Marie-Antoine Carême (; 8 June 1783 or 178412 January 1833), known as Antonin Carême, was a leading French chef of the early 19th century.
Carême was born in Paris to a poor family and, when still a child, worked in a cheap restaurant. Later he became an apprentice to a leading Parisian pâtissier and quickly became known for his patisserie skills. He was deeply interested in architecture and was famous for his large pièces montéestable decorations sculpted in sugar, depicting classical buildings.
Working with leading chefs of the day, Carême extended his knowledge to cover all aspects of cooking, and became head chef to prominent people including Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Tsar Alexander I of Russia and the Prince Regent in Britain. He codified and to some extent simplified classical French cookery, insisted on the finest and most expensive ingredients, and was regarded as the foremost chef of his day.
Carême wrote a series of books, lavishly illustrated, intended to pass his skills on to other chefs providing grande cuisine for the elite of French, and other, society. His influence continued after his death; his approach was continued by Jules Gouffé, Urbain Dubois and Émile Bernard, reinvigorated by Auguste Escoffier and continued until it was overtaken by nouvelle cuisine in the second half of the 20th century.
Life and career
Early years
Marie-Antoine Carême, known throughout his life as Antonin Carême, was born in Paris. The date of his birth cannot be authenticated and is disputed. The day and month are generally accepted as 8 June and the year as either 1783 or 1784. He was one of the many children of Marie-Jeanne Pascal and Jean-Gilbert Carême. The French Revolution, starting in 1789, brought large-scale building work in Paris to a temporary halt, leaving Carême's father struggling to feed the family. Carême went to work at an early age at a Parisian gargotethe most basic and modest kind of restaurantthought to have been called .|group=n In the words of a biographer who accepts this version of events:
Bailly was conscious of the need to innovate and attract new customs. He wanted eye-catching pièces montéeselaborate displays of patisseriein his windows. Sculpting in sugar paste had been well known in the Ancien Régime but had become neglected after the revolution. Carême helped to revive the art, creating croquembouches and extravagant showpieces based on the ancient architecture he had studied in the library. He is credited with saying, later, "The fine arts are five in number: music, painting, sculpture, poetry and architectureof which the principal branch is confectionery". His enthusiasm, then and later in his career, sometimes led him to conflate in a single pièce montée details from several widely differing architectural eras and styles. In 1803 he opened his own shop in the rue de la Paix, trading there for a decade. They had no children, although Carême later had a daughter, Marie, with another woman, Agatha Guichardet.
In addition to his skills as a pastry-cook, Carême became expert in the other branches of cookery. He was influenced by earlier cooks and food writers, and studied Vincent La Chapelle's Le cuisinier moderne (1736), Joseph Menon's Soupers de la cour (1758) and Lémery's Traité des alimens (1792). He worked for or alongside leading Parisian chefs; he later wrote:
From 1803 to 1814 Carême worked as chef-pâtissier in the kitchens of Talleyrand at the Hôtel de Galliffet, under the head chef, Boucher. He continued to learn about the arts of cookery in general, and was engaged to cater for special events such as the festivities for the marriage of Jérôme Bonaparte to Catharina of Württemberg (1807) and of that of Napoleon to Marie-Louise of Austria (1810). Although of an age liable for conscription into the army, Carême was not called up; Talleyrand may have secured an exemption for him, but that is not certain.
Professional pinnacle
After the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, the British and Russians occupied Paris. Talleyrand, anxious to be on friendly terms with the allies, invited Tsar Alexander I to stay with him and tasked Carême with delighting his guest with a continual series of fine meals. According to the biographer Marie-Pierre Rey, "Talleyrand's generous hospitality undoubtedly had positive effects on the tsar's mood and the magnanimity that he showed to the French state".
"Pavillon athénien" from Carême's Le Pâtissier pittoresque, 1815|thumb|left|alt=line drawing of table decoration in a shape based on an ancient Greek construction
After staying with Talleyrand for some weeks, the tsar took up residence in the Élysée Palace, and requested that Carême should be his head chef there during his stay. The biographer Georges Bernier (fr) writes that this appointment put Carême at the pinnacle of his profession. Already a renowned pastry-cook, he had risen further, to be chef de cuisine to the most powerful man in Europe, reflecting his employer's status with suitable culinary magnificence. The following year, after Napoleon's brief return and final defeat at Waterloo, Alexander returned to Paris, and again secured Carême's services.
When the tsar assembled his troops for a grand review at Châlons-sur-Marne, Carême had to provide three banquets for 300 people each, despite enormous logistical difficulties. There were few supplies available locally and food, wines, linens, glassware and even herds of cattle and flocks of sheep had to be transported from Paris, over away. In addition, Carême had to cope with the tsar's preference for Russian servicea succession of individual coursesrather than the traditional French service, in which numerous dishes were set out on the table on hot plates and kept under cloches to keep warm.
In 1815 Carême published his first books. Le Pâtissier royal parisien was an illustrated two-volume compilation of recipes for a skilled pastry-cook. Le Pâtissier pittoresque focused on piéces montées, with over 100 of Carême's drawings of designs, together with what the food writer Barbara Wheaton calls "more or less sketchy instructions" for executing them. He hated the English weather, particularly the fogs, which exacerbated the respiratory problems he had after years of working in smoky kitchens. He returned to France in late 1817 with no firm plans for his immediate future.
St Petersburg, Paris and Vienna
Tsar Alexander returned to Paris in 1818, en route to an international congress at Aix-la-Chapelle. Carême's friend Muller, comptroller of the tsar's household (and dedicatee of Le Pâtissier pittoresque), convinced Alexander that having Carême cook for the Russian delegation would enhance its standing, and approached him with the proposal that he should work for the tsar at Aix and then travel with him to Russia. Carême agreed to go to Aix, with a handsome salary and lavish budget, but declined to go on to Russia.
Carême was chef to (clockwise from top left) [[Alexander I of Russia|Tsar Alexander I, the Prince Regent, Lord Stewart and Princess Bagration, among others.|thumb|alt=head and shoulders portraits of three early 19th-century men and one woman, all white and fairly young]]
After briefly working in Austria and England for Lord Stewart, the British ambassador to Vienna, Carême decided to take up the tsar's offer,