Professor Butter Beard and Marie-Antonin Carême
“The fine arts are five in number, namely: painting, sculpture, poetry, music, and architecture, the principal branch of the latter being pastry.” ― Marie-Antonin Carême
I have been enamored with many celebrity chefs throughout this journey. It began with Edna Lewis, whose biscuits and fried chicken riveled my grandmother’s. Then Paul Prudhomme, Julia Child and James Beard initiated their competitive dance of “ring around the rosy” in my baker’s mind and soul. My academic psyche was stimulated by MFK Fisher, Harold McGee and Madeleine Kamman. And, yes, I have completely schoolgirl crushed out on Jamie Oliver, Tyler Florence and James Morton (thank you, British Bake Off).
But how did it take me sixty years to awkwardly begin to gingerly flirt with the original celebrity chef himself, Marie-Antonin Carême, the delicious bad-boy of Post-Revolution Paris, who tantalized the taste buds of the Romanovs, the Rothschilds, Rossini and even made Napoleon’s wedding cake? I am a tad late to the party, but, oh dear Antonin, you have finally captured my full attention.
Marie-Antoine Carême, known throughout his life as Antonin Carême, was born in Paris in either 1783 or 1784 (there are conflicting biographies). His father was a construction worker, and the family lived in what Carême's biographers Philippe Alexandre and Béatrix de l'Aulnoit call a “baraque” – a shack – in what was then the poorest section of Paris, near the rue du Bac and the rue de Sèvres. The French Revolution, starting in 1789, brought large-scale building work in Paris to a temporary halt, leaving Carême's father struggling to feed the quickly growing family.
We do better know the next phase of the story. In 1790, Carême’s father apprenticed his young son, (or abandoned him) to work for a baker in the rue Saint-Honoré, known as Père Ducrest. Carême's first assignment was to scurry through the streets delivering his employer's wares (and reportedly flirting with anything that breathed) before returning in the evening to Ducrest's kitchen, where he slept under the baker’s tables. Over time, the relationship broadened and Decrest “adopted” the lad as his own – his personal baker’s assistant and protégé.
Carême's history is more reliably documented from 1798, when he began an apprenticeship at Sylvain Bailly's patisserie-restaurant-hotel in the rue Vivienne. This was a gift from Buddha, in career terms, as in post-revolutionary Paris, patisserie was the most prestigious branch of the culinary arts. As an apprentice pastry-cook, Carême began as a “tourier,” or turner, working the dough and repeatedly folding and rolling it to achieve the perfect puff pastry. He gained outstanding skill at this and later put it to use in two confections with which he became particularly well associated: the vol-au-vent and mille-feuille (as both savory and sweet).
He later wrote, “Egypt, Greece and Italy inspired me with a taste for architecture; but my financial means prevented me from devoting myself to that fine career. I had to repress this noble wish, without ceasing to admire what antiquity has produced, wonderful in its masculine and imposing architecture.”
His spun-sugar constructions, featuring Greek columns and temples, Chinese pagodas and Egyptian pyramids, attracted widespread attention and approbation. From 1803 to 1814 Carême worked as chef-pâtissier in the kitchens of Talleyrand at the Hôtel de Galliffet, under the head chef, Boucher. He continued to learn about the arts of cookery in general and was engaged to cater for special events such as the festivities for the marriage of Jérôme Bonaparte to Catharina of Württemberg in 1807, and of that of Napoleon to Marie-Louise of Austria in 1810.
In 1815, Carême published his first books. “Le Pâtissier royal parisien” was an illustrated two-volume compilation of recipes for a skilled pastry-cook. “Le Pâtissier pittoresque” followed, focusing on “piéces montées,” with over 100 of Carême's drawings of designs.
With the Restoration, Carême became famous throughout all Europe during the negotiations of the Congress of Vienna, at the end of which, in addition to creating a new map of Europe, a new taste in high society was also generated. He worked in London in the service of George IV and in Russia for Tsar Alexander I. He then returned to Paris as “Executive Pastry Chef” for James Mayer Rothschild. He died in Germany at the age of 48, reportedly of lung cancer due to a lifetime of smoke exposure from cooking directly over a charcoal fire.
Carême is credited with the invention of the tall chef's hat (or Toque Blanche) and the reclassification of sauces into groups starting from the four mother sauces (béchamel, Spanish, velvety, tomato). He is also credited with the “revolution” of the Russian service, that is, very similar to the service as we know it today, as opposed to the French service which provided all the dishes at the table at the same time. And, in recent years, it has been speculated that to make ends meet in highly competitive culinary circles, our “bad-boy” made a few extra bucks by expertly spying for whomever paid the top dollar.
As a means of quieting King Lear’s growingly insane ranting in my head, I treated myself last evening to the first episodes of Apple TV’s adaptation of Ian Kelly’s biography of Carême. Obviously, our young pastry chef protégé is currently being portrayed as unconceivably sexy and furry, with dancing eyes more tempting than caramelized bacon, but he did seduce me into the kitchen this morning to bake a new variation of my French Madeleines for my farmer friends – this time with fresh sweet cherries and toasted almond flour and slivers.
I close this week with another enlightened quote from our gifted French culinary connoisseur: “When we no longer have good cooking in the world, we will have no literature, nor high and sharp intelligence, nor friendly gatherings, no social harmony.”
Thank you, Chef.
Madeleines aux Cerises Fraîches et aux Amandes
48 Madeleines – using two Madeleine baking trays
1 cup almond slices, toasted in a cast iron pan and cooled
1 ½ cup fresh cherries, pitted and coarsely chopped
13 Tbsp unsalted butter – plus 3 Tbsp more to prep the madeleine trays
2 Tbsp honey
4 Tbsp almond flour, toasted in a cast iron pan and cooled
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp fine sea salt
½ tsp ground allspice
½ cup granulated sugar
Zest of one lime
4 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla paste
Confectioner’s sugar to finish
1) Pit the cherries, coarsely chop and set in a small strainer to drain off the excess juice. Toast the almond slices in a cast iron pan until golden and aromatic, shaking often. Pour into a small bowl to cool. Toast the almond flour in the same pan, stirring often, until slightly darkened and aromatic. Pour the toasted almond flour into a medium bowl to cool.
2) Place the 13 Tbsp of butter and 2 Tbsp of honey in a small saucepan over low heat until the butter has melted. Stir to combine, remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.
3) In the medium bowl with the almond flour, whisk in the flour, baking powder, ground allspice and salt. Have at the ready.
4) Place the sugar and lime zest in a food processor and process until aromatic and combined. Add the eggs and vanilla paste. Process until combined (about 20-30 seconds) Add the flour mixture and pulse a few times to combine. With the processor running, slowly pour in the cooled butter/honey. Scrape the batter into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rest in the refrigerator for one hour.
5) Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Melt the remaining 3 Tbsp of butter and use to brush the madeleines trays. Chill the buttered trays while the oven heats.
6) Fold the toasted almond slices and the drained cherries into the chilled batter.
7) Portion the batter into the individual madeleine wells – 3/4 full. Bake one tray at a time for roughly 10 minutes until the “humps” are just solid. Remove from the oven and let sit 3-5 minutes before turning the cakes out onto a cooling rack. Make sure to wipe the first pan and re-butter before baking the third tray.
8) While still warm, dust the shell-side tops of the madeleines with confectioner’s sugar.
