Alexis Soyer

Alexis Soyer
Alexis Soyer in 1849

Alexis Bénoit Soyer (4 February 1810 – 5 August 1858) was a French celebrity chef who became the most celebrated cook in Victorian England. He also tried to alleviate suffering of the Irish poor in the Great Irish Famine (1845–1849), and contributed a penny for the relief of the poor for every copy sold of his pamphlet The Poor Man's Regenerator (1847). He worked to improve the food provided to British soldiers in the Crimean War. A variant of the field stove he invented at that time, known as the "Soyer stove", remained in use with the British army until 1982.

Alexis Benoist Soyer was born at Meaux-en-Brie in France. His father had several jobs, one of them as a grocer. At the age of nine he was sent by his parents to the cathedral church as they had decided on his becoming a priest. Soyer resented the career path chosen for him and contrived his dismissal whereupon a year later, in 1821, he was sent to Paris where he lived with his elder brother Phillipe. He became an apprentice at the Grignon restaurant in Paris. Later, in 1826 he moved to Boulevard des Italiens restaurant, where he became a chief cook. By 1830, Soyer was a second cook to Prince Polignac, the French prime minister.

On 26 July 1830, while assisting in the kitchens of Prince Jules de Polignac, armed supporters of “Les Trois Glorieuses” burst in and shot two of the staff. Soyer escaped then fled to England where he joined the London household of Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, where his brother Philippe was head chef. Later, notably as chef of the Reform Club from 1837 to 1850, where he designed the innovative kitchens, he also worked for various other British notables, including the Duke of Sutherland, the Marquess of Waterford, William Lloyd of Aston Hall and the Marquess of Ailsa at St Margaret’s House, beside the Thames and Priory Gardens in Whitehall.