THE SAVOY’S SHOCKINGLY SEXIST CHEF

AS MY cookery school began to pump out talented graduates in the Seventies, I realised that none of them got work at the Savoy hotel.

The reason was Silvino Trompetto, The Savoy’s famous head chef, who believed that no woman should ever work in his kitchens. He wouldn’t even have a female in the pastry department, where women had begun to make headway in most other hotels.

Nonetheless, I tried to persuade him to give a Leith’s School female graduate a two-week trial. Absolutely not, he said.

I asked him why, expecting the usual nonsense about girls taking the men’s minds off the job, or not being able to lift a full stock-pot.

I was ready with my reply: if men managed to work with women in reception, why not the kitchen? And no one, male or female, could lift a full stock-pot by themselves.

But his answer almost left me speechless: ‘Because, dear lady, at a certain time of the month, women cause the mayonnaise to curdle.’ ‘You must be joking. You can’t believe that.’ ‘No, no, it’s true. That is why women are not allowed into the mushroom sheds in France. They stop the spores germinating.’