Recipes From Disaster - Part 3

and produced an excellent soup which he had his inspection party plus Dr Cumming and other doctors taste. Everyone pronounced it excellent - Cumming could hardly believe that the ingredients were well within the daily ration allowance. Soyer finally made his mark with Milton, whom amazingly (!) he had never met. The Head Purveyor took in his complaints about meat and poultry, and promised to send the contractor along to meet him. He would write an official letter complaining about the charcoal to the commissariat department.

In the kitchen, Alexis left instructions for the boilers to be thoroughly cleaned, and for rations to be drawn early next morning ready for cooking to start at eight a.m.

His house still not yet ready for him to move in, he was intending to return to Pera, but a violent storm blew up, and he had to 'doss' down on a restaurant floor, one of seventeen trying to sleep on straw. After a dreadful night, but back in the Barrack Hospital kitchen by seven, his ill humour was worsened on finding that none of his orders had been carried out. His own cooks were nowhere to be seen, and the army staff said they couldn't draw rations until 10 am, the laid down time. A fuming Soyer marched off to the purveyor's headquarters; the rations were on the table by eight o clock. His cooks finally crept in - they hadn't slept till daylight having been harassed all night by rats, but doubtless they received little sympathy from Alexis!

That day he personally supervised the cooking. His soup was prepared as per the evening before, but left to simmer for two and a half hours and with a little sugar and flour added. He made sure that the meat rations were not tied together on a spit, and hence were properly cooked. After the dinners had been served, he noticed a large copper half full of meat broth with about three inches of fat floating on top.

'What do you do with that?' he asked.

'Throw it away, sir...It's the water in which the fresh beef has been cooked.'

'Do you call that water? I call it strong broth. Why don't you make soup of it?'

'We orderlies don't like soup sir.'

Alexis swiftly put them right, and taught them to skim off the fat for cooking purposes; far better than the half rancid butter purchased in Constantinople at sky-high prices.

In the

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