Do modern diners have the stomach for 19th-Century culinary indulgence?

I HOPE I saw you among the astounded throng at the Hilton Adelaide for the Carême Banquet. Cheong Liew, with the help of a brigade that included Tim Pak Poy, resident genius of Claude’s in Sydney, and Urs Inauen, the chef who inspired the much-missed Fleurieu Restaurant in Adelaide’s Hyatt Regency, created a cornucopia of dishes mimicking a feast in the manner of Antonin Carême, celebrity chef of the early 19th century.

It was an opulent, excessive, outrageous event. Dish after dish of extraordinary variety hit the table. If I was a toff in Carême’s time and had scored a much sought after invitation to his table, I suppose I would have feigned boredom and languidly picked at my favourite morsels. No chance of that – I tried to taste at least a tiny bit of every single dish. Every simple moulded jelly, and every bit of complexity in “saumon a la Rothschild” salmon cooked in champagne, garnished with whiting paupiettes, lobster quenelles, mussels, freshwater crayfish, and fried whitebait.

This was not the time to sprint early in the race. What if you had to skip the Tourte a la Financiere with its filling of kidneys and cockscombs, chicken quenelles, lamb sweetbreads, mushrooms and olives? One’s reputation as an intrepid eater would vanish in a trice. At an occasion with a time-warp of two centuries, how should one have behaved? Aristocratically? Badly? According to the accounts of the chosen ones at Carême’s banquets we did just as they did. Gawped. I noticed a couple of pairs of eyes looking horrified as I slathered butter and salt over the integrity of an innocent radish. They furtively followed my example, though. But who knows, this may have been a social gaff at the Palace.

Cheong and collaborating food academic Barbara Santich had pored over Carême’s original texts to ensure accuracy in every detail. Ornate architectural desserts were laid out to be admired on a central table. We were only about two wheel-barrow loads of truffles short of absolute success (Carême sprinkled them around like confetti) but I am sure we clawed back some luxury points for superior lavatorial arrangements.

All diners had a twinge, however small, about the waste involved in staging such an extravagant event. In Carême’s time I suppose the leftovers would have bypassed the peasants and gone straight into the pig-swill. Clever Cheong had solved that problem by selling off a leftovers banquet the next day.

I don’t know if this elaborate journey back in culinary time can or will be organised again. Just in case, put aside a few gold coins in a big tin each week so you will be a Tallyrand, a Russian Tsar, or even the Prince Regent (all Carême’s employers), if only for one night.

And to learn even more about the style of Carême, I suggest reading the definitive tome Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Carême, The First Celebrity Chef, by Ian Kelly (WalkerBooks).