sunday, february 4th, 2007

Iron Chef Morimoto at his restaurant Morimoto in Philadelphia 

The media is dripping with shows, books and even Page Six gossip about what chefs are up to these days. It's impossible to flip through the channels without seeing Bobby, tongs in hand at the grill, Mario doing his orange-clogged thing on Molto Mario, Morimoto dazzling us on the set of Iron Chef or Rachel Ray stepping out of the food universe altogether to get all comfy cozy on her talk show with nary a skillet or microplane in sight. It might seem that this anomaly of celebrity emerged only recently with the growing popularity of The Food Network and the publishing of virtually hundreds of cookbooks each year, but before the advent of The Food Network, actually, before the creation of television entirely, when books were bound by hand and rubber Crocs were a thing of the future, there were still celebrity chefs. Some may argue that it was Marie Antoine Careme who was the first chef-as-personality but I like to think it was the lesser known but just as worthy candidate Alexis Soyer, a celebrity chef in his own right but also an admirable philanthropist and for that reason, in my book at least, I bestow upon him the title of first celebrity chef. While none of our contemporary celebrity chefs can tell the story of slogging through the trenches of the Crimean War with Florence Nightingale at their side like Alexis Soyer could, many of them are doing their own charitable work and following in the footsteps of this pioneer of epicurean philanthropy.

Without the aid of television or a mass marketing campaign, Alexis Soyer, a French chef living in Victorian England, became the world’s first celebrity chef. Flamboyant and charismatic, he relished the fame and fortune that his celebrity invited, but he was a man of the common people first. He never forgot his modest, even destitute beginning and gave back in ways so generous and profound they had a lasting impact in the culinary world and many of his concepts and inventions are still in use today.

Born on February 4th, 1810 in Meaux-en-Brie, a French city famous for its cheese, 

Alexis Soyer was the youngest of four boys. Two of his brothers died in infancy and this left Alexis and his older brother Phillipe as the heirs to essentially nothing. Their father was a failed grocer who spent the rest of his life laboring in menial jobs that provided little sustenance for his impoverished family. At the age of 11, Alexis, semi-illiterate but with admirable determination, failed to realize his mother’s dream of becoming a priest and instead followed his brother Phillipe, already an established chef, to Paris.

While Alexis’s initial goal was to become an actor, his talent in the kitchen convinced him to refine and perfect his skills as a chef instead. He used the power of performance in his kitchens, which became for him a stage and a means to preserve his thespian dreams. He created spectacular food in flamboyant, dramatic fashion and by the age of 17 he was put in charge of the kitchen at P’Oix with twelve cooks working under him.

Alexis’s rise to celebrity chef status in Parisian society was directly connected to the role the restaurant played in French culture. By the late 1700s, restaurants were no longer uninspired places whose sole purpose was to fill the stomach with unimaginative food. They had become warm, inviting gathering places and the thriving, beating heart of a society that craved colorful, flavorful, inspired food consumed in a setting stimulated by intellectual conversation, the day’s gossip and a captivating, charismatic chef. By 1803, when Almanach des Gourmands was published, there were between 500-600 restaurants in Paris alone and for the next few years Alexis Soyer thrived in a city that lavished him with praise, fortune and prominence.

With the fall of Napoleon in 1830, Soyer’s Parisian glory days came to a screeching halt. The French Revolution’s message that the masses should not suffer while a decadent few lived in opulent disregard of the suffering around them, lessened the restaurant’s role in a society where most could not afford a lavish meal, extravagant entertainment and expensive wine. Restaurants, and by default, Alexis Soyer, were associated with the old regime and were swiftly discounted and marginalized. A change was in order and in 1831 Soyer, along with his brother Phillipe, crossed the channel to London where French chefs maintained their status; not necessarily for the luminous food they created but for the bragging rights having such a chef afforded an English restaurant at the time.

Victorian England’s view of high quality food was not necessarily born of a refined palette but more as a status symbol in an aristocratic society obsessed with image and rank. While Alexis Soyer would never again live in France, the Parisian restaurants he trained in taught him to appreciate food and he set high standards for himself and for his newly adopted country. Initially, it was a difficult struggle. Whereas in France, chefs were regarded as eminent members of society, in England Soyer wrote that, “…a cook, especially if a man, was looked upon as a distinguished member of society while now he is, in the opinion of almost everyone, a mere menial.”

With his usual determination and drive, Soyer set out to change English perceptions of food and the role of the chef in society. He spent several years working as a cook in the homes of the English gentry where he labored with little recognition or praise. This all changed when he was appointed in 1837 as Chef de Cuisine at The Reform Club in the Pall Mall neighborhood of London. Founded in 1836 by the liberal members of England’s two houses of parliament, the Reform Club was the most influential of London’s Social Clubs. Today it is perhaps most famous for being the starting point for Phineas Fogg’s journey in Around The World In 80 Days but in 19th century England, it was renowned for its warm hospitality, intellectually stimulating environment and thanks to Alexis Soyer, its cooking.

At the Reform Club, Soyer, with the assistance of Charles Barry, designed a kitchen so cutting edge that it quickly became a popular tourist destination. He pioneered the use of gas for stove top cooking and in this innovative, thriving environment, he prepared lavish, decadent feasts. One of the highlights was his turtle soup that called for “a good turtle weighing 140-180 pounds”. When Queen Victoria was crowned on June 28th, 1838, he prepared a lavish meal for over 2000 people. His annual salary of 1000 pounds reflected his status as society’s preeminent celebrity chef. The Reform Club became the gathering place for London’s elite. The Illustrated London News extolled, “There is hardly a person of distinction who has not sought to visit that mansion of good things of the life terrestrial. And departed from it with a due impression of the sublimity of the art that is practiced within its walls.”

Much like our modern celebrity chefs, Soyer’s fame provided an avenue for publishing success and several of his eight cookbooks became best sellers. The irony was that since he quit school at age twelve, he was most likely semi-illiterate. The task of transcription was therefore left to his secretaries and from 1837-1842, to his beloved wife, Emma Jones, a prominent London based portrait artist. She, along with their son, died during childbirth and Soyer never remarried.

Soyer had become the most celebrated chef in London and despite his early struggles, his life mirrored the lives of today’s celebrity chefs; he was exceedingly wealthy, famous, and glorified. Yet he never allowed these trappings to isolate him from the struggles and hardship he saw all around him and this is what differentiates him from so many modern celebrity chefs. Perhaps as a result of his impoverished childhood, he used his notoriety as a vehicle to help literally hundreds of thousands of people and a few of his inventions and reforms are still in use today.

While many of his cookbooks meant to appeal to a select few who could afford to first purchase the expensive book itself and then assemble the even pricier tools and ingredients required to construct the recipes, he also wrote, “Soyer’s Shilling Cookery For The People.” The purpose of this book was to democratize the rules of cooking and bring to the populace, no matter what their status or income, techniques that in France were a part of the daily culinary vernacular but were still a foreign concept in England. His goal was to teach the masses that no matter what their income or knowledge of cooking, they could produce practical, inexpensive, delicious and most importantly, nutritious meals and incorporate them into everyday life. This was not the last time he would use his celebrity to market and sell a book of benefit to society. After experiencing the terror of the Irish potato famine firsthand, he wrote “Soyer’s Charitable Cookery, or the poor Man’s Regenerator”, and donated most of its proceeds to charity.

It was not only in publishing that Soyer gave back to society. In dozens of ways it is clear that his real goal in life was not to be a celebrity, but to be a philanthropist.

London’s impoverished majority had a profound impact on Soyer and he worked tirelessly to provide them with relief and sustenance. He designed and opened cutting edge soup kitchens that provided the inhabitants of London’s rookeries with satisfying, nutritious, yet inexpensive meals. He also designed a training program for the kitchen’s employees that ensured their initial success would continue.

His accomplishments in London’s soup kitchens led to the Lord Lieutenant’s request in 1847 that Soyer travel to Dublin and do whatever he could to alleviate the plight of the masses that were starving as a result of the Irish potato famine. Soyer applied the same techniques to the soup kitchens of Ireland, notably the Royal Barracks Esplanade in Dublin, and also created recipes that would yield enormous quantities of nutritious meals at minimal expense. He is credited with saving thousands of lives as a result of his efforts.

Upon his return to London, he marketed his invention “the magic stove” which was shaped like a dust bin and allowed people to cook wherever they were, even in the most cramped conditions. It was especially suited to the overcrowded, claustrophobic homes of London at the time.

He also dreamed of opening his own restaurant and in 1851 he transformed the Gore Hotel into “a Gastronomic Symposium of All Nations.” It was not just a restaurant but a massive culinary emporium meant to entertain as well as feed London’s elite and middle class alike. The restaurant reflected the Parisian restaurants of his youth and was lavish and garish in every way. It was also a catastrophic failure. Soyer lost over 7000 pounds in this failed venture but ever the unflappable luminary, he dusted himself off and returned to his philanthropic tradition.

The Crimean War reports by William Howard Russell in The Times of London had a profound impact on Alexis Soyer. The conditions that the British soldiers were living in were horrendous and Soyer felt that many were dying unnecessarily; not as a result of combat but as a result of their diet and the cooking methods being used. They were dying of malnutrition, poor rations and cholera and he was compelled to use his knowledge to improve their plight. At his own expense, he arrived at Scutari Hospital in March, 1855 where he worked with Florence Nightingale to usher in reform; she within the wards and he within its kitchens.

Within the kitchens, Soyer found unsanitary conditions, disorganization and little training for those who were required to feed thousands. His initial task was to train the cooks, as he had done in London and Dublin, on how to make cost-effective, nutritious, appealing meals for the masses. He then implemented systems to maintain cleanliness and organization. He had great success in reforming wartime hospital kitchens and most of his modifications are still in use today.

His reforms transcended the hospital kitchens and extended into the battlefields. He found that the English system of feeding its soldiers was woefully inadequate. Each soldier was issued a daily ration of meat along with coffee, salt, sugar and additional items. Each was responsible for collecting the firewood to cook his meal, but since the meat was salted and must be soaked for hours before cooking and was lashed so tightly it took hours to cook, a soldier rarely had time to properly prepare his meal and often ate the meat undercooked or even raw, which along with an unappetizing taste, was an invitation for bacteria and disease. The soldiers also contaminated their meat with a large piece of metal attached to each piece in order to assist them in identifying it once removed from the fire.  Few vegetables were available as they rotted quickly and therefore, soldiers became malnourished and weak and often suffered from scurvy. Biscuits hardened quickly and as a result, became inedible because the men suffered from scorbutic gums and could not bite into them. If this was not enough, the fires necessary to prepare the meal could be seen by the enemy, creating a perilous situation for the soldier.

Soyer first banned the metal identifier in order to prevent meat contamination. He then modeled a mess system upon the French method where soldiers were organized into units of twelve, rations were distributed to each division and one trained chef was responsible for all of the cooking for each group. He ordered dried vegetables packaged in tins from a Parisian company called Chollet and created a “new-bread” biscuit that could be kept for long periods of time and became soft once dipped in a liquid. He standardized cooking for the chefs by creating recipes for them. These were printed by the Army and distributed to all hospital kitchens and cooks in the field.

His greatest achievement, and one that is still in use today, most recently used in the Gulf War, was the field stove, modeled after his “magic stove”. Small and compact, it was portable and worked like a steam boiler with a cauldron on top. The steam was vented through a pipe at the back that made the stove virtually smokeless and unable to be seen by the enemy.

His reforms were many and because of his tireless efforts, he saved thousands, if not tens of thousands during the Crimean War and in many successive battles. His devotion to this cause led The Morning Chronicle to write, “He saved as many lives though his kitchens as Florence Nightingale did through her wards.”

While in the Crimea, Soyer caught a fever that he never completely recovered from and in 1858 he died at the age of 48. It is unfortunate that such an inspired man was lost at such a young age but his legacy endures and his philanthropic works will hopefully inspire for years to come.

Alexis Soyer was a celebrity chef in the mid-nineteenth century but with his charisma, energy and flamboyant nature it is likely he would have been an even bigger star in our celebrity obsessed, media saturated culture. He influenced culinary history in several ways. He introduced London to a new way of thinking about and appreciating food. He set a new standard for food preparation, presentation, quality and flavor and inspired an exciting food revolution in his society. He reformed the soup kitchens and military kitchens of his day and because of his modifications and forward thinking, he enabled thousands to survive who might otherwise have perished from malnutrition and disease. He invented many useful culinary tools, from the kitchen drain stopper to the field stove, which is still in use today. He pioneered the notion that with celebrity comes responsibility and through a lifetime of philanthropic efforts, he set an example that transcended his own time and should be emulated by today’s celebrity chefs. Modern society abounds with issues of food safety, malnutrition and countless other food related issues that many chefs are making efforts to remedy and I like to think Alexis Soyer influenced a few of the many celebrity chefs who are doing their own charitable work today.

BOOKS BY & ABOUT ALEXIS SOYER:

Relish: The Extraordinary Life of Alexis Soyer by Ruth Cowen 

The Adventurous Chef Alexis Soyer by Ann Arnold 

The People's Chef; The Culinary Revolution of Alexis Soyer by Ruth Brandon 

Alexis Soyer: Cook Extraordinary by Elizabeth Ray and Prue Leith 

Memoirs of Alexis Soyer by F. Volant and J.R. Warren 

Portrait Of A Chef: The Life  of Alexis Soyer, Sometime Chef To The Reform Club by Helen Morris 

Soyer's Cookery Book by Alexis Soyer 

Food Cookery and Dining In Ancient Times: Alexis Soyer's Pantropheon by Alexis Soyer 

Soyer's Cookery Book by Alexis Soyer 

A Culinary Campaign by Alexis Soyer 

The Modern Housewife or Menagere, Comprising Nearly One Thousand Recipes for the Economic and Judicious Preparation of Every Meal of the Day by Alexis Soyer

Memoirs of Alexis Soyer: With Unpublished Receipts and Odds and Ends of Gastronomy by Alexis Soyer