Portrait of a Chef
The Life of Alexis Soyer, Sometime Chef to the Reform Club

A 1938 biography of the flamboyant Alexis Soyer (1810–58), arguably the greatest chef of the nineteenth century.

Helen Soutar Morris (Author)

9781108061698, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 13 June 2013

254 pages, 26 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 1.5 cm, 0.33 kg

Perhaps the first celebrity chef, Alexis Soyer (1810–58) was a flamboyant, larger-than-life character who nonetheless took his profession very seriously. As the chef of the Reform Club, he modernised its kitchens, installing refrigerators and gas cookers. In 1851, during the Great Exhibition, he prepared spectacular (but financially ruinous) culinary extravaganzas at his restaurant, the Gastronomic Symposium of All Nations. In stark contrast, he organised soup kitchens during the Great Famine in Ireland and volunteered his services in the Crimea in 1855 to improve military catering. He was also a prolific inventor of kitchen gadgets, notably promoting the Magic Stove, used for cooking food at the table. First published in 1938, this biography by Helen Soutar Morris (1909–95) is based on François Volant and James Warren's anecdotal account of 1859 (also reissued in this series), and it faithfully conveys the adulation that Soyer engendered in his lifetime.

Prologue
1. Early life
2. Emma Jones
3. Chef de cuisine to the Reform Club
4. The Gastronomic Regenerator
5. Inventions
6. Banquets
7. Soup-kitchens: Ireland and Spitalfields
8. The Modern Housewife
9. Resignation: work in the provinces
10. The 'Gastronomic Symposium of All Nations'
11. The years 1851–4
12. Soyer at Scutari
13. Culinary campaign: veni
14. Culinary campaign: vidi
15. Culinary campaign: vici
16. 'Ars longa, vita brevis'
Epilogue
Appendices
Index.

Subject Areas: British & Irish history [HBJD1]