Frenchman Roland Meunier, pastry chef for five US presidents, has died at the age of 78 in the US, his family said.

Meunier died Friday in Virginia from cancer, his son Georges and older sister Genevieve Guillère Meunier said.

He was born in Bonn, a small village near Besançon, into a poor family with nine children. In 1979, Rosalynn, wife of President Jimmy Carter, hired him to the White House.

“I have very fond memories of Chef Meunier. He loved to make people smile with his wonderful creations such as his famous Christmas gingerbread houses. We will miss him,” another former First Lady Hillary Clinton tweeted, posting a photo of herself with Mesnier.

“We are saddened by the news of the passing of Roland Meunier, who served 26 years as White House Chef to five Presidents and 25 of them as Pastry Chef. His passion, his love for his work will remain in our memory,” the Ronald Reagan Foundation said in a statement.

Mesnier, who became an American citizen, left the White House in 2004. Since his retirement, he has written books and talked about his experiences in the White House. In an interview aired in 2013, he said that Rosalynn Carter asked him what he was going to cook in the kitchen at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue if he was hired.

He replied that a lot of low-calorie sweets, explaining that “Mrs. Carter was a very beautiful woman, very thin, and so I thought it was a trick question.” But he seemed to give the right answer when she turned to her secretary and said, “I want it as soon as possible.”

Mesnier was not shy about telling jokes about presidents and their families: George W. Bush. Bush loved walnut and pecan ice cream and was “the most impatient man I ever met.” Mrs. Reagan was a “perfectionist.” Bill Clinton was allergic “to sugar, flour and chocolate”, but at the same time he was very gluttonous, and for this the chef was forced to create new recipes, without controversial ingredients.

And although he said he admired the Carters immensely, one of their favorite recipes, which he had to cook at all the big dinner parties, horrified him. For this dessert, “I had to use the stickiest cheeses I could find, blend them, add anchovies and other things, and then assemble them into a wreath (…) and put strawberry jam in the middle,” he said. “The funny thing is that Mrs. Carter was always trying to find out if this thing was on the table. So it was, but no one ever touched it. So we put it back in the freezer and brought it to every buffet. I think the same dish stood for four years.”