Recipes from Disaster - Part 1

The next few years served to cement Soyer's reputation as a foremost exponent of culinary arts on the London scene. Then came happy domestic news - Emma was pregnant. Sadly, tragedy was to strike all too soon. In the middle of a terrifying thunderstorm during the night of 29-30 August 1843 Emma went into premature labour; neither she nor the baby could be saved.

Obviously completely devastated, Alexis threw himself into his job with even greater gusto, enhancing his reputation with flamboyant events such as the Great Ibrahim Pasha Fete at the Reform Club in 1846. He also gained a reputation as a writer - his first cookery book, The Gastronomic Regenerator was published in 1846. Other books dedicated to practical food preparation followed. As time went by, a new romance blossomed with Fanny Cerito, a celebrated ballet dancer. Although her father would not agree to their marrying and she embarked on an unsuccessful marriage with Arthur St Leon, their liaison lasted for his lifetime.

In 1847 a disastrous situation in Ireland had become the focus of public attention. In the rural areas of Ireland many thousands of poor farm tenants were starving to death.

The Irish rural economy was based on such shaky foundations that it had long been a disaster waiting to happen. Overpopulation and excessive sub-division of the land had progressively created conditions of ever deeper poverty. The peasants were permitted by landlords, their middlemen or agents, to erect cabins on small plots routinely no bigger than a quarter acre in exchange for their labour and the right to cultivate the land. No wages were paid; the only money they received was in the form of meagre amounts for the harvested crop they managed to sell. Universally, the potato, being high yield and highly nutritious, was realistically the only available foodstuff permitting the tenant and his family to subsist. But the potato crop could not always be relied on.

In the first week of August 1846, a blight which had already caused major losses the previous year, wiped out the complete potato crop at a stroke. The tenants asked for money to buy food in return for their work; in general the landlords were unwilling or unable to pay and the poor tenants either deserted the land or were evicted for non payment of rent. In desperation they sought relief from the workhouse or the government sponsored public works.

The 1845

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