Careme Let's Them Eat Cake

Marie Antoine Careme greatly influenced the Grand Cuisine.  He is one of the most important French chefs of all time.  Careme is named for Marie Antoinette and was orphaned during the French Revolution. As the legend goes, he was rescued by a pastry chef at ten in the streets of Paris. He then began a cooking apprenticeship. Careme is first and foremost a pastry chef by training.

He was considered arrogant by many of his contemporaries, but cooked for the nobles and aristocracy all over Europe. This included Duc de Talleyrand, Napoleon, Czar Nicholas the II in St. Petersburg, and the Prince Regent in England around 1815. His kitchen at the Brighton House in London was state of the art for the time and had some of the first steam tables to ever exist.

He documented much of his life’s work publishing nearly thirty cookbooks. He studied Palladian architecture and took drafting lessons to draw and document a lot of his elaborate displays and cakes. Some of his works include Le Maitre d’hotel Francais, Le Cuisinier Parisien, and L’ Art de la Cuisine. The irony of an orphaned boy cooking for the aristocracy really "let them eat cake," and, this phrase is often credited to Marie Antoinette, by was actually said by Rousseau in his Confessions. 

He is accredited for pioneering such techniques as the piping bag, spinning sugar, and meringue. He developed the mother sauces, introduced the chef’s hat, and brought Russian service to France. At a Napoleonic banquet at Vertus, he invented the canapé.

For a great in depth look at the life of Antoine Careme, check out Ian Kelly’s book Cooking for Kings. Click Here for Ian Kelly's site