Recipes from Disaster - Conclusion

The great day dawned predictably hot and sunny. A variety of dishes were to be prepared: ox-cheek and ox-feet soups; Scotch mutton broth; boiled salt beef, plain or with dumplings; boiled salt pork, plain or with peas-pudding; stewed salt pork and beef with rice;French pot-au-feu; stewed fresh beef with potatoes; stewed fresh mutton with haricot beans; fresh and salt beef curry.

The guests started arriving from 3pm. Their full dress uniforms worn for the morning ceremony added a feel of importance to the occasion. Soyer's stoves, placed in a semi-circle in the open air, were boiling merrily without any fire or smoke being visible. Alexis was in his element extolling their features and benefits. The stoves on view were of the larger, hospital variety. The duplicate though smaller campaign stoves were on order - two of these would cook for a company of 120 men and could be carried on one mule with enough wood packed inside the stove for two days' cooking. They were simple to operate, easy to clean, and most important, represented an enormous economy in fuel (eight ninths, as calculated by the Coldstream Guards!) over the current fragmented cooking practice. To further the message, a soldier cook was discreetly displayed in one corner, preparing rations under the existing method using a camp kettle over an open fire.

The several hundred British French and Sardinian officers present seem to have been greatly impressed. Captain Fred Dallas of the 46th Foot had some practical reservations: 'He certainly made very nice ragouts and soups....but I fear it will be a very long time before we can do it for ourselves. His dishes had the additional advantage of being washed down with iced champagne.'

Final comment on the event to Lieut General Henry Barnard, remarking to Marshal Pelissier: "....this day has been remarkably well spent; we devoted the morning to the Cordon Rouge, and the afternoon to the Cordon Bleu."

Hard to link this festive social occasion with the wholesale carnage of the final assaults on the Malakoff and Redan were to take place less than two weeks later. In the aftermath devoted to dealing with the heavy casualties, Alexis busied himself with supporting the cooks and doing odd jobs in the overworked hospitals. He himself succumbed to tiredness which swiftly degenerated into Crimean fever. Forced to return to Scutari, he was ill for a further period of three months, the fever protracted by

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