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Alexis Soyer’s Field Kitchen
Alexis Benoît Soyer was born in Meaux-en-Brie on the River Marne in France in February 1810. Following his apprenticeship and early career as a cook in his home country, he came to London in 1831 to join his brother in the kitchen of Adolphus Frederick (tenth child of King George III and Queen Charlotte), 1st Duke of Cambridge. He moved from gentry kitchen to gentry kitchen until he was appointed chef to the Reform Club in 1837, a post he held until May 1850.
Soyer was appointed by the government to go to Ireland, where his revolutionary soup kitchen helped feed the victims of the 1847 potato famine. In 1855 he went of his own accord to the Crimean War, where he joined Florence Nightingale at her field hospital in Scutari. Appalled by the state of malnutrition and disease, he worked with Nightingale to alter the diet and food regimes in the hospital, and invented the ‘Soyer’s Field Stove’.
The best testament to its inventor came from The Morning Chronicle newspaper just after his death: "That he saved as many lives through his kitchens as Florence Nightingale did through her wards."
Presenter Mohini Sule says: "The beauty of the Soyer Field Kitchen is that you can cook anything, any time, anywhere. In fact, although it is an old design, the army is thinking of resurrecting it again...a real tribute to its creator."
Where can it be found? At the North East War Museum.
Museum Quote: "He was a larger than life, flamboyant character who actually did a lot of good."
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