Modern Cooks

Gastronomy has become in these later days a science of no ordinary moment to the royal, the noble, and the wealthy of the world. Nay, it has even become of no slight importance politically; or, at least, it certainly was so during the last general European agitations, when embassies and congresses were things of everyday occurrence. Even Napoleon recognised the potent effects of good dinners in diplomacy; and, though he disdained individually to avail himself to any great extent of such agencies, he yet, while first consul of France, gave his full sanction and approval to the magnificent entertainments of his supple colleague Cambaceres, as he also did, when emperor, to the splendid fetes of the still more wily Talleyrand. Bonaparte saw clearly the influence of such instrumentation, and was content, accordingly, to let his subordinates surpass even himself in this respect in cost and display. No doubt pure luxuriousness of taste has also been the means of bringing the gastronomical science still more extensively of late into acceptation and cultivation. Abounding in riches, palled with common enjoyments, and anxious to shine in their sphere by novelty of entertainments, the great among mankind have carried the contrivances for enhancing the pleasures of the table to a most extraordinary pitch. Now, while we, for our own part, as little approve of gourmandism in excess as we do of the eating of raw meat—ever considering that there is a medial course here, as in other matters, which rational people ought to adopt—nevertheless we have the impression that some notice of the extreme features of modern cookery, or rather a glimpse of the life of the acknowledged prince of modern cooks, may amuse our readers generally.
Have these readers not yet heard of Monsieur de Careme? —of that illustrious “chief of the kitchen” (chef-de-cuisine, as the French have it), who served in succession ministers of state, princes, kings, and emperors, and whose services were more eagerly courted by such regal personages than those of the most able statesmen, and were moreover far more highly rewarded? My Lady Morgan is one English writer who has given an opportunity to the public of this country to know and appreciate Careme, having devoted a chapter to his laudation in her lively sketches of Parisian notabilities. According to all accounts, he was (for he is now no more) the very Brummell of cookery, exhibiting as much enthusiastic egotism in the culture of his art as the Beau did in the department of dandyism. However, we shall allow the character of the man to develop itself in the tourse of our article.

Jean de Careme (which, oddly enough, may be rendered in English Jack-a-Lent) was a Parisian by birth; and, as his father was a poor workman with no fewer than fifteen children, he opened life under no very favourable auspices. Besides his poverty, the elder Careme led an irregular life, and all the help he could give to the subject of our notice consisted in the following advice, often repeated by the great cook in later years: “Go, my boy,” said the father, who had noticed in the youngster some special marks of activity and talent; “there are good things to be picked up in the world. Leave the rest of us, for our lot is misery. This is the age of lucky hits and sudden fortunes. You are clever, and will make yours. Go, my boy, and see what Providence will do to open your way.' The lad was then actually left by his father alone, in the open streets. Hungry and despairing, he begged shelter from a poor publican, and, receiving it, was on the morrow admitted into the same person's service. Here the afterwards famous Careme received his initiation as a cuisinier; but at the age of eighteen he removed to the service of one of the first restaurateurs (confectioners or pastry-cooks) of Paris, under whom he aided in supplying the table of Prince Talleyrand. This was about 1800; and Talleyrand had then restored, under Napoleon, all the splendour of the tables of the old regime. The peculiar talents of Careme were soon observed by M. Laguipiere, the chef-de-cuisine, who latterly attended Napoleon to Moscow, and was then and there found dead in his carriage from the cold. [Here we cannot but digress a little way. War must be a fearfully heart-hardening business, indeed, since Bonaparte could deem the attendance and services of a first-rate cook essential on that dreadful campaign, while famine beset so many thousands of his followers. Such unions of enjoyment and misery cannot but shock common humanity. But let us not blame the French emperor too much either, since we have the well-authenticated statement of a British soldier, that he and others were delighted to have the charge of feeding the Duke of Wellington's hounds with biscuit during part of the Peninsular war, that they might appease their constant and mortal hunger with portions of the canine food. Heart-hardening, indeed, must war be!] ; Let us return to Careme, however. Under M. Laguipiere he learned much in the art of cookery, and also pursued his studies otherwise, according to his own account, with a degree of ardour which one does not well know whether to wonder or smile at, approve or despise. He tells us in a published work that he pored over all the histories of antiquity to get at the secrets of their domestic and culinary arrangements, and even went the length of searching manuscripts to find out in what lay the fame of the tables of Lucullus, Pompey, Heliogabalus, and the Caesars generally. Here was, at least, enthusiasm in kitchen studies . The proper erection of fires and furnaces formed also a subject of his inquiries, and one in which he attained such surpassing skill as to be employed, partly under Laguipiere, in arranging the kitchens of all the brilliant marshals raised to eminence and wealth by Napoleon—such as Murat, Junot, Lannes, Eugene Beauharnois, and the rest of that famous and martial fraternity. It is really entertaining to find Careme telling us who taught him the mystery of sauces originally—to whom he owed his knowledge of soups—whence came his acquirements in roasting meats—and how he learned all the other branches of his “incomparable science.’ His opinion of that science he gave with epigrammatic sublimity: “L’homme mome, c’était l'estomac ; ' that is, “What is the real man? It is the stomach to Nothing can beat this egotism of art, excepting, to repeat a comparison already made, the famous exclamation of Beau Brummell about white neckcloths, ‘Starch is the man!' Another expression of Careme was either borrowed from, or perhaps may even have suggested, a similar one of Bonaparte. When the aids of the great cook complained that to execute some of his orders was impossible, he would cry, ‘Impossible! erase that word from your minds.” The warrior and the cook had the same idea. Between the sublime and the ridiculous there is truly but one step, and it is a short one.

Careme soon became one of the best employed of the ambulatory confectionary cooks of Paris, being now engaged in one grand mansion, and now in another, and there working out the hundred and fifty recipes which he ultimately gave to the world in his ‘Pâtissier Pittoresque,” or “Picturesque Pastry-Cook,” and which he had drawn from his inquiries in the imperial library. But his genius, as he tells us with modest dignity, speedily sought to burst the bounds of mere experience; and after skimming the cream of Tertio, Palladio, Vignole, and others—after picking all that was best from the cookery of India, China, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland (barbarous England is not on his list), he felt himself irresistibly pressed forward to the conception of new culinary feats, and, in his own language, “ saw the ignoble fabric of routine cookery crumble under his venturous attacks.' Caesar, in narrating the conquest of Gaul, spoke not in a tone of more elevated gravity than Careme does here. ‘The peace of Amiens came,' he continues; ‘the consul had willed it;’ and that great event was followed by others equally great in the eyes of Careme. As assistant for the time to M. Bailly, he gave full scope to his invention in pastry-cookery. “I executed,” he says, “the most extraordinary uniques in my department. But oh! young students of the art, what busy days and sleepless nights were required to attain to what I did attain: Through threefourths of the hours of darkness I laboured, composing my designs’—in pastry-work. What enthusiasm, we repeat: We have already, in part, anticipated a point in Careme's life by mentioning his engagements with many of the marshals and princes of the empire. It was there and then that he left the field of confectionary for that of general cookery, applying himself to “grand dinners’ almost solely. Talleyrand pleased him best of all his employers; and, alluding to the magnificent repasts given by that astute statesman in the saloons of the Foreign-office Hotel, Careme would say, ‘M. Talleyrand understands the genius of the cook. He respects it, appreciates its most delicate results, and combines grandeur and prudence alike in his outlay.' Riquette, an able coadjutor and pupil of Careme, was sent for to Russia by the Emperor Alexander, and soon made a large fortune in the imperial service. Talleyrand made an inquiry regarding Riquette in 1814 when the czar was in Paris. “Oh!” said the latter, “he is truly a man of genius. He has taught us to eat—we knew not the way before!'

In the same year, 1814, Careme had in hand the great task of dining the whole of the imperial, royal, and martial allies on the plain of Vertus. He executed his duty so ably that some of the British chiefs there present seem to have aroused a wish in the Prince Regent to possess this marvellous caterer for the palate. Careme accepted the enormous salary offered, and transported himself to England, where he remained for two years in the regent's service. A practised gourmand, the prince made full use of the talents of the Gallic cook. Every morning the latter visited the royal apartments, explained his plans for the day, and dilated on the virtues, the perils, and the neutral qualities of such and such dishes. One hour was regularly thus spent. In all probability the tailor followed Careme—for so passed much of the privacy of the fourth George. On one occasion the regent observed to Careme, “The dinner of yesterday was delicious. Indeed, I find all that you offer me excellent; but you will make me die of indigestion.’ ‘My prince,' replied the great cook, “my duty is to gratify your appetite, and not to regulate it.' Still Careme took to himself the credit of so serving the royal table as to free the prince from gout. Though loaded with bounties, Careme, nevertheless, could not be persuaded to remain in England. ‘That villanous grey sky,' he declared, would soon be his death; and he returned to France. Ten years afterwards George IV. sent for him again. He declined the invitation, but remarked with pride, ‘What a memorable honour for my age The sovereign of Great Britain deigns to preserve the recollection of my art!'

However, another sovereign was lucky enough to secure the master-cook to himself, probably by far higher offers. Careme went to St Petersburg, and there shone for a time in the imperial palace. But the clime of Russia pleased him as little as that of England; and he left for Vienna, where he superintended the grand dinners of the Austrian emperor and the ambassadors then assembled there. The present Marquis of Londonderry was one of these envoys, and induced Careme to visit England with him once more. But he could not keep the illustrious chef-de-cuising from his own belle France. Thither he went, as he announced, to write down and to publish his professional experiences. Notwithstanding, when called on by the eminent plenipotentiaries engaged at the several congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle, Layback, and Verona, Careme could not resist the flattering appeals, and went to each of these meetings to soothe the palates of the diplomatists there congregated to decide on the fortunes of nations. Possibly the admirable cook may have played as important a part as any of them in these high affairs, since the state of the digestion exercises, undeniably, a vast influence over the tempers of men and ministers, and that department was, in a measure, wholly under his command. An over-seasoned ragout may have irritated some of the high contracting powers into the sacrifice of a province.

Careme lived to serve several other parties of distinetion, and among these were the Prince of Wurtemburg, the Princess Bagration, and Baron Rothschild. The baron was his latest employer; and Careme, though he had ceased to invent new dishes, revelled in the gorgeous display of his former ‘creations' of fancy, as he called them, under the auspices of the munificent millionaire. He had a salary like a noble's income, and had the carriages and suite of a noble. With M. Rothschild, as remarked, he spent his last active years. His final illness was long, but patiently borne; and in the closing scene of all there was a resemblance to that of Napoleon. It will be remembered that the last words of the ex-emperor were singularly in accordance with the pursuits of his life. “Tóte d'armée:’ (head of the army), was the dying exclamation of him who had ‘headed’ so many ‘armies.’ The expiring chief of the culinary world, in his final moments, had a pupil by his bedside, whom he gently chided for the seasoning of a slight dish made for himself. He drew the pupil nearer to him, and told him in a whisper, waving his hand to enforce the lesson, that when he dressed it again, he should “shake the sauce-pan o' These words were the last of Careme! Half seriously, half in jest, have we written this article. At its close, the repetition of the axiom (usually ascribed to Napoleon, but in reality the property of Edmund Burke) occurs to us as the best possible winding-up—“Betwixt the sublime and the ridiculous there is but one step.”