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• by:
• Kelly, Ian

A unique feast of biography and Regency cookbook, Cooking for Kings takes readers on a chef's tour of the pleasure-palaces of Britain and Europe in the ultimate age of culinary indulgence.

Drawing on the patissier royal's rich memoirs, Ian Kelly traces Antonin Carême's meteoric rise from Paris orphan to international celebrity, and provides a dramatic below-stairs perspective on one of the most momentous, and sensuous, periods in European history__First Empire Paris, Georgian England, and the Russia of War and Peace

Carême had an unfailing ability to cook for the right people in the right place at the right time. He knew the favorite dishes of King George IV, the Rothschilds and the Romanovs; he knew Napoleon's fast-food requirements, and why Empress Josephine suffered halitosis.

His recipes--now classic of French cuisine, created for, and named after, the gourmet-kings and queens for whom he worked--can bring the very taste and smell of the early 19th century alive: in the phrase first coined by Carême, You can try them yourself. For the paperback edition, click here.