The century of Antonin Carême, cook dinner to princes | EUROtoday

Lth XIX^e century ? It is the age of nationalism, the commercial revolution, the rise of science, gastronomy, the good French delicacies, that of Lent (1784-1833). Revolutionary period throughout which the restaurant took over the streets of Paris and when delicacies took over literature.

We eat, and studying Balzac, Maupassant or Zola, we generally have the impression that that is all we do, from the gourmand who eats truffles at Beauvilliers to the employee who’s glad with a stew for a couple of cents in a caboulot. Paris was then famend because the temple of fine meals, and the restaurant, a usually Parisian establishment, as acknowledged within the 1810s by the Guide for vacationers in Europe, by the German Reichard (1751-1828).

A bit of poultry filled with truffle…