Alexis Soyer (Radio Edit)

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Jenner?

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• 1:05Speaker 03

  BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

• 1:10Greg Jenner?

  Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner, I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today, we are tying our aprons and firing up the stove as we learn all about 19th century celebrity chef Alexis Soyer. And to help us, we have two very special dining companions. In history corner, she's an author, broadcaster and food historian, specialising in food from 1600 to the present day. That's a lot of food. You might have heard her on BBC Radio 4's The Kitchen Cabinet or read one of her many wonderful books, including The Greedy Queen, all about Queen Victoria's food tastes. And you'll definitely remember her from our delicious episode on the history of ice cream. It's Dr Annie Gray, welcome back Annie. Thank you for having me. Lovely to have you back. And in comedy corner, he's a comedian, podcaster, writer,

• 1:54Greg Jenner?

  broadcaster. He's a superstar. He co-hosts the mega-award-winning off-menu podcast. He judges dishes on the Great British Menu. He's done gags on Mock the Week. He's had an existential crisis on Taskmaster Champion of Champions. Sorry, Ed, I had to mention it. You may love his food-themed memoir, Glutton: The Multi-Course Life of a Very Greedy Boy. And you'll remember him from our episodes on Lord Byron and Gothic vampire literature. It's Ed Gamble. Welcome back, Ed.

• 2:16Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me back.

• 2:17Greg Jenner?

  Delighted. Ed, you are the foodiest comedian in the UK.

• 2:21Speaker 04

  It's certainly an avenue that I've pursued, I would say. You know, once you get a thing, you've really got to lock in. I'm just out there mopping up every single food-themed job possible.

• 2:33Greg Jenner?

  And you don't even like food. You've just found a niche.

• 2:35Speaker 04

  No, no, no. Barely eat.

• 2:37Greg Jenner?

  What do you know about food history? Are you happy in the 19th century?

• 2:41Speaker 04

  I mean, I can't promise to offer much historically in terms of food history. I can barely remember what I ate last week.

• 2:50Greg Jenner?

  So what do you know?

• 2:57Greg Jenner?

  This is where I have a go at guessing what our lovely listener might know about today's subject. And we all can name a celebrity chef, right? Some of them are so famous, they only need one name. Delia, Jamie, Nigella. But Alexei Soyer, probably not ringing any bells for you. You're probably not going to know about him unless you are a student of 19th century military history or culinary history. That's the kind of the Venn diagram of people who might know.

• 3:19Speaker 04

  I'm none of those things.

• 3:20Greg Jenner?

  Okay. So who was this French celebrity chef? He found fame in Britain. Why is he known to ex-soldiers? Just what is a magic stove? Let's find out, right? Okay, Dr. Annie, first things first. Where and when was little Alexei born? And to whom?

• 3:38Speaker 05

  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 Meaux-en-Brie, which was known for its mustard and its cheese. So I think it would be kind to call Alexei working class. He was on that sort of liminal zone that you find so often in 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.

• 4:06Greg Jenner?

  Born in Brie. He was born in the home of Brie.

• 4:09Speaker 04

  That's pretty good, isn't it?

• 4:10Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, surrounded by cheese in the labour ward.

• 4:14Greg Jenner?

  Do you want to guess what his childhood professional training was?

• 4:17Speaker 04

  You would have thought if you're born in Brie, you're going to be a...

• 4:20Greg Jenner?

  A cow?

• 4:21Speaker 04

  You may be a cow, maybe you work within dairy or cheese, et cetera, or mustard. You mustn't forget the mustard.

• 4:29Greg Jenner?

  No, moutard, yeah.

• 4:30Speaker 04

  So yeah, maybe he's a spicy cow.

• 4:34Greg Jenner?

  And he was, he was training for the priesthood.

• 4:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, so he was a Protestant, which is relatively rare in France at that point. So they sent him off to a Protestant seminary because he had a very good singing voice. So one presumes he could get a scholarship and his beginnings are quite kind of murky because there's lots of stories that he told about himself, the truth of which...

• 4:53Speaker 05

  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, the local fire brigade came out and the local garrison. So as you can imagine, he didn't last very long.

• 5:12Speaker 04

  The other priests would have been like, man, this is such a bad boy.

• 5:16Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, he is. Yeah, he is. He's the, he's the bad boy of the bell squad. So it was bye bye Brie for teenage Alexei. So what was next for our bolshy bellboy?

• 5:25Speaker 05

  Well, next he got pushed off to Paris to go and stay with his brother Philippe, who was a chef. And by all accounts, he sort of decided that, okay, well, yeah, fine, he'd go into chefing, largely because it was a really good excuse to drink a lot and party. So he became a real party animal. He worked his way up through Parisian society, as a lot of chefs did at that point. And he ended up being the chef at the Foreign Office. And this is in 1830, 1830, there was another revolution, the July Revolution in this case, which didn't last long, but did topple the monarch at the time. They stormed the kitchens where Swaye was in the middle of catering a banquet. And this mob broke into the kitchens, they shot two of the chefs and all hell broke loose. And it, it, you know, it was genuinely a very dangerous moment, but because Swaye

• 6:10Speaker 05

  was very good at thinking on his feet, he quickly whipped off his apron and started singing La Marseillaise. So what actually happened was he was hoisted on the shoulders of the revolutionaries who took him out of the kitchen singing, what a hero, what a patriot, presumably not recognised. Who he was. And then, once he was out of the kitchens, he scarpered. But he then got a reputation as being this sort of shill for the monarchists. And he was persona non grata, couldn't get a job anywhere in France. He followed Brother Philippe over to England, which was again a tried and tested route for Parisian chefs. They all sort of drifted over to England.

• 6:41Greg Jenner?

  So he saves his life by singing the French National Anthem. What song could you sing to save your life if a crowd broke in?

• 6:47Speaker 04

  Well, it depends. I mean, obviously, it depends what the crowd are for, right? Because I'm happy to capitulate to any mob.

• 6:54Greg Jenner?

  Instantly.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  I just want to save my own skin. I've got absolutely no ethics whatsoever, so.

• 6:58Greg Jenner?

  They're angry at the concept of podcasting. They hate podcasts.

• 7:01Speaker 04

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 7:02Greg Jenner?

  What are you going to do?

• 7:03Speaker 04

  I guess I'm singing the Radio 4 pips just to, just to let them know I am a traditionalist when it comes to broadcasting.

• 7:11Greg Jenner?

  You're doing the shipping forecast.

• 7:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm doing the shipping forecast. You know, I like live radio. That's what I like.

• 7:17Greg Jenner?

  Alexis Swaye, Fleeing Violence, going from revolutionary France into Britain in 1831, which is during the reign of, we're not at Victoria yet, are we?

• 7:26Speaker 05

  No, we're William IV. The sort of most non-entity monarch in history.

• 7:30Greg Jenner?

  No one's favourite king.

• 7:31Speaker 05

  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. And he was there specifically to cook the best, most fashionable food.

• 7:54Greg Jenner?

  We know now that Alexis Swaye is a, he's a whiz in the kitchen, right? But he's also a whiz with a kitchen. Do you know what I mean by that?

• 8:01Speaker 04

  In terms of running, running the kitchen?

• 8:03Greg Jenner?

  More than that, in terms of the technology in a kitchen.

• 8:05Speaker 04

  Okay, so the, the equipment as well.

• 8:07Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, he's innovating in that way. It's quite interesting, Annie. And I don't know whether he's the pioneer, because I know he likes to sort of build his part a little bit. So I don't know whether he's like really, really inventing or whether he's just sort of popularising. But he brings a lot of stuff into the kitchen.

• 8:22Speaker 05

  I think it's a mixture of both. He was quite well known for finding sort of small-scale inventors and such, and then buying out their invention and kind of, you know, popularising it or building on it. But he was. Absolutely an inventor in his own right as well. He was always coming up with ideas. With the Reform Club, he worked with the architects to put in new kitchens just after he arrived. And, you know, some of the stuff was was fine. There were separate departments for butchery and for lots of different larders. And, you know, 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.

• 9:02Speaker 05

  And then he went all out for steams. He had a steam table, 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.

• 9:30Greg Jenner?

  He was experimenting with kitchen appliances as well. So he claims to have invented many gadgets. I'm not sure if he invents them or whether he licenses them.

• 9:37Speaker 04

  I think what I've learnt about this guy so far is we can't necessarily trust what he says.

• 9:42Greg Jenner?

  You're definitely getting the hang of this episode. Thank you, Ed. Yeah. So which of these five gadgets, one of them's not true, did he not invent or at least?

• 9:49Speaker 04

  Or claim to invent.

• 9:50Greg Jenner?

  Or claim to invent, popularise. Okay. So mechanical kitchen timer, plug strainer, a tendon separator for meat, an ice cream scoop, or a cafetiere for coffee. Which of those five was not an Alexis Sawyer original?

• 10:04Speaker 04

  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 sort of grand enough. It doesn't feel, no, I'm going to go with that. I mean, huge news if he really did invent the cafetiere, but.

• 10:19Greg Jenner?

  The cafetiere he does invent.

• 10:21Speaker 04

  He invented it.

• 10:22Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. So no, the one that I'm afraid I've caught you out there, ice cream scoop is not his. Comes later, later in the century.

• 10:28Speaker 04

  I was thinking about it, the plug strainer is almost the sink cafetiere, isn't it?

• 10:34Speaker 05

  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.

• 10:40Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, so cafetiere is one of his.

• 10:41Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 10:42Greg Jenner?

  Kitchen timer, pretty clever, isn't it? What is one utensil that you wish someone had invented or perhaps you could invent right now that desperately we need in kitchens?

• 10:50Speaker 04

  Hey, look, if I could invent a kitchen utensil that we desperately need in kitchens, I wouldn't be here.

• 10:55Greg Jenner?

  You've got Dragon's Den, right?

• 10:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. In Back to the Future 2, they have that sort of rehydrating oven thing where they get a tiny pizza delivered. And they put it in the oven and hit it and then five seconds later, it's a full sized pizza. That.

• 11:10Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  I'd like that.

• 11:11Greg Jenner?

  Yes, yes, please.

• 11:13Speaker 04

  And I know there are like, you know, dehydrators and whatever and all of that, but I just want something that makes food massive.

• 11:19Greg Jenner?

  I mean, I'm here for it. That's absolutely.

• 11:21Speaker 05

  I'd buy it.

• 11:22Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. So the ice cream scoop comes later in the century. The others are Alexis Swaye originals, caveat, maybe not originals, but certainly he's popularising them and claiming them.

• 11:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, and everyone builds on the shoulders of others.

• 11:33Greg Jenner?

  I get the feeling he's fun in a kitchen, but 1837 was a spicy year for him romantically as well, because this is where he meets his good lady wife.

• 11:41Speaker 05

  Well, he's already met her, meets her in 1835, I think. So in Paris, he'd already had a relationship with a lady called Adelaide Le Maire and almost certainly had a son by her. Or at least later on, the son called himself Alexis Swaye and they had some lovely tete a tete and then Swaye forgot about him in his will. So who knows? 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 Alexis Swaye. 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 Swaye courted this lady who was called Emma, Elizabeth Emma Jones. And in 1837, they got married.

• 12:23Speaker 05

  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. 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. And when he got back, he was so entranced by this picture that he had it framed.

• 12:53Speaker 04

  I think it's better just to be there on time though.

• 12:56Speaker 05

  You could argue that.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  That sounds lovely and romantic, but it's a pain, isn't it?

• 13:02Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, you could argue that. It did have a tragic end, though.

• 13:07Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, she dies very young, doesn't she?

• 13:08Speaker 05

  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, Swire went off to Belgium. She told him to go. She was like, don't worry, don't worry, it's going to be absolutely fine. And then there was this big storm and her maid said, oh, I'm going to the theatre, but there's a big storm. And Emma went, don't worry about it, I'll be fine. Off the maid goes to the theatre. There's a huge crash of lightning. Emma starts to hemorrhage. 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.

• 13:47Speaker 05

  He sort of got back on the horse and took up with an Italian ballet dancer who was apparently very voluptuous. And called it Fanny Trito.

• 13:57Greg Jenner?

  But yes, so Emma died in 1842. So their romance was quite short, but was very meaningful to him.

• 14:02Speaker 04

  And it sounds like a Victorian novel, doesn't it?

• 14:04Greg Jenner?

  It does.

• 14:05Speaker 04

  The way that all builds.

• 14:06Greg Jenner?

  You're right. It's quite Gothic, isn't it?

• 14:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:09Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. Does this sort of grief slow his, his rise, his culinary quest for stardom? Because this is a man who's, who's got drive.

• 14:16Speaker 05

  He started really chasing glory. And, 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, 1846. Then there was the modern housewife in 1849. And then there was the shilling cookery for the people in 1854, which built on an earlier pamphlet called Swire's charitable cookery.

• 14:39Greg Jenner?

  I don't know if it's in a different book, but we've got a couple of images to show you, Ed.

• 14:42Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:43Greg Jenner?

  And I wouldn't say that this is the 19th century equivalent of cheese on toast. Do you want to describe what you can see for us?

• 14:49Speaker 04

  Yes. Oh, my goodness.

• 14:50Speaker 05

  These are not from the shilling cookery. I should point out, these are gastronomic regenerator dishes.

• 14:54Speaker 04

  Something that appears to look like a, a sort of a, a big duck or a swan or a gull. But is that an actual bird or are you supposed to form whatever you're cooking into a bird shape? And then something else which looks like a roast turkey, but also a galleon.

• 15:10Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  With the little birds going all the way around it. I mean, yeah, that's a nightmare to me. If I turned up somewhere and someone had done me that, I'm like, what? Total waste of time.

• 15:22Greg Jenner?

  So Alexi Soyer was releasing cookery books, but he also had other money-making schemes. Ed, what do you think they might have been?

• 15:28Speaker 04

  Deliveroo?

• 15:31Greg Jenner?

  I mean, I wouldn't have put it past him, but I don't think he did that.

• 15:34Speaker 05

  No, lots of people did, but not him.

• 15:36Greg Jenner?

  Not him, no. He went the other way. He went very 21st century. He went branded merch.

• 15:40Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 15:41Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. In the 1840s, Alexi Soyer is one of the first influencers in the food space. And he invents the art form, Annie. I'm coming out big for him. I'm swinging for the fences with Alexi Soyer. I think he's a pioneer in this.

• 15:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, he is. Alexi decided to partner with Croton Blackwell to produce a range of sauces. He also did kitchen gadgets. There was a stewing pan and there was improved baking dish and all the various bits you've sort of heard about already. But the big thing was the sauces. Soyer's sauce was marketed in two versions. There was a spicy one for the gentlemen and then a milder one for the ladies.

• 16:15Speaker 04

  You've always got to think of the ladies.

• 16:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:17Speaker 04

  And their soft mouth.

• 16:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, exactly. Then there was Soyer's relish, which was for general purposes. No one knows what was in this, but it seems likely that it was a heavily garlic sauce. So perhaps also not the most sociable of sauces. And he marketed that as being so perfect, it would create a soul under the ribs of death, which is a quote from John Milton.

• 16:39Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 16:39Speaker 05

  He's aiming high with quotes from masters of the English language and religion from the 17th century.

• 16:44Speaker 04

  I always say that when I eat something delicious.

• 16:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:47Greg Jenner?

  He's also got his magic stove. Ed, do you know what this is?

• 16:50Speaker 04

  No, I heard you mention the magic stove earlier. I'm very excited. Is it a bit like a Dutch oven?

• 16:55Greg Jenner?

  I don't know what that is, so maybe.

• 16:57Speaker 04

  It's when you fart and then push someone's head underneath the diva.

• 17:02Greg Jenner?

  Soyer's gas, is it? Yeah, yeah. Annie, is it a Dutch oven?

• 17:06Speaker 05

  No, actually, although I suspect if he'd been able to invent that one, he would have done it as well and marketed it as farts in a bottle. But no, the magic stove is basically a camping stove, so it's a miniature stove. Again, it wasn't his invention per se, but he marketed it. He never took out patents on it, which is a bit of a problem because ultimately he didn't make as much money as he could have done from them. But he loved this magic stove. It sold phenomenally well to anyone who was camping or travelling. He made about £6,000 from it in the first year, which was a phenomenal amount of money at the time.

• 17:34Greg Jenner?

  I'm assuming the Reform Club, where he meant, he's meant to work, they must be delighted, no? Their, 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.

• 17:48Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, but they're a members' club, you don't want too many people queuing, because you don't want the holly 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, look, 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, and left.

• 18:18Greg Jenner?

  So, one thing that we haven't talked about yet is what Alexey Sawyer looked like. If he walked into this room right now, what are you imagining?

• 18:24Speaker 04

  Well, there's two classic chef looks, right, that I'm thinking of, chefs from history. Big fat red man, or little weasely rat boy.

• 18:32Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 18:33Speaker 04

  Those are the two.

• 18:34Greg Jenner?

  Which one are you going, you're looking at me right now, at the weasely, um, boy, that's me.

• 18:37Speaker 04

  No, no, I was looking at you anyway, because I'm talking to you, Greg. Um, I'm not thinking big fat red man.

• 18:43Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 18:43Speaker 04

  I feel like he's got so much stuff going on, he doesn't really have time to indulge all of the time. So I'm thinking more weasely little rat boy.

• 18:51Greg Jenner?

  Okay. Here is a portrait, done by his wife Emma.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Okay, right, so this is through his wife's eyes?

• 18:55Greg Jenner?

  This is through, yes, exactly. This is love for you.

• 18:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, rap!

• 19:01Speaker 04

  I was right.

• 19:02Greg Jenner?

  So Annie, is he playing up to the Frenchiness here with the beret and the, and the rat boy look?

• 19:08Speaker 05

  He's not a rat boy. This doesn't give you an impression of his height, he was apparently quite tall and slender and, and very much in, though, the fashionable Victorian gentleman, he, he very much to vote for.

• 19:19Speaker 04

  That's back in, it's, you know, it's a rat, it's a rat boy summer.

• 19:21Greg Jenner?

  It is rat boy summer, yeah.

• 19:22Speaker 05

  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, 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 bayous, so à la zook zook, or à la zigzag, as he called it.

• 19:41Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 19:41Speaker 05

  And like, it got really obsessive, like his business cards. Cut in a zigzag way. I mean, to be fair, a lot of people did actually take the mick out of what he wore because he did look.

• 19:50Greg Jenner?

  He drew attention, didn't he? He drew attention to himself and certain people were like, this guy's a bit of a douchebag, but.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  Still being talked about.

• 19:57Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. Yeah. So he's as stylish as Nigella, as French as Raymond Blanc. And also Alexis Soyer is doing charity work. He's a man of the people. Do you know where he did charity work? In which country?

• 20:08Speaker 04

  What? So he's going outside of.

• 20:10Greg Jenner?

  Outside of England.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  Going back to France to do charity work?

• 20:13Greg Jenner?

  It's a good guess, but no.

• 20:14Speaker 04

  No?

• 20:15Greg Jenner?

  No. Think of another country close to.

• 20:17Speaker 04

  Another country?

• 20:18Greg Jenner?

  Another, think of another country that is not France or England.

• 20:21Speaker 04

  Germany?

• 20:22Greg Jenner?

  Nope.

• 20:22Speaker 04

  Spain?

• 20:23Greg Jenner?

  No.

• 20:26Greg Jenner?

  It's Ireland.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  Oh, I should have guessed it.

• 20:28Greg Jenner?

  So Ed, have you heard of the Irish potato famine?

• 20:30Speaker 04

  I have.

• 20:31Greg Jenner?

  We're a comedy show, but I think for the next two, three minutes, a bit of a gear change. This is a tragedy, right, Annie? This is a million die, probably a million have to emigrate. It's a devastating, horrible thing. And he responds to it in quite an interesting way.

• 20:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, he does. So Ireland is in dire, dire straits. This all happens from 1843 when potato blight hits Ireland and you have six years of awful harvests. The English overlords just go, well, they're Irish, their fault, they're poor, they didn't work very hard, did they? And they just leave them to it for a couple of years. And then eventually the newspapers start saying, oh, hang on, do you know what? Maybe it's not actually the poor's fault they're poor. Maybe the fact that the Irish are all starving is because the English have taken all their crops and sold them abroad. Oh, do you think you ought to do something about this? And very gradually this movement builds, which is saying that perhaps some form of poor relief should be offered. And Soyer gets to hear about this. He already had some dealings with the idea of feeding the poor and caring for the poor. He set up soup kitchens in Spitalfields.

• 21:26Speaker 05

  So he had already kind of dabbled in the idea. But in 1847, he decided to set up a soup kitchen under new principles, which classic Soyer were basically factory feeding principles. So the ideal, there was this portable soup kitchen and you could feed about 5,000 people, feed 5,000 meals a day. And you had a bowl in each position. You had chained down spoons. So people came in, they were fed their soup, they ate it, they got out really quickly, you swabbed out the bowls, you wiped down the spoon, the next lot came in. And he took that out to Ireland and there was a grand opening because he was never a man to miss up an opportunity for some publicity.

• 22:01Greg Jenner?

  Sure.

• 22:02Speaker 05

  And he devised all these recipes which he said would feed people and be nutritionally really brilliant and they weren't, I think it's fair to say. It's problematic because I think his heart was really in the right place. He genuinely wanted to do something and I don't think he ever really thought that his soups were nutritionally sound. He was accused of treating the poor like wild animals, which, you know, yes, he was accused of treating the whole thing like a technical problem to be solved. Eventually the tide turned and people started saying that actually the soup kitchen was a bad idea. You know, when he first went out, everyone was like, great, what an amazing thing. And the British government went, brilliant, we can blame it all on him.

• 22:37Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, I mean, I was gonna say, he, he did something.

• 22:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:41Greg Jenner?

  When the government did nothing.

• 22:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:43Greg Jenner?

  But it wasn't necessarily the best thing. So that was his first effort with charity relief. He did another one. He went to a war zone.

• 22:49Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 22:50Greg Jenner?

  Do you know which war zone this might be?

• 22:52Speaker 04

  Couldn't guess. All of my guesses have been rubbish so far.

• 22:54Greg Jenner?

  You might have heard of this one, the Crimean War.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  I have heard of that one.

• 22:58Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, so that's a long way to travel. This is 1855, this is the, you know, we know about this war because of Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale, but for listeners who don't know where Skitari is, which is where he went to, Skitari weirdly is in Turkey, a totally different country to where the war was happening, 300 miles away.

• 23:14Speaker 05

  Yes, but it was where the British troops who were fighting were taken to, to, well, to die. Let's not be about the bush.

• 23:21Greg Jenner?

  They weren't meant to die there, but that's what happened to them.

• 23:22Speaker 05

  But this is a war, like every other war up to that point, but even worse, where the vast majority of casualties were from disease, not from fighting in action. They'd get wounded or, you know, a bit, they'd be put on a ship and then they'd be brought over to Skitari and then they would be left on the dock where the rats would eat them as they died. And eventually they converted barracks into a hospital, which is where Florence Nightingale went out and tried desperately to reform. I mean, there was nothing there. It was falling down, there was no furniture, there were rats everywhere, there was lice. It was, the conditions were horrific. And for the first time, the newspapers in Britain, they reported on this and they reported on it in very critical terms. So this became a real thing. The British government was seen to be failing its own.

• 24:04Greg Jenner?

  The Prime Minister.

• 24:05Speaker 05

  They did, yeah. And Sawyer heard about this and he wrote an open letter to the Times saying, I will go out there and I will sort out the catering and I will sort out the nutrition and I will sort out the kitchens. And that is what he did.

• 24:18Greg Jenner?

  And he brings his magic stove.

• 24:20Speaker 04

  Of course he does.

• 24:20Greg Jenner?

  Of course, you know.

• 24:21Speaker 04

  Brings it everywhere.

• 24:22Greg Jenner?

  It brings it everywhere, but it's really useful for the soldiers. It's smokeless, which means they can use it in the battlefields because it doesn't show the enemy where you are. And the British Army carried on using it until the Falklands War.

• 24:31Speaker 05

  Apparently some countries still have Sawyer stoves tucked away in case of emergencies. So, and the army still celebrate him.

• 24:37Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, and he doesn't come back healthy.

• 24:40Speaker 05

  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'd fall from his horse and he started hemorrhaging. And actually, reading about his last few weeks is really awful. 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 died in 1858, so he was only 48 years old.

• 25:08Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, he'd achieved an awful lot. I mean, we've talked quite a lot about Alexey Sawyer and his career. What are your sort of final thoughts?

• 25:13Speaker 04

  Well, I'm ashamed that I didn't know more about him, to be honest, because it seems like he's sort of the absolute proto-celebrity chef.

• 25:19Greg Jenner?

  I love him. I've talked about him a lot, but no one knows who he is. You have to, you know, historians know him and no one else. So, you know.

• 25:26Speaker 04

  But even the marketing of the products and bottling his sauces and doing all of this stuff, just, yeah, it's incredible.

• 25:31Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 25:32Speaker 04

  He packed a lot into a relatively short life. The New Year's Window!

• 25:40Greg Jenner?

  This is the part of the show where Ed and I sit quietly and sup on our turkey lobster for two minutes. Well, Annie, tell us something we need to know about Alexey Sawyer. My stopwatch is ready. You have two minutes. Annie, take it away.

• 25:53Speaker 05

  Right, so Alexey Sawyer is best known in terms of his books for Shilling 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 recognised for the magic stove and for the other book, 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 Elouise.

• 26:36Speaker 05

  Hortense is the kind of mother figure who is advising Elouise 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. 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 know, you're really invested, you want to buy the different books. 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

• 27:18Speaker 05

  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, 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 roulue biscuits. I've never managed to find a biscuit recipe which satisfyingly moulds every single time you make it. 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 on to them, and then these would have been served at balls.

• 27:49Greg Jenner?

  So there we go, Alexis Swaye, fun guy, I think.

• 27:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:52Greg Jenner?

  Well, listener, if you want to learn more about the history of food with Annie, check out our episode on the history of ice cream. For more quality time with Ed in the 19th century, we've got episodes on Lord Byron and Gothic vampire literature. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review, share the show with friends, subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. But I just want to say a huge thank you to our guests. In history corner, we had the amazing Dr Annie Gray. Thank you, Annie.

• 28:16Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 28:17Greg Jenner?

  And in comedy corner, we had the excellent Ed Gamble. Thank you, Ed.

• 28:20Speaker 04

  Thank you very much.

• 28:21Greg Jenner?

  And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we cook up another historical feast. But for now, I'm off to go and invent turkey à la Wellington. It's basically turkey in a rubber boot. Bye.

• 28:35Speaker 06

  I'm Hannah Fry.

• 28:36Speaker 07

  And I'm Dara O'Briain.

• 28:37Speaker 06

  And in the all-new series of Curious Cases, things are getting curioser and curioser.

• 28:42Speaker 07

  We'll be looking the universe squarely in the eye and demanding an answer to your everyday mysteries.

• 28:47Speaker 06

  Including?

• 28:48Speaker 07

  Can you actually die of boredom?

• 28:50Speaker 06

  Why do some people taste music?

• 28:53Speaker 07

  And how many lemons would it take to power a spaceship?

• 28:55Speaker 06

  We will shine a light on the world's most captivating oddities.

• 28:59Speaker 07

  Brought to us by you, you delightful bunch of weirdos.

• 29:02Speaker 06

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• 29:03Speaker 07

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• 29:05Speaker 04

  Curious Cases.

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• 29:17Speaker 04

  It's the film that convinced Americans the Second World War was worth fighting. A reason to be in Hollywood that is really quite a terrifying situation. And its production is an extraordinary story in itself. Ronald Reagan had been named as the potential lead. Join me, Misha Glennie, and three expert guests for a special live edition of In Our Time, where we discuss Casablanca. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.