“The fine arts are five in number: painting, music, poetry, sculpture, and architecture – whereof the principal branch is confectionery.” It’s a bold point of view, even for a patissier. But Antonin Carême, personal chef to the rich and powerful of early 19th-century imperial France, was nothing if not ambitious.
Born on 8 June 1783 into extreme poverty – sources disagree as to whether he was one of 15 or 25 children – he started work in the kitchen of a local tavern. By 1804 he was working for Talleyrand, France’s leading statesman; in 1810 he organised the banquet for Napoleon’s marriage to Marie-Louise of Austria. Later patrons included Tsar Alexander I and the Prince Regent. Perhaps he can be forgiven the odd grandiloquent comparison between the fame of his meals and those taken by Achilles in his tent outside Troy, or by Alexander at Persepolis, or Mark Antony with Cleopatra.
Alongside numerous books of recipes, he did in fact produce two books of architectural designs for Paris and St Petersburg. “The professors,” he wrote airily in the preface to the former, “will no doubt find inaccuracies in… these projects; I resign myself in advance to their criticism.” But his sadly unrealised plans for those cities are arguably less remarkable than the spectacular constructions that fill pages of his cookery books: the ruins of Palmyra, a Turkish pavilion, a Venetian gondola, nothing was beyond his ambition. The intersection of confectionery and architecture was a life-long concern: “A pastry cook of the present day should possess somewhat of the skill of the architect… [and] should at least be acquainted with the details of the five orders of architecture”.
He died in 1833 in the service of James de Rothschild. One theory is that carbon monoxide poisoning, working slowly, after decades in poorly ventilated charcoal-burning kitchens, killed him.
Carême said his legacy was in the patisseries of Paris. “Nothing like it existed before me and my books,” he said.
This is an extended version of a piece that first appeared in the June 2023 issue of History Today.
Like this? You can read more of Mathew’s History Today Months Past pieces here.
Mathew Lyons 
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