10. The Hysterical French Chef
Francois Vatel (1631 – 1671) is best remembered as the cliche French chef prone to histrionics after he killed himself because he was embarrassed about a dinner that he had prepared. Vatel was born Fritz Karl Watel in Switzerland. He apprenticed as a pastry cook, then went to work for Nicolas Fouquet, who became King Louis XIV’s finance minister. Vatel became a celebrated master chef, often credited (inaccurately) for inventing Chantilly cream, and rose within Fouquet’s household to become his majordomo – the highest-ranking employee in an aristocrat’s household.
In 1661, Vatel supervised the grandiloquent inauguration fete of Fouquet’s chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte – now a famous tourist site southeast of Paris. Vatel did such a great job, and the inauguration was so splendid, that Louis XIV grew jealous of his finance minister’s display of opulence. The king fired Fouquet and threw him in jail, charged with maladministration of state funds and lese majeste, and kept him locked up until his death in 1680.