Greg Jenner is joined in the 19th century by Dr Annie Gray and comedian Ed Gamble to learn all about French celebrity chef Alexis Soyer.Despite being well-known during his lifetime, Soyer is virtually unknown today. His primary legacy was a portable stove, used by the British army until the Falklands War. But Soyer was a prototypical celebrity chef: he opened the Reform Club kitchen to the public so that they could watch him cook, wrote popular cookbooks, sold kitchen gadgets and branded sauces, and even took part in high-profile charity campaigns.From his birth in France to the success he found in London, via a soup kitchen in Dublin and a hospital during the Crimean War, this episode explores Alexis Soyer’s extraordinary life and culinary innovations.This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Hannah Campbell Hewson Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Ben Hollands Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: James Cook
Chapter 1: Who was Alexis Soyer?
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No bad ideas.
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Chapter 2: What innovations did Alexis Soyer bring to cooking?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Er experimentierte auch mit Küchen-Applikationen. Er glaubt also, dass er viele Gadgets inventiert hat. Ich weiß nicht, ob er sie inventiert hat oder ob er sie lizenziert hat.
Ich glaube, was ich von diesem Mann gelernt habe, ist, dass wir nicht unbedingt vertrauen, was er sagt.
Du wirst definitiv die Hänge dieses Vortrags bekommen, danke. Also, welche dieser fünf Gadgets, einer ist nicht wahr, hat er nicht inventiert oder zumindest popularisiert? Oder glaubt, dass er sie inventiert hat. Okay, also Mechanical Kitchen Timer. Obviously, they're all big in my life. The tendon separator especially. I'm going to go with the plug strainer. It doesn't feel grand enough.
I'm going to go with that.
Huge news if he really did invent the cafeteria.
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Chapter 3: How did Alexis Soyer influence military cooking?
So he has gas. Annie, is it a Dutch oven?
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.
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.
I'm assuming the Reform Club, where he's meant to work. They must be delighted. No? Their star chef is a superstar, bringing in the cash. Everyone knows him. Surely people are queuing to eat at the Reform Club. This is a win for them.
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.
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.
So, one thing that we haven't talked about yet is what Alexis Sawyer looked like. He walked into this room right now. What are you imagining?
Well, there's two classic chef looks that I'm thinking of. Chefs from history. Big fat red man or little weasley rat boy.
Okay.
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Chapter 4: What can we learn from Soyer's life and career?
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And in the all new series of Curious Cases, things are getting curiouser and curiouser.
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