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Recipes from Disaster - Part 1

© John Barham

THE HOSPITAL KITCHENS AT SCUTARI

To the Editor of the Times

SIR,- After carefully perusing the letter of your correspondent, dated Scutari, in your impression of Wednesday last, I perceive that, although the kitchen under the superintendence of Miss Nightingale affords so much relief, the system of management at the large one in the Barrack Hospital is far from being perfect. I propose offering my services gratuitously, and proceeding direct to Scutari, at my own personal expense, to regulate that important department, if the Government will honour me with their confidence, and grant me the full power of acting according to my knowledge and experience in such matters.

I have the honour to remain, Sir,

Your obedient servant
A Soyer

Feb. 2,1855.

The fact that this letter,dispatched to the Times after midnight, was published in the newspaper the very next morning suggests that the author enjoyed a great store of credibility and esteem amongst the readership. How had this come about?

Alexis Benoit Soyer was born in February 1810 in Napoleonic France at Meaux on the river Marne to the east of Paris. The youngest son of a small grocer's shopkeeper, his chief attribute in childhood was a fine treble voice which earned him a place in the Cathedral choir. At the age of 12, his father bound him apprentice to a cook at Thiverval-Grignon on the other side of Paris. During his five years there he impressed well enough to land a job with a well known restaurateur Monsieur Douix, in the centre of the city on the Boulevard des Italiens. By 1829 he had become Head Chef presiding over a kitchen of twelve,when he was lured away by Prince Polignac to become Second Cook at the Foreign Office.

A decisive moment in his life came in 1830, when revolution erupted and Paris was suddenly a dangerous place for anyone identified too closely with Louis XVIII's ousted regime. Alexis took off to England, where his brother found him a job working alongside him in the Duke of Cambridge's kitchen. His exceptional culinary gifts were thus showcased to the British nobility and there followed a period of six years when he cooked for successively, the Duke of Sutherland, the Marquis of Waterford, a William Lloyd of Aston Hall Oswestry and the Marquis of Ailsa at Isleworth. No doubt each new employer made it worth his while to leave the previous one, but the short tenures of each position does indicate a certain restlessness and maybe it was disatisfaction with domestic service which led him to apply for the position of Chef at the recently founded Reform Club. The fact that romance had entered his life in the comely shape of Elizabeth Emma Jones, a fashionable portrait painter, may also have had something to do with it. This engraving from her sketch of him dates from around this time. Whatever, in 1837 he both married Emma and started at the Reform Club. His reputation there was soon assured when on Queen Victoria's coronation day - 28th June 1838 - he organised a sumptuous breakfast for two thousand guests at the Club's temporary premises at Gwydyr House.

An egraving of Alexis from a sketch by Emma

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