Marie-Antoine Carême, considered by many to be the father of French haute cuisine, is perhaps most famous for his sweets — he perfected the soufflé, invented the croquembouche and may have developed the modern wedding cake.
But was Carême as racy as he appears in the Apple TV+ series that drops on Wednesday? On the show, the master chef — who was born in 1784, died in 1833 and was known as Antonin Carême — is seen sharpening knives, seducing multiple women and selling secrets during the turbulence of Napoleonic France.
“Carême is, singularly, the most important individual figure in the birth of modern gastronomy,” said Ian Kelly, whose biography of the chef is the basis of the series. (A new edition is being released in the United States on May 27 as “Carême: The First Celebrity Chef.”)
Here’s a primer on Carême, who wrote cookbooks, served kings, defined pastry as an edible form of architecture and is widely seen to be one of the world’s first celebrity chefs.
Carême in the Kitchen
Carême is best known for his towering pastries — known as extraordinaires — which could be shaped into giant harps or fountains. Some, like the croquembouche, rose several feet high.
Carême thought “that food should be treated as a fine art — and being a chef is akin to being an artist, not an artisan,” said Mr. Kelly, who also helped write and create the series.
The chef also had a savory side. Carême was the first to codify mayonnaise as a sauce and is a father of what are now known as the mother sauces. Auguste Escoffier, another legend of French gastronomy, used Carême’s original classification to describe the five used today.
But Carême’s cookbooks were the real source of his wealth, and he was a pioneer in what Mr. Kelly called the “aspirational cookbook.” Alongside tales of banquets and illustrations of desserts, he was encouraging: “He does coin the phrase: ‘You can try this yourself at home.’”
Carême in the French State
Carême lived through France’s most turbulent period. He was born a few years before the French Revolution and survived the Reign of Terror, after the overthrow of the monarchy.
The Napoleonic Age shaped his adult life, both professionally and personally. Carême was noticed by Charles‐Maurice de Talleyrand‐Perigord, the top diplomat in France.
While Napoleon was unconvinced that “gastronomy could be an important part of diplomacy,” Mr. Kelly said, his top diplomat saw an opportunity in the young chef, seeing his talent as an important part of state building.
“Talleyrand was absolutely convinced that this was going to be one aspect of French soft power,” Mr. Kelly said, speaking of the country’s cuisine.
The series also suggests that Carême was a spy. Mr. Kelly said that was based on widespread rumors, but no official confirmation has been found. Still, one thing is certain: Carême had a front-stage seat to the fall of Napoleon.
The series tells of the fraught moment after the Russians had occupied Paris. A banquet would usually begin with a toast to the leader. But France had no ruler — or, at least, not a leader upon whom everyone could agree. So Czar Alexander I broke diplomatic protocol and toasted Carême, the chef of their meal, instead.
“He’s known as the king of chefs, and the chef of kings,” Mr. Kelly said.
Carême in His Later Years
Carême moved to England to cook for the British royal family, served in the royal kitchen of Alexander I of Russia and also cooked in Austria.
Then, the wealthy Rothschild family offered Carême a semiretirement near Paris after his health started failing — perhaps because of decades spent inhaling kitchen fumes, Mr. Kelly said.
“The Rothschilds break into Parisian high society — because they’re new money and they’re Jewish — through deliberating courting great artists, including Carême,” Mr. Kelly said.
As for Carême’s personal life? In the series, it’s steamy and tangled, with quite a lot of crossovers between cooking and lovemaking.
Mr. Kelly said that he married Henriette Sophy Mahy de Chitenay and was involved with another, Agatha Guichardet, whom he may have married. At his death at age 48, Carême appears to have fallen out with his daughter, Marie.
“When he died he was given a pauper’s funeral and an unmarked grave, and his only child destroyed everything,” Mr. Kelly said. “So we know something went terribly wrong, eventually, but we don’t know exactly what.”
