Cooking for kings : the life of Antonin Carême, the first celebrity chef / Ian Kelly.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kelly, Ian, 1966-

Contributor:

Nick Malgieri Culinary Archive and Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Culinary Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Carême, M. A. (Marie Antonin), 1784-1833.

Carême, M. A.

Cooks--Biography.

Cooks.

Genre:

Biographies.

Cookbooks.

Penn Provenance:

Malgieri, Nick (donor) (Malgieri Collection copy)

Physical Description:

301 pages, 3 unnumbered pages : illustrations (some color), portraits (some color), plan ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Walker & Company, [2004]

Summary:

A unique feast of biography and Regency cookbook, Cooking for Kings takes readers on a culinary tour of the palaces of Britain and Europe in the ultimate age of gastronomic indulgence, when, for the first time, chefs became celebrities and the modern restaurant was born. Drawing on the legendary cook's rich memoirs, Ian Kelly traces Antonin Careme's meteoric rise from a child abandoned on the streets of revolutionary Paris to international celebrity and provides a dramatic below-stairs perspective on one of the most momentous, and sensuous, periods in European history -- First Empire Paris, Georgian England, and the Russia of War and Peace -- when emperors, kings, and princes wielded Careme's gastronomy as a diplomatic tool.

Careme was much more than the inventor of the chef's hat, the vol-au-vent, and the souffle. He had an unfailing ability to cook for the right people in the right place at the right time. He knew the foibles and the favorite dishes of the Romanovs, the Rothschilds, and Rossini. He worked for the gourmet-king George IV, the Viennese court, and even made Napoleon's wedding cake. But Careme's reputation rested ultimately on a novel idea that changed cooking forever: by marrying food and glamour in his books -- which transported readers to the tables of the famous households for whom he cooked -- he was the first chef to become rich and famous by publishing cookbooks. Careme's recipes still grace the tables of restaurants the world over. Now classics of French cuisine, created for, and named after, the kings and queens for whom he worked, they are featured throughout this captivating biography. In the phrase first coined by Careme, "You can try them yourself."

Contents:

1 A Feast for Epicures

2 Pastry Boy

3 Breakfast at Talleyrand's

4 Gastronomy: A cult in want of a priest

5 Château Valencay: A year in the Loire

6 Napoleon's wedding cake

7 The Russians in Paris

8 The cook, his book, his wife and his lover

9 The Brighton Pavilion

10 Viennoiserie

11 The Winter Palace

12 'Right good judges and right good stuffers'

13 Chateau Rothschild

14 Last Orders

From the Recipe Books of Antonin Careme 227.

Notes:

"First published in England in 2003 by Short Books; published in the United States of America in 2004 by Walker Publishing Company, Inc."

"Book design by Georgia Vaux."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 278-283) and index.

Local Notes:

Nick Malgieri Culinary Archive and Library copy presented to the Penn Libraries in 2015 by Nick Malgieri.

Malgieri Collection copy: dust jacket retained.

ISBN:

0802714366

9780802714367

OCLC:

54500752

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description