Home » History » Crimean War » Recipes From Disaster - Part 3

Recipes From Disaster - Part 3

© John Barham

Alexis Soyer now felt prepared enough to start on his improvement programme. His first tour of the Barrack Hospital was guided by a reformist Deputy Inspector General, Dr McGrigor,and Florence Nightingale. They led him first to her dietary kitchen, where he noticed that the charcoal used for fuel was of very poor quality, little more than dust and smoking horribly. This meant that it was impossible to forecast cooking times, and so equally impossible to serve individual diets to patients at the correct times and intervals. In the next extra-diet kitchen the soldier 'cooks' had tried to get round the charcoal problem by building a wall of bricks round each stove, allowing them to supplement the fuel with wood. This meant that the atmosphere was thick with smoke and much of the food was overcooked and burnt. In nearly all the other kitchens the problem was the same.

Alexis also noted that the soup was tasteless, since it lacked seasoning. He was told that salt and pepper pots were in the wards, for the use of patients as required. Clearly this was contrary to the principle of regulated diets. Alexis took two bowls of the soup, added seasoning to one, and invited Dr Cummings, who had tagged on to the party, to taste. Cummings was amazed that such a huge improvement in taste could be gained by such a small addition, and gave the order on the spot that seasoning in future would be carried out only in the kitchens.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Soyer found the 'general kitchen' superb. There was one reservation; it was fitted with twenty copper boilers, but they were unlined, and thus could be harmful, especially in a hospital. Florence mentioned that there was another kitchen, but it was situated some distance from the wards, on the other side of the yard. Although it was partitioned down the middle, Alexis liked its overall size and relative cleanliness, and changing his mind suddenly, he declared that he would set up his main kitchen there.

The last duty of the day before returning to Pera was to call on Mr Tucker in the purveyor's department, to find that he was 'oh, THAT Tucker,' a friend for some ten years. Not only that, he found that the hospital storekeeper was a Mr Bailey, whom he also knew!

The following day saw Alexis, still accommodated across the harbour, having to get up at dawn in order to be on time to meet Dr McGrigor in the Scutari Barrack main kitchen at half past six. He looked at the meat ration first; he found the quality very poor, and the method of cooking no better. The meat was distributed by messes, arbitrary groups of anything between fifteen and twenty patients. The poundage allowed was calculated as the sum of those on full meat diet (3/4 lb), half diet (1/2 lb) or quarter diet (1/4 lb). Each hunk of meat was placed on a thick piece of wood about 2 ft long 'almost as large as a wooden leg' acting as a spit, and tied tightly with a strong cord. The spit was then tossed into boiling water.

The copyright of the article Recipes From Disaster - Part 3 in Crimean War is owned by John Barham. Permission to republish Recipes From Disaster - Part 3 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.