Nicknamed "the king of chefs and the chef of kings," Antonin Carême was a trailblazer in more ways than one — as the forthcoming eponymous Apple TV+ series is sure to show. Born just six years before the French Revolution, in 1783, Carême loomed large in his 49 years, inventing the chef's toque (hat), the pastry bag, and the very idea of serving a meal in courses. And that's just the beginning.
"Carême created, revisited, and codified more than 2,000 recipes," explains historian Marie-Pierre Rey, author of the 2024 biography "Le premier des chefs, l'exceptionnel destin d'Antonin Carême." These included some of France's most famous pastries, from the éclair to the flaky millefeuille to the croquembouche (a tower of cream puffs held together with caramel and frequently served as a French wedding cake).
Fans of the show are in luck: Carême left a delicious legacy behind. Visitors to Paris can easily take in some of the gorgeous backdrops used during the filming of the series, and of course, countless pastry shops still bear the imprint of his influence.
Who Was Antonin Carême?
Legend has it that Carême, the youngest of a large brood, was abandoned or orphaned, though for Rey, these claims are patently untrue. That said, his early pastry prowess is far from an exaggeration. After an apprenticeship on Paris' rue Vivienne, near the illustrious Palais-Royal, Carême opened his own pastry shop at age 19 on the ritzy rue de la Paix. He quickly stood out with his innovative approach to pastry arts.
Some of his inventions were simple, like biscuits à cuillère (ladyfingers) or lighter-than-air gâteau de Savoie (a type of sponge cake). Other creations were more fanciful, including what has since become a French staple: the éclair. This choux pastry finger filled with pastry cream (a custard-like filling made with milk, eggs, sugar, and flour) and glazed with icing can now be found in nearly every Parisian pâtisserie, most often flavored either with coffee or chocolate, the latter another pioneering development of Carême's. The French, after all, first fell in love with cocoa in the form of drinking chocolate. For Jamie Schler, the author of the Substack "Life's a Feast," Carême was one of the first to use it in such a wide range of confections. "He took chocolate and ran with it," she says.
Carême's Pastry Legacy
In his 9th arrondissement shop, Stéphane Louvard is an innovator in his own right as the inventor of the world's first crookie. His éclairs are a marriage of tradition and creativity. He eschews the lighter crémeux most of his colleagues now use in place of traditional pastry cream, noting that the more modern recipe, made with a ganache stabilized with cooked custard, is beloved above all by chefs because it takes better to freezing. But Louvard bucks tradition when it comes to the choux pastry itself, infusing it with either single-origin chocolate or house-made organic coffee extract for bolder, more intense flavors.
Much like Louvard, a lot of Carême's innovative energy was dedicated towards revisiting preexisting classics.
"Carême didn't so much invent pastries as he elevated and refined them," explains Schler, "taking simple things, from choux and éclairs to rice pudding or bread pudding, and turning them into elaborate, sophisticated, often theatrical pastries and desserts."
These include the charlotte, a British dessert that was originally made with slices of buttered bread filled with fruit and served warm. Carême's chilled version took advantage of his own ladyfingers to render the dessert more delicate. Today, charlottes are typically flavored either with chocolate, as at Hugo & Victor in Paris' 7th arrondissement, or strawberry, a fine dining form of which can be enjoyed at palace hotel Le Bristol.
Carême's Architectural Sensibility
The charlotte is a great example of perhaps Carême's most pervasive pastry philosophy: the idea that pastry was the principal branch of the fine art of architecture. This philosophy is on clear display in creations like the "thousand-sheet" millefeuille, made with layers of laminated puff pastry and vanilla-scented cream. Today, Carl Marletti makes one of Paris' best, eliminating the distracting, sickly-sweet royal icing glaze in favor of deeply-burnished pastry and a cream seasoned with Madagascar vanilla.
Carême's most architectural pastries were undoubtedly his pièces montées, elaborate edible creations made of multiple components, from sugar to almond paste to pastry itself. "He used éclairs, meringues, and other cookies as architectural building blocks to create huge fantasy desserts," explains Schler.
For Jessica Préalpato, the 2019 World's Best Pastry Chef, one can clearly see the inheritance of this architectural approach in contemporary pastry contests, where nougatine creations and sculpted pastries are the mot d'ordre.
"You need to think about the weight, the height, the shapes," she says. "Otherwise, the structure and the foundations won't be stable, and the structure risks falling apart."
That said, for Préalpato, contemporary pâtissiers have shifted slightly from this approach.
"Desserts today are (in great majority) less structured than a few years ago," says the pastry chef, whose own plated desserts captivate diners at Paris' palace Hotel San Regis. But some do still take inspiration from Carême's majestic croquembouches. Laurent Duchêne builds his own versions in the shape of Eiffel Towers or airplanes. And an architectural mindset certainly motivates Christophe Michalak, who originally set his sights on becoming an architect before devoting himself to the trompe l'oeil pastries that reign in his Parisian boutiques.
Carême's Savory Food Legacy
Carême's culinary contributions were far from limited to sweets alone, as evidenced by his time cooking for Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, a prominent diplomat under Napoleon Bonaparte. It was in spring of 1814, Rey recounts, that Carême was called to Talleyrand's home at 2, rue Saint-Florentin — a majestic private mansion in the 1st arrondissement now owned by the American Embassy — to cook for Alexander I, Tsar of Russia. Carême rose to the challenge.
"Not only did Carême succeed in internationalizing the culinary prestige of France," explains Rey, "but he was able to put the Russian sovereign in a good mood, the effects of which could be seen in the generous dispositions in the peace treaty of May 1814. It was a key moment as much for French gastronomy as for its diplomacy."
And the proof is in the proverbial pudding. One year later, Carême was requisitioned by the tsar to organize three prestigious banquets for 300 officers in Champagne — a region that had been devastated by the war and lacked everything. "Carême succeeded with a prowess as gustative as it was logistic," she explains, "and that's another great moment of his existence."
Over the course of the next 10 years, Carême would frequently cook for Talleyrand's guests at the Château de Valençay, one of many Renaissance châteaux that still dot the Loire Valley. Here, Schler says, "He brought the science and the elegance of pastry to cooking." And here, visitors can still descend into the basement of the castle's western wing via the service stairs, following the long servants' corridor to the very kitchens where Carême would have prepared his masterpieces.
Carême's savory legacy, according to Rey, includes dishes like lièvre à la royale, a preparation of hare in a red wine sauce gilded with truffle and foie gras. Wholly dependent on the availability of wild game and wild black truffles, it appears frequently on the autumn menus of top restaurants like that of Benjamin Schmitt, who evokes Carême as his chief inspiration for the dish. Carême united his pastry prowess with his savory inspiration in dishes like the vol-au-vent, a tower of puff pastry filled with meat, seafood, or mushrooms. An exquisite one is on offer at Paris' Café des Ministères, where buttery pastry is lined with spinach before being filled with a tumble of creamy chicken and sweetbread stew.
From the kitchens of Talleyrand, Carême spread his wings for England, where he directed the kitchens of the Prince of Wales, the future King George IV, before heading to Vienna to cook for Francis I, Emperor of Austria. Throughout his travels, he continued to champion a surprising modernity, according to Rey. In addition to his recipes, cooks today owe him a number of "innovative principles," from the importance of beautiful tableware to the idea of balance and moderation as well as the superiority of local, seasonal ingredients
How to Experience the Carême TV Series' Filming Locations
In 1833, after years of inhaling the toxic fumes from the coal over which he cooked, Carême died in Paris at just 49 years of age. He is buried in the picturesque Montmartre Cemetery, a final resting place he shares with author Emile Zola and filmmaker François Truffaut. Carême's skull, meanwhile, is housed in Paris' Natural History Museum.
Carême's legacy looms large still today, rendering the Apple TV+ series about his life perhaps the most logical conclusion. The series, which stars Benjamin Voisin in the titular role, took full advantage of France's rich architectural heritage. Historic backdrops include the Château de Champs-sur-Marne, a castle in the classical style constructed at the turn of the 18th century just outside of Paris and reachable by suburban rail line RER A. The crew also filmed in the stunning town of Compiègne 85 kilometers (about 53 miles) outside of Paris, which boasts 30 protected historical monuments, including the château, 19th-century town hall, and neoclassical opera building.
But both Rey and Schler are reserved about the series' potential inaccuracies. Rey, who was not consulted on the screenplay, notes that she has already identified a number of errors from previews. "He wasn't a spy in service of Talleyrand," he says, "and he wouldn't go to Vienna until 1821, long after the fall of the Empire. Though it was during this visit that he invented the toque."
The racy vibe of the show, she continues, is pure invention. "He wasn't a great seductor or an unbridled lover," she says. "His exhausting and stressful 14- to 16-hour workdays wouldn't have given him any availability in this vein!"
Schler admits she isn't sure she'll watch the show, fearing that Carême's true character may not shine through.
"I love reading his cookbooks because they are so full of his personality and self-importance," says Schler. "He doesn't hide his own very high regards for himself and his talents (rightly so, I have to add); and if one pays close attention, the snark and subtly abrasive jabs aimed at other chefs, the classe bourgeoise, the British, and a whole lot of others is brilliantly witty."
But regardless of any factual errors, Rey is excited to give it a go. "I'm glad that a series will increase awareness of this genius cook and the extraordinary period (the First Empire) during which he hoisted himself to the summit of his art and his international notoriety."
Whether viewers are enticed by the fictional storyline or the historical figure, one thing's for sure: A visit to Paris is a particularly delicious way to bring the show to life.