Of the trinity said to have founded modern cuisine in post-Revolutionary Paris—Brillat-Savarin, De la Reyniere and Careme—only one cooked,” wrote Ian Kelly in “Cooking for Kings: The Life of the First Celebrity Chef” (2003, Walker Publishing Co.)
That was the line I used in my talk on food writing, at the Philippine Readers and Writers Festival of National Book Store held recently at the Fairmont Hotel, to highlight the value of food writers. Because, while Careme cooked, Brillat-Savarin and De la Reyniere were food writers. And all three were important in documenting French cuisine during that 19th-century period.
First celebrity chef
In the 21st century, are food writers as relevant as those who work in the kitchens?
If you are a serious student of culinary arts, then Marie-Antonin Careme should be someone you have heard of, read about or studied. Kelly, who wrote Careme’s biography, enumerated what French cuisine and even world cookery owes to this man who rose from cook helper to become the “first celebrity chef.”
He reduced the hundreds of French sauces into four basic ones—veloute, bechamel, alamande and espagnol. Kelly wrote that Careme “introduced into the mainstream… the souffle, the vol-au-vent and the piped meringue.” He established order in the kitchen to give military precision to service, and advocated hygiene. He always used the freshest ingredients and seasonal produce.
Chefs still wear the toque, a cap he originally designed. He was the master of “grande cuisine” or, as we know it now, haute cuisine, having cooked for royalty such as France’s Louis XVI and XVIII, the British Prince Regent George, Napoleon Bonaparte, the Russian tsar and famous personalities of the time like the diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand and the wealthy banker James Mayer Rothschild.
Elaborate centerpieces
When we talk of haute cuisine, that includes the table settings that Careme created, like his elaborate centerpieces of fruits, pastries and pulled sugar sculptures. His pastry creations were what attracted many of the famous men he worked for to seek him out and offer him to be head chef in their kitchens.
And unlike Francois Vatel, a 17th-century majordomo who was known for orchestrating extravagant banquets using theatrical methods and who killed himself when he thought his order of fish didn’t arrive, Careme was less dramatic about disappointments. He died of an ailment due to years of inhaling charcoal fumes in old kitchens with bad ventilation systems.
A chef’s cooking lasts only while his food is being consumed. But why does Careme’s work live on? Because of his writings. Careme documented not only recipes, but also his menus and table settings in books like “Le Pâtissier Royal Parisien,” “Le Maître d’Hôtel Français” and “L’Art de la Cuisine Française.” The latter was supposed to have been five volumes, but Careme finished just four though the series was eventually completed by one of Careme’s chef friends from his notes.
His books contain his own drawings of his table settings and centerpieces; he studied architectural art and even published books about the subject with his renderings. Chefs today have detailed examples in words and visuals of 19th-century French cuisine from a chef extraordinaire, allowing them to reproduce recipes from the era.
Gastronomic writing
Jeanne Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, meanwhile, was a lawyer by profession and a practitioner of what was then known as gastronomic writing. His writings were on the pleasures of the table, and he appreciated simple cooking if executed with artistry. He is said to be an early advocate of low-carb eating.
Very few people have read his “Physiologie du Goût (The Physiology of Taste),” myself included, even if it was translated to English by the eminent American food writer M.F.K. Fisher, who said it was an honor to do that work.
Most of us know only of one or two of his quotes, such as “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are” and “A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye.”
A vocational and technical school in Berlin is named after the writer Brillat-Savarin Schule, where the Kulinarya team head, chef Myrna Segismundo, gave a talk on Filipino cooking to would-be chefs.
Food critic
Alexandre Grimod de la Reyniere, on the other hand, can be described in today’s terms as a food and restaurant critic. His “L’Almanach des Gourmands” in eight volumes was really a restaurant guide book.
Dining places would send food to his house, nicknamed Hotel Grimod by his friends, so he could critique the dishes. His monthly Journal des Gourmandes et des Belles was considered food literature; here, the reader gets a sense of the state of eating and dining at the time.
So even if “only one cooked” among the three names mentioned by author Ian Kelly, all three were writers. In today’s world, however, more importance is given to cooks.
“A culture where the chef, not the writer or the critic, becomes a celebrity, is a culture where food, too, is in revolution,” Kelly wrote.
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