The Pantropheon, or, History of Food, and Its Preparation

The son of a grocer, appropriately enough, Alexis Soyer (1810-1858) became a famous chef, indeed perhaps the first-ever “celebrity chef.”  Apprenticed at a restaurant in Paris, he quickly rose in the profession to become the chef for several French and English aristocrats and subsequently cemented his reputation as the chef de cuisine at the Reform Club in London.  Impressively – considering his clientele – he took an active interest in providing soup kitchens for the poor during the Irish famine of 1847 and worked with the British Army in the Crimea to improve the provisioning of army hospitals.  He wrote several cookbooks, often donating the profits to charity, but The Pantropheon, an historical survey, was originally the work of Adolphe Duhart-Fauvet; Soyer wrote the last chapter and translated the work from French.  Whether he appropriated the credit for his own glory, or allowed his far more famous name to be used to promote sales of the book, is unclear.