Among all the objects on display at the birthplace (now a museum) of the famous French chef Auguste Escoffier in Villeneuve-Loubet, I remember two that caught my eye: two small one-handed tinned copper pots. One of them, about 10 cm in diameter, had two opposite spouts that allowed the liquid to be poured in from both sides; thanks to this simple invention, the pot could be held with both hands, allowing the left-handed cook to mix the mixture by holding the whisk with the more suitable hand.
Even stranger was the other pot, which had a strangely flat wall.
The cooks with me could not imagine why Escoffier would have made such a vessel. Various theories were put forward, some saying that the flattening of the wall had been caused by a fall, others that it had been specially designed to work in a cramped kitchen where the ovens were placed close to the wall... A more logical solution was sought and, in the spirit of the great chef's gastronomic genius, a plausible one was found, which, if not entirely true, is at least, I hope, well told.....
Escoffier, innovator and codifier of modern French cuisine, was also a great inventor of sauces that were concatenated, within a rational gastronomic structure, into preparations from the simplest to the most complex. Indeed, from the cooking grounds derive the mother sauces, from these the primary sauces, then the secondary sauces, and so on.
However, the development of a new sauce required repeated attempts aimed at obtaining the most balanced result. However, the use of traditional casseroles, however small in size, would have resulted in considerable food waste, especially if the result was not immediately satisfactory. In order to get a few tablespoons of sauce to taste, it would have been necessary to tilt the casserole on the stove in order to raise the level of the limited amount of contents and thus facilitate the "binding" of the sauce.
Escoffier's special flat saucepan allowed him to raise the level of the little liquid it contained by tilting it, to make it more stable by resting its handle on the edge of another small saucepan, and to leave his hands free to add and mix all the ingredients he thought necessary to create a perfect flavour, making the "liaison", as he advised, "au coin du feu", so that the effect of the heat would be as gentle as possible.
The ones you see are not the originals, of course; I had them reproduced by my Italian master coppersmith, for my own curiosity and yours.
Eugenio Medagliani, "Humanist Calderaio"