Dr. Annie Gray
Appearances
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Then there was the Modern Housewife in 1849 and then there was the Schilling Cookery for the People in 1854, which built on an earlier pamphlet called Sway's Charitable Cookery.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Oh my goodness. These are not from the Schilling Cookery. I should point out, these are gastronomic regenerated dishes.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Ja, er ist es. Alexei hat sich mit Cross & Blackwell vertreten, um eine Reihe von Saucen zu produzieren. Er hat auch Küchengadgets gemacht. Es gab einen Stuhlkasten und einen verbesserten Backofen und all die verschiedenen Sachen, die ihr schon gehört habt. Aber das große Ding waren die Saucen. Soyes Sauce wurde in zwei Versionen vermarktet.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Es gab eine heiße, für die Herren, und eine mildere, für die Mädchen.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Ja, ja. Und ihre leichte Mund. Genau. Genau. Dann gab es Soyes Relish, was für generelle Gründe, niemand weiß, was in diesem Rezept drin war, aber es scheint, als wäre es eine sehr gartige Sauce, also vielleicht auch nicht die am meisten verbindliche Sauce. Und er markierte das als so perfekt, dass es eine Seele unter den Rippen des Todes kreieren würde, was ein Quote von John Milton ist. Wow.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
No, actually, although I suspect if he'd been able to invent that one, he would have done it as well and marketed his own farts in a bottle. But no, the magic stove is basically a camping stove. So it's a miniature stove. Again, it wasn't... Seine Erfindung per se, aber er hat es markiert.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Er hat nie Patent aufgenommen, was ein bisschen ein Problem war, weil er im Endeffekt nicht so viel Geld gemacht hat, wie er es von ihnen machen konnte. Aber er liebte diesen Magikstof. Es verkaufte phänomenal gut für jeden, der campen oder reisen wollte. Er hat in dem ersten Jahr etwa 6.000 Pfund davon gemacht, was eine phänomenale Menge von Geld war.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Well, yeah, but they're a members club. You don't want too many people queuing, because you don't want the whole ploy to get in, do you? And I will be fair, he was stretching himself a little thing. He increasingly didn't love being a subordinate. He wanted to be the person that was the draw because he was. And it all got a little bit tense, basically.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
And then in 1850, they kind of offered him an ultimatum. They basically said, either toe the line, start cooking here and turn up. Or, you know, go away and do all your other things. So he went, turn up.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
He's not a rat boy. This doesn't give you an impression of his height. He was apparently quite tall and slender and very much in the fashionable Victorian gentleman. That's back in.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
I like to think of him more as soon as he entered a room, you'd know he was there, just because he just must have oozed this energy and this interest. He did play up on his Frenchness, but actually that's not a beret, that's more like a sort of tamashanta. He really loved things cut on the bias, so à la zugzug or à la zigzag, as he called it.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
And it got really obsessive, like his business cards were cut in a zigzag way. I mean, to be fair, a lot of people did actually take the mic. He drew attention, didn't he?
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Ja, aber es war dort, wo die britischen Truppen, die kämpften, um zu sterben. Sie wollten nicht da sterben, aber das ist das, was ihnen passiert ist. Nein, aber das ist eine Krieg, wie jede andere Krieg bis zu diesem Punkt, aber noch schlimmer, wo die größte Mehrheit der Verletzungen von Krankheit, nicht von Kämpfung in Aktion waren.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Sie würden verletzt oder ein bisschen, dann würden sie auf einem Schiff gelegt und dann würden sie nach Skatari gebracht und dann würden sie auf dem Dock geblieben, wo die Ratten sie als sie verletzt haben. It brought down the Prime Ministers. Sie haben es gemacht, ja.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Und Soyer hat darüber gehört und er hat einen offenen Brief zu den Zeiten geschrieben, dass er da rausgehen wird und die Katerung und die Nahrung und die Küchen auswählen wird. Und das hat er gemacht.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Apparently some countries still have soya stoves tucked away in case of emergencies. And the army still celebrate him.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
No, he contracted Crimea fever. Towards the end of his time there, he also got dysentery. So he was very, very, very ill. And then when he got back to the UK, he published his book. He kept, kept working and he had a fall from his horse and he started hemorrhaging. And actually reading about his last few weeks is really awful.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
He's coughing blood, but he's still desperately trying to work and produce things. And then the blood turns to sort of black bile and it's very, very clear he's going to die. And he He died in 1858, so he was only 48 years old. Yeah, he'd achieved an awful lot.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Right, so Alexis Sawyer is best known in terms of his books for Schilling Cookery for the People, which was a massive bestseller. But I am going to talk about this book, The Modern Housewife, which was published in 1849 and then went through subsequent editions. And the reason I want to go through that is because he's always recognized for The Magic Stove and for the other book.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
But this one to me is unique among history books. Because it is written by a French chef who was almost illiterate, working through a series of secretaries. And not only is it a brilliant book from a recipe point of view, but the way it is written is just magic. So he writes this book from the point of view of two Victorian English housewives, writing to each other, Hortense and Heloise.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Hortense is the kind of mother figure who is advising Heloise on how she can run her household. And it's not just, you know, here's a letter about roasts. You know, they chat to each other, they talk about what's going on in their neighbourhood. Throughout the different editions, their story changes.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
So by 1853, Hortense has fallen upon bad times due to her husband speculating unwisely on the railways and had to move from St. John's Wood to Rugby. where she can now advise on other things involving poor people's food, for example. You get really invested, you want to buy the different books.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
But interspersed with that are things that are brilliant for a food historian, because you can study social history through it because of those details. He has a picture in here which shows you apple pie, one of my favourite pictures in the book ever, apple pie as it ought to be, taken from still life, followed by apple pie as they often are. And you look at that and you think, yes,
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
People in the Victorian times, they cocked up their food as well. This makes me feel reassured. But also, and the final thing about it, is the recipes are fantastic. So I brought in Rout Biscuits. I've never managed to find a biscuit recipe which satisfyingly moulds every single time you make it.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
And as you can see from these, they are a little biscuit, a lot like a rich tea biscuit, and I like a rich tea, but they take a mould. You can emboss figures onto them and then these would have been served at balls.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
He was born in 1810, so in what to us Brits is the Regency period. So think about Jane Austen, Colin Firth coming out of the lake, that kind of thing. Born in France in a town called Mont-en-Brie, which was known for its mustard and its cheese. So I think it would be kind to call Alexei working class.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
He was on that sort of liminal zone that you find so often in the Victorian period between working class and actually abject poverty. Something he never forgot about. He was always desperate for social respectability later on in life.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Ja, also er war ein Protestant, was in Frankreich relativ selten ist an diesem Punkt. Also haben sie ihn zu einem Protestanten-Seminar eingeladen, weil er eine sehr gute Sängersprache hatte. Also wurde er vermutlich eine Scholarschaft bekommen. Und seine Beginnungen sind ziemlich schmutzig, weil es viele Geschichten gibt, die er über sich selbst erzählt hat, die Wahrheit davon...
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Anyway, so the story goes that he decided to get expelled by breaking out of his dormitory, climbing up the cathedral tower and ringing the bells, which bearing in mind that was also the signal for Armageddon, released all hell upon the town. So the local fire brigade came out and the local garrison. So as you can imagine, he didn't last very long.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Nächstes Mal wurde er aus Paris gedreht, um mit seinem Bruder Philipp zu bleiben, der Chef war. Und auf alle Fälle hat er... Er hat sich entschieden, dass er in die Chefarbeit gehen würde, weil es eine gute Ausgabe war, viel zu trinken und zu feiern. Er wurde also ein echter Feierling. Er hat seinen Weg durch die parisianische Gesellschaft gearbeitet, wie viele Chefs das damals machten.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Er wurde dann Chef im Außenministerium. Das war 1830. 1830 gab es eine andere Revolution, die Juli-Revolution, die nicht lange dauerte, aber den Monarchen zerstörte. Sie stürmten die Küchen, wo Soyez im Mittelpunkt des Katering-Bankwerks war. Und dieser Möbel brach in die Küchen. Sie schossen zwei der Chefs. Und alles brach los. Und es war wirklich ein sehr gefährliches Moment.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Aber weil Soyer sehr gut an seinen Füßen denkt, hat er schnell seine Arme ausgeschnitten und angefangen, La Marseillaise zu singen. Also was tatsächlich passiert ist, dass er auf den Schultern der Revolutionärin war, die ihn aus der Küchen rausgezogen hat und singt, was für ein Hero, was für ein Er war ein Patriot, der vermutlich nicht erkannt hat, wer er war.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Und dann, als er aus den Küchen ging, hat er sich gekleidet. Aber er hatte dann eine Reputation, als ein Schild für die Monarchen. Und er war Persona non grata, er konnte nirgendwo in Frankreich einen Job bekommen. Er folgte Bruder Philippe nach England, was wiederum eine versucht und getestete Route für parisianische Chefs war. Sie fliegen alle nach England.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Nein, wir sind in William IV. William IV, der größte Non-Entity-Monarch in dieser Zeit.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
So he worked for the Duke of Cambridge, he went to work at Stafford House, which was probably the grandest house in London, over onto the Welsh borders to go and work for a family called the Lloyds, and eventually networked his way into working as the head chef at the Reform Club, which was a liberal gentleman's club, founded by people who had favoured the Reform Act of 1832.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
And he was there specifically to cook the best, most fashionable food.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Ich denke, es ist eine Mischung von beidem. Er war ziemlich bekannt für die Erfindung von kleinen Inventoren und so und dann ihre Erfindung ausbauen und es popularisieren oder aufbauen. Aber er war absolut ein Inventor in seinem eigenen Recht auch. Er kam immer mit Ideen. With the Reform Club, he worked with the architect to put in new kitchens just after he arrived.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Some of the stuff was fine, there were separate departments for butchery and for lots of different larders. It was a huge complex of kitchens, so far so normal. But then he did things like install sliding chopping boards and sliding partitions so that everyone could have their own workspaces. He made sure things were the right heights for shorter people, kitchen maids and people like that.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
And then he went all out for steams. He had a steam table. It's steam heated, so the dishes are staying hot. There's temperature-controlled ovens. And most of all, he was this huge champion for gas. So gas had been in for lighting for quite a long time, but very, very few people had thought about cooking with it, partly because the size of the pipes was too small to get enough supply in.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
But because he was building from new, he could make sure the pipes were made bigger, so he could get this gas into the kitchens. And he was this enormous champion for cooking on gas.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
And also really important because blocked drains at that point in time, very, very difficult to clean them when you don't have diner rod.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Oh wow. Nice. But he, with typical aplomb, walked into the studio of a leading artist at one point and said, I want my picture painted because I'm Alexei Soye. And the chat went, yeah, right, whatever. My stepdaughter can paint you. So in comes the stepdaughter. And by all accounts, it was love at first sight. So Soye courted this lady who was called Emma, Elizabeth Emma Jones.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
And in 1837, they got married. They had a really interesting marriage because she was a career woman and he was a career man. So they didn't really have what was by Victorian standards a conventional relationship at all. She would be off travelling quite a lot, he worked quite a lot. It does seem to have been a really lovely relationship though. Genuinely, when you read about it, it's gorgeous.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
There are stories like, she turned up at one point to go and wait for him in his office at the Reform Club and he didn't turn up for an hour. So she just sketched herself on the wall as a visiting card and left. Und als er zurückkam, war er so enttäuscht von dieser Bildung, dass er sie gebildet hat.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
Well, I mean, you could argue that. It did have a tragic end, though. Yeah, she died very young, didn't she? Very, very young. So she became pregnant with their first child. And about, I think it was only a couple of weeks before the child was due, Suey went off to Belgium. She told him to go. She said, don't worry, don't worry, it's going to be absolutely fine. And then there was this big storm.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
And her maid said, oh, I'm going to the theatre, but there's a big storm. And Emma went down.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
worry about it, I'll be fine, off the maid goes to the theatre, there's a huge crash of lightning, Emma starts to haemorrhage, she miscarries, there's nobody there, she's all alone and by the time anybody realises what's going on it's just too late, she loses the child and she herself died as well and then he spent really the next two years planning this enormous memorial for her but it didn't last that long, his mourning period, he sort of got back on the horse and
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
took up with an Italian ballet dancer who was apparently very voluptuous and called Fanny Torito.
You're Dead to Me
Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)
He started really chasing glory and one of the things he did, like all good chefs who really want to make a splash, is he started publishing cookery books. The three best known are the Gastronomic Regenerator, which was his first one in 1846.