Week 1 Lesson 2: The Grand Daddy of Chefs - Marie-Antonin Careme

If you haven't read about Mr. Marie-Antonin (Antonin) Careme, you really should. What an amazing character. His poor parents, suffering financially during the height of the French Revolution, and dealing with 25 kids (yikes!) put Careme on the streets to make his own way in the world when he was about 10 years old. He knocked on the door of achophouse and worked as a kitchen boy in exchange for room and board.

He picked up some skills there and then worked in a patisserie called Bailly's and then eventually opened his own pastry shop. This is where he started to do some wicked things that Parisians had never seen before, like making the Egyptian pyramid with pastry, sugar and marzipan. He really loved modeling his pastries after great architectural structures and displaying them in the window of his shop. That is where he really started his niche with elaborate centerpieces called pieces montees. If the paparrazzi existed at the time, this is when they would have started stalking Careme. He became famous for those things and was essentially the first