Carême, Antonin

Here is the man who became and remains the most famous of 19th-century French chefs. His students and their successors studied his books, or at least paid lip-service to him, well into the 20th century. Gastronomes and food writers have praised him as a great genius of haute cuisine, and have held him up as an outstanding example of how a lowly apprentice, of a humble background, could rise to the topmost pinnacle of his profession. His grandiloquent claim that there are five branches of the fine arts, and that the greatest of these is confectionery, is famous.