A new Apple TV series explores the life of the so-called "King of Chefs and the Chef of Kings" – shown as a wild enfant terrible in post-Revolutionary France who blazed a trail for future generations of cooks.

It's described as "the story of the first celebrity chef". The French language series Carême is a dramatisation of the life of Antonin Carême, who was born into poverty in pre-Revolutionary Paris around 1784. His talent would make him chef for the French diplomat Charles Talleyrand, the Emperor Napoleon, the future George IV of Britain, Tsar Alexander of Russia and the Baron de Rothschild. He also wrote celebrated cookbooks and introduced the Toque (the tall chef's hat), still in use today – giving birth to the very idea of the "celebrity" chef.

Indeed, Benjamin Voisin, the actor playing Antonin Carême, believes that if the chef had been working in the 2020s, "he'd have been the one with 100 million views on TikTok. That would be the equivalent of what he did at the time," he tells the BBC.

And Voisin's portrayal of Carême feels modern; he plays him with a touch of the rock star as well as kitchen chef. He wears an earring, his clothes seem to owe more to the 1980s New Romantic movement than 19th-Century costume, and from his affairs with women to his lack of deference to his so-called superiors, he is what could be described (in French) as an enfant terrible. He is also confident, brash and authoritative in his kitchen – a manner that echoes 21st-Century celebrity chefs such as Gordon Ramsay.

The series is inspired by a biography of Carême and his gastronomy by Ian Kelly, who also co-created the series with screenwriter Davide Serino. The historical figure of the young chef is actually described by Kelly in his book as a "bookish innocent" when he takes his first job, but Voisin's look in the series isn't too far from Kelly's description of Carême aged 25: "He was handsome, his hair cut and tousled forward in the fashionably Byronic manner... he was described as slight, and a slight eater." Kelly also describes Carême as "ambitious, solipsistic, even narcissistic" as a person – although the Carême on screen risks much for those he loves.

Indeed, perhaps inevitably, the series takes various liberties with the truth, also depicting Carême as a spy for his powerful masters, something there's no historical evidence for. The show's lead director Martin Bourboulon describes the added drama as "the charm of fiction in the show". The reality is that the real man didn't leave much information behind. As Kelly says in his biography, "He [Carême] would disclose the minutiae of his professional life… and the menus, guests and ingredients that made up his working days. But about his personal life he revealed nothing."

What is true to the era is the depiction of the aristocratic kitchens he worked in, his small army of staff, and their fevered preparations for royal banquets. He's seen in the series organising a meal for Napoleon Bonaparte, and in real life he was responsible for the Emperor's wedding cake. Carême's ability to sugar-sculpt led to extraordinary creations in the shape of classical lyres and Venetian gondolas, all carefully sketched out on paper first by the chef himself. But that wasn't all he was capable of, according to Paul Freedman, Professor of History at Yale University.

"He helped establish a routine for how kitchens were run," Freedman tells the BBC. "He also defined dishes and the repertoire of sauces, what was considered to go with what food, what kind of garnishes would be standard, and the kind of multi-course dining that would come to be characteristic [of haute cuisine]. And as his original metier was confectionery and sugar sculpting, even having a centrepiece of sculpted food is owed to Carême."

While some of the real-life recipes in his cookbooks still sound mouthwatering (Kelly mentions an orange flower and pink champagne jelly), others, such as a stuffed boar's head, might seem strange to today. But Bourboulon says that, above all, he wanted to make the chef himself accessible to a modern audience.

Bourboulon, responsible for two successful film adaptations of Alexandre Dumas's historical novel The Three Musketeers, tells the BBC that he wanted to avoid "the usual period drama style" in this story.

"I really wanted to bring a bit of sexiness, rock 'n' roll attitude, and a modern twist for all the main characters, especially Carême," he says. "And Benjamin Voisin is like this in real life."

Voisin says their idea of the chef was that he had "a Mick Jagger aspect to him. It's really what attracted........

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