Roland Mesnier
Made all the presidents’ cakes from Carter to George W Bush
ROLAND MESNIER, who has died aged 78, spent 25 years as executive pastry chef at the White House, preparing desserts for five American presidents and their families from Jimmy Carter to George W Bush; his dishes often marked big international events – such as the lemon sorbet doves, each with an sugar olive branch in its beak, for the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993.
State dinners for world leaders received similar attention: blown-sugar giraffes for Kenya; flower leis (garlands) made of sugar for the Philippines; white chocolate tigers for India; and miniature chocolate replicas of Big Ben for the Queen. He claimed never to have repeated a state dinner dessert.
The Burgundian Mesnier told how the kitchen staff feared for their jobs after Nancy Reagan’s arrival in 1981. “Forget about compliments – if she didn’t complain, that was a compliment,” he recalled. When the first Lady requested 16 spun-sugar baskets with spun-sugar tulips for a Dutch royal visit, he protested that there were only two days until the event. “But you also have two nights,” she replied.
Barbara Bush, wife of George HW Bush, was a “shouter” who insisted on dry, overcooked fish, while Bill Clinton’s brother-in-law, Hugh Rodham, could wolf down half a dozen pork chops in a single sitting. Yet Mesnier had a soft spot for Chelsea, the Clintons’ daughter, serving warm fresh doughnuts on silver platters after her first White House sleepover.
Preparations began early for Christmas. “We have to have 120,000 pieces of cake and cookies in stock,” he explained. On one occasion Martha Stewart filmed him creating a Christmas gingerbread house, but raised his hackles by suggesting that the roof was held together with metal pins. “Eet has nothing but gingerbread and chocolate in the roof,” he insisted.
Gifts of food for the US first family are destroyed for security reasons. After Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit in 1987, the Soviet leader sent a large package that was diverted to the kitchen with orders that it be dumped. When Mesnier discovered that it contained two large tins of Russian caviar, he looked at a fellow chef and said: “I don’t know about you, but I’m willing to die for what’s inside.” They took a tin each.
Some White House incumbents arrived with family recipes that he regarded with disdain. The Clintons had “an atrocious concoction of Coca-cola-flavoured jelly served with black glacé cherries”, while the Carters had a moulded cheese ring that was “Muenster, cheddar, all the stickiest cheese you could find, mixed with onions, capers and strawberry jam in the middle … a secret family recipe that no one tried to steal”.
Roland Robert Mesnier was born at Bonnay, a village in eastern France, on July 8 1944, the seventh of nine children; his father worked on the railways and his mother was “a wonderful chef ”. From an early age he was helping an older brother in his pastry shop and by 14 had been packed off to Besançon for a three-year apprenticeship. After a year scrubbing floors and washing pots he was allowed near the ovens, remarking: “You never forget making your first croissant.”
In 1963 he joined the Savoy Hotel in London as pastry chef, later working at the Princess Hotel in Bermuda and the George V in Paris. He was at the Homestead Resort in Hot Springs, Virginia, when he was poached for the White House by the Carters who, despite being peanut farmers, did not eat peanuts. His entertaining memoir, All the Presidents’ Pastries (2004), was followed by several recipe books.
Mesnier met Martha Whiteford, an American teacher, while in Bermuda and they were married in 1969. She died in January and he is survived by their son.