Top 10 Greatest Chefs to Have Ever Lived

Julia Carolyn Child was an American chef, author and television personality. She is recognized for bringing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and her subsequent television programs, the most notable of which was The French Chef.

François Massialot (Limoges 1660 — Paris 1733) was a French chef who served as chef de cuisine (officier de bouche) to various illustrious personages, including Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, the brother of Louis XIV, and his son Philippe II, Duke of Orléans. He’s best known for his Nouveau cuisinier royal et bourgeois where both meringues and crème brûlée made their first appearances in the book.

Alexis Bénoit Soyer (4 February 1810 – 5 August 1858) was a French celebrity chef who became the most celebrated cook in Victorian England. He also tried to alleviate suffering of the Irish poor in the Great Irish Famine (1845–1849), and contributed a penny for the relief of the poor for every copy sold of his pamphlet.

artolomeo Scappi was a famous Italian Renaissance chef. His origins had been the subject of speculation, but recent research shows that he came from the town of Dumenza in Lombardy, according to the inscription on a stone plaque in the church of Luino. He not only listed about 1,000 recipes for popular Renaissance-era dishes, he also described hundreds of cooking techniques and tools, shows the first published picture of a fork, and even declared Parmiggiano-Reggiano the finest cheese on earth.

Fernand Point was a French chef and restaurateur and is considered to be the father of modern French cuisine. He founded the French restaurant La Pyramide in Vienne near Lyon. He came from a family of cooks, and he influenced many brilliant chefs and the food that we eat today.

Georges Auguste Escoffier was a French chef, restaurateur and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods. Much of Escoffier's technique was based on that of Marie-Antoine Carême, one of the codifiers of French haute cuisine.

Marie Antoine (Antonin) Carême was a French chef and an early practitioner and exponent of the elaborate style of cooking known as grande cuisine, the "high art" of French cooking: a grandiose style of cookery favoured by both international royalty and by the newly rich of Paris.

Alice Louise Waters is an American chef, restaurateur, activist and author. She is the owner of Chez Panisse, a Berkeley, California restaurant famous for its organic, locally grown ingredients and for pioneering California cuisine, which she opened in 1971.

The Roux brothers are regarded as the godfathers of modern restaurant cuisine in the UK. They put Britain on the culinary map and raised standards across the board through their ground-breaking Michelin-starred restaurants, their TV series, their many books, and the unflagging training and encouragement they have provided to many of today’s top chefs.

Paul Bocuse, French chef and restaurateur known for introducing and championing a lighter style of cooking. Scion of a long line of restaurateurs, Bocuse apprenticed under several prominent chefs before taking over the family's failing hotel-restaurant