DANA MARTA BENTIA JECU
1
Marie-Antoine Carême1 (1784-1833) is considered a landmark reformer of food preparation and techniques of display and he marked a defining stage for the crystallization of what today we call modern/haute cuisine. What is referred to as ‘grand cuisine’ is associated with the celebrated chef Antoine Carême and the period following the French Revolution of 1789. He is called the founder of classic French cuisine since he codified and ordered its principles and thus enabled their adoption and implementation across France and beyond. To the extent that the crystallization of modern gastronomy (and with nouvelle cuisine in particular) presents similarities to the debates unfolding in France between the Ancients and the Moderns, 2 there is one sense especially which tends to assert itself above the others: vision. Sight is related in a particular way with the creation of standards of preparation and styles of presentation (both of dishes as well as cookbooks) and resonates with the rational, materialist, and scientific Weltanschauung emerging since the 1. 2.
Marie-Antoine Carême or Antonin Carême. See Spang, Rebecca. The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
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