Kelly - Cooking for Kings: the Life of Antonin Carîme, the First Celebrity Chef

"A tale of intricate recipe development, political intrigue, and brutish working conditions."Entertainment Weekly

"Ian Kelly has done a wonderful job, not only depicting Carme's culinary genius beautifully but introducing us to his extraordinary personal life as well. I enjoyed reading this book immensely and recommend it to culinary historians and food buffs everywhere."Daniel Boulud

"Antonin Carme, the chef of chefs, was a legend in his own time and as artful a publicist as any of today's celebrity cooks. His story is a natural for an epic tale and Ian Kelly brings Carme's restless spirit back to life along with a tableau of la grande cuisine 200 years ago."Anne Willan, founder of Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne

"Ian Kelly's valuable and pleasurable addition to the literature of food combines an eye for the richness of historic detail with a solid sense of culinary crafts. While stimulating our palates, it breathes life into a critical period in the building of modern Europe."Mark Kurlansky, author of Salt and Cod

COOKING FOR KINGS

First published in England in 2003 by Short Books;

published in the United States of America in 2004 by

Walker Publishing Company, Inc.

This paperback edition published in 2005

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Walker & Company, 104 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011.

Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Kelly, Ian, 1966

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

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-802-71932-4

1. Carme, M.A. (Marie Antonin), 1784-1833 Biography.

2. Cooks. I. Title.

TX649.C37K44 2004.

641.5'092dc22

[B]

2004041900

Book design by Georgia Vaux

Visit Walker & Company's Web site at www.walkerbooks.com

All papers used by Bloomsbury Publishing are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

Printed in the United States of America

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

for Claire

CONTENTS

Marie Antoine (Antonin) Carme, 1783-1833, painted by Charles Steuben. The only known likeness in oils.

~

6 July 1829. Twelve hours earlier. A slight, ashen-faced man, looking older than his 45 years, breathed with difficulty in the early-morning Paris fug. His doctors, Broussai and Roque, were in disagreement about his ailment. But Antonin Carme knew. He had seen the same in older colleagues and friends; he was slowly dying from the poisonous fumes of a lifetime of cooking over charcoal.

With his weakening left arm, Antonin pulled himself into his carriage, which then followed the same route that Lady Morgan's would take later that day: by Napoleon's half-finished Arc de Triomphe, which Antonin had watched being built, and out on the new road to Boulogne-sur-Seine. Perhaps the air cleared a little as he left Paris behind, and his mind turned to the day's business: a formal dinner-party for the Rothschilds in the orangery of their country Chteau.

For a man who had once fed 10,000 people on the Champs-Elyses, this was small potatoes. Even so, work had begun the day before at the rue Saint Roch. Crayfish and brill, eel, cod and sea bass, quails, chickens, rabbits, pigeons, beef and lamb had been ordered from the Paris markets around Les Halles ~ where Carme was a celebrated regular ~ along with specified offals: calves' udders, cocks'-combs and testicles, and the best Mocha coffee and truffles. Isinglass (fish gelatine) and veal stocks had been prepared, cream supplied locally, and the Chteau's ice-house restocked in expectation of Carme's arrival. The vegetables and fruit for the menu would be supplied from the Rothschild gardens. Antonin had also already begun work, with his young assistant Monsieur Jay, on the sugar-paste foundations of a table-length confection in the form of a Grecian temple, the Sultane la Colonne.