paul Bocuse put him on a par with the founder of the French pâtissierie, Marie-Antoine Carême (1784–1833). Like Carême, Lenôtre insisted that pastry-making is the best practice for master chefs, as it is a very good practice for precision and perfection. Lenôtre's successor is the Alsatian Pierre Hermé , who began his apprenticeship with him at the age of 14 and studied there for six years.

Quotes

“You know, confectionery is not done to feed people, but to offer them sweet things to share. »

- Gaston Lenôtre

«The pastry shop taught me the taste of precision, measure, and discipline. If things are carelessly done, I scream. »

- Gaston Lenôtre

“With his talent and creativity, with his rigor and his aspiration, he understood how to elevate confectionery to the rank of art. It was very important to him to pass on his knowledge to the coming generations, that is, to let the French way of life persist and shine in the world. He did not like conformism, he always tried to renew the art, respecting the traditions and the rules. »

- Nicolas Sarkozy , 2009

Awards

  • In 1955, Lenôtre won an international confectionery competition in Deauville.
  • In 2000 he was awarded the Officier de la Légion d'Honneur's Cross of Merit by Paul Bocuse .

Literature (selection)

Web links

Obituaries

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Lenôtre, le précurseur de la pâtisserie modern. ( Memento of June 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: AFP  / Le Point , January 8, 2009.
  2. ↑ a b LeNotre Family History. ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the web archive archive.today ). In: Culinary Institute Alain & Marie LeNotre , 2009, (English).
  3. ↑ a b c d D. A .: Lenôtre ou l'appétit de la vie. ( Memento of March 8, 2002 in the Internet Archive ). In: Conseil général du Département Loiret , November 15, 2001, interview with Gaston Lenôtre.
  4. ^ Basil Katz: Gaston Lenôtre, Who Built a Culinary Brand, Is Dead at 88. In: The New York Times , January 8, 2009.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Tom Jaine: Gaston Lenôtre. Master pâtissier who created an empire and became a household name in France. In: The Guardian , Jan. 12, 2009.
  6. ^ Maurice Beaudoin: Gaston le magnifique. In: Le Figaro , January 16, 2009.
  7. ^ Jean-Claude Ribaut: Gaston Lenôtre, pâtissier. In: Le Monde , January 8, 2009.
  8. ↑ French master pastry chef Gaston Lenotre dead at 88. ( Memento from January 25, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ). In: AFP  / Google News , January 8, 2009.
  9. ↑ Ullrich Fichtner : Revolutionary of the cream cuts. In: Spiegel Online , January 9, 2009.
  10. ^ Carole Bellemare: Lenôtre, un empire international de la gourmandise offensive. In: Le Figaro , December 15, 2008.
  11. ^ A b Paul Levy: Gaston Lenotre: Pastry chef who brought patisserie into the modern age. In: The Independent , January 15, 2009.
  12. ↑ Ralph Klingsieck: Accor sells catering subsidiary Lenôtre. In: AHGZ , July 22, 2011.
  13. ^ Laura Schalk: Sodexo Finalizes Acquisition of Lenôtre. In: Business Wire , September 22, 2011.
  14. ↑ Press release: Lenôtre, newest symbol of haute cuisine for Sodexo. In: Sodexo , September 27, 2011, (English).
  15. ↑ a b c Gaston Lenôtre: patissier. ( Memento of May 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) In: The Times , January 10, 2009.
  16. ↑ Birthday cake I ( Memento of February 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), in: Le Figaro , December 29, 2007 and Birthday Cake II. ( Memento of July 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) In: Le Parisien , May 26, 2000, article and Joyeux anniversaire M. Lenôtre. ( Memento of November 26, 2001 in the Internet Archive ). In: L'Hôtellerie , May 4, 2000.
  17. ↑ Illustrated recipe: Opéra. In: meilleurduchef.com , September 26, 2015, (English), with back video, 34:43 min. (French) and
       Opéra , ( Memento from December 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), with recipe and pictures of the preparation (German).
  18. ^ Agence France Presse (AFP): Mort du pâtissier Gaston Lenôtre. In: France-Amérique , January 8, 2009.
  19. ↑ Guillaume Crouzet: Pierre Hermé: J'appelais toujours Gaston "Monsieur". In: L'Express , January 8, 2009, interview with Pierre Hermé.
  20. ↑ Alexandra Michot: Lenôtre, un traiteur nommé plaisir. In: Le Figaro , December 28, 2007.
  21. ↑ Décès / Lenôtre: hommage de Sarkozy In: AFP  / Le Figaro , January 8, 2009.
personal data
SURNAME Lenôtre, Gaston
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lenôtre, Gaston Albert Celestin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French confectioner, chocolatier, entrepreneur and author
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Nicolas-du-Bosc , Eure department , Normandy
DATE OF DEATH January 8, 2009
Place of death Sennely , Loiret department