Around the year 1800, a French teenager named Marie-Antoine, or Antonin, Carême split his time between the library and the pastry shop where he worked as an apprentice.
At the library, he’d pore over architectural drawings, fascinated by the world’s most intricate buildings. Then, back at the patisserie, he’d replicate them in pastry and sugar, constructing temple ruins, pagodas, and hermitages in miniature. The skill would later land him roles in royal kitchens and an enduring legacy as one of France’s most influential chefs.
Today, Carême’s signature fusion of pastry and architecture lives on in one of his most legendary creations: the croquembouche, layers of dainty cream puffs bound by caramel in the shape of a skyward-stretching spire. For hundreds of years, croquembouches have towered over France’s most celebratory occasions, from baptisms to first Communions to weddings (at the latter, it’s tradition for the couple to saber off the top of the confection and for the bridal party to catch it in a tablecloth). It is a pastry that drops jaws and elicits gasps—and that’s before anyone has even bitten into a puff and experienced the rush of vanilla-scented cream; the burnished, slightly bitter caramel; or the eponymous “crunch in the
