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Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Careme, the First Celebrity Chef
by Ian Kelly
Available from Amazon
$11.25
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Features
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Walker & Company August 25, 2005
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0802777317
ISBN-13: 978-0802777317
Product Dimensions:
8.4 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
Readers who enjoy being privy to the evocative details of a past era will devour this book, and foodies will have a field day with the engrossing story of a man who literally died for gastronomy. Carême (1783–1833) was born poor in Paris, and by his late 20s he was already Europe's most famous chef. He cooked for monarchs and noblemen, even baking Napoleon's wedding cake, and his fame dovetailed with the rising interest in gastronomy—what Kelly, a British actor who played a luncheon guest in Howard's End, calls "a cult in want of a priest." Luckily, Carême was also a prodigious author who recorded every major meal and became rich off his cookbooks. Kelly feasts on the wealth of source material; his fine book offers a recipe at the end of each chapter, plus more in an appendix. The scale of Carême's meals will astonish today's readers: he served literally hundreds or even thousands of elaborate dishes for throngs of guests. He'd cook for weeks on end without a break, and Kelly theorizes that he eventually died of "low-level carbon-monoxide poisoning after a lifetime of cooking over charcoal in confined spaces." Worse, this superchef was buried in an unmarked grave and no one attended his funeral (due to a cholera epidemic). But his work wasn't in vain—we can thank Carême for numerous culinary advances, including chef's toques, which he invented, and the course-by-course meal service we're accustomed to today. 18 color and 13 b&w illus.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From
Antonin Carême was the most illustrious chef of post-Revolution France—Napoleon, the Rothschilds, and Tsar Alexander all employed him—and he is still remembered as the father of modern French cuisine, the popularizer of the soufflé, and the designer of the iconic chef's hat. Kelly charts Carême's use of food as a tool of social leverage, although he perhaps takes the self-promoting chef too much at his own estimation when he attributes the rise of the Rothschilds to their decision to hire Carême. Many of Carême's recipes appear here, but Kelly suggests that his more lasting legacy is the public figure of the celebrity chef. In Carême's dining rooms, ostentation often trumped taste. His signature dishes were elaborate replicas of classical architecture in pastry and spun sugar, held together with gum and colored with spinach. They were not intended for consumption.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Careme, the First Celebrity Chef (Hardcover)
'Cooking for Kings' by Ian Kelly is a Biography with Recipes subtitled 'the Life of Antonin Careme, the First Celebrity Chef'. I suspect that since the 1820s in France did not have the great celebrity media of TV, press, and print of today, one can question whether Antonin Careme was in any way similar to Wolfgang Puck, Emeril Lagasse, and Mario Batali. But, this is probably just an academic quibble with a word in the title, as Careme is as important to the history of modern western (read French) culinary practice than any other figure you can mention, including Escoffier. The greatest delight in reading a book of this type, an interesting history of a period in your field of interest with which you may not be too familiar. There is a little surprise on every page, and a few really big ones. In retrospect, it is almost obvious that to become famous in the culinary field in Napoleonic France, one had to be a patisserie. There were no restaurants. In fact, the book repeats the claim that restaurants were invented by the French Revolution, as the guild system under the Bourbons prevented establishments from selling practically all kinds of food except soup. The Revolution, in seeking to overturn everything associated with the Royal regime, overturned that stricture as well. So, restaurant chefs were not exactly a dime a dozen in Napoleonic Paris. Almost all great chefs were employees of wealthy families, former nobility, or they were pastry chefs, as boulangerie and patisserie were much better established and patisserie offered a medium in which great talent can achieve expression. That is, the centerpieces of great banquets created largely out of sugar and baked shapes. This would make pastry specialists such as Jacques Torres and Ewald Notter the closest modern counterparts to Careme, as both Torres and Notter are leaders in the very specialized field of confectionery sculpture, one in chocolate and one in sugar. This also means that this practice which seems so 'new' on Food Network specials covering pastry competitions is actually very old, and much more widely popular than it is today. So, it was much easier for a patisserie specialist to come to the attention of the very food conscious politician Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord. Talleyrand is probably the third most important non-Royal politician in French history, following only Napoleon and Cardinal Richileau. As important as dining was to Talleyrand's political techniques, it is curious to read that culinary matters were of practically no importance to Talleyrand's boss, Napoleon. Talleyrand was Careme's first very important patron, the second being the very wealthy Rothchild family. Having such powerful patrons at an early stage in his career did not prevent Careme from suffering and ultimately dying from the occupational disease of cooks, especially cooks in great houses. That is, disorders of the lungs from breathing in smoke and carbon monoxide from charcoal fires in dark, poorly ventilated basement kitchens. The great irony here is that the architectural convention of placing large kitchens in the basement came from the great residential architect Palladio, a major hero in Careme's interest in architecture as an inspiration to his centerpiece constructions in sugar and pastry. One of Careme's most famous influences on gastronomy was the classification of mother sauces, but his subtle influence is much greater. Another little surprise in the telling of the times was the fact that the style of food service common in great French meals was quite unlike what we are used to today. The French style almost seemed like a 'family style' service where many dishes were placed on the table at once. The modern system plating moderately sized courses, delivered to the table one at a time was imported from Russia and was gaining in popularity in Paris after 1815. Careme was a great advocate of this method of service. Just a note here to suggest that you do not buy this book with the thought that you will actually make many of the recipes in this book. A fair number can be done, but many involve ingredients that are simply no longer available and many preparation techniques will try the patience of even the most devout foodie. They remind me again and again that much of older French cuisine is built on the premise of its clients having poor teeth. It abounds in purees, aspics, and mousses squeezing some of the most improbable things through coarse screens for hours. But, this is all part of the picture the author very successfully paints of haute cuisine in the time of Napoleon, even if the Emperor was not himself a gourmand. Highly recommended reading for anyone with an interest in culinary history.
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Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Careme, the First Celebrity Chef
by Ian Kelly
Available from Amazon
$11.25
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