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His brother artiste, M. Jaquet, of Johnson's tavern, Clare Court, rejoins that he never questioned M. Soyer's ability to make a palatable and pleasing soup with little or no meat, but that he himself had not acquired the valuable art of making nutritious and useful soup without meat, and that he would not like to make the experiment of doing so, "for the use of the destitute poor."
In a famine-stricken land, the good taste of this exhibition was doubtful enough: at any rate it was criticised with no sparing hand. When I got a card of invitation, writes one, I thought I was to see M. Soyer's peculiar appliances for making soup for the poor; but no it was a "gala day:" drums beating, flags flying.
In fact, everything looked very simple; there was no sign whatever of a hiding-place. The furniture was opened, the walls sounded, and the panels examined without finding any hollow place. It was now Soyer's turn to appear. Whether he feared for himself, or whether Licquet had made him understand that denial was useless, Mme. de Combray's confidential man consented to guide the detectives.
But nearly concurrent with Soyer's book appeared one of humble pretensions, yet remarkable for its lucidity and precision, Eliza Acton's "Modern Cookery in all its Branches reduced to an easy practice," 16mo, 1845. I have heard this little volume highly commended by competent judges as exactly what it professes to be; and the quantities in the receipts are particularly reliable.
If he took the same article to a high-church magazine, the editor could not commit himself to any theory which made the earth more than six thousand years old, and was afraid that the public taste would not approve of the allusions to free-masonry and Soyer's soup. . . . And worse than that, one and all Jew, Turk, infidel, and heretic, as well as the orthodox joined in pious horror at his irreverence; the shocking way he had of jumbling religion and politics the human and the divine the theories of the pulpit with the facts of the exchange. . . . The very atheists, who laughed at him for believing in a God, agreed that that, at least, was inconsistent with the dignity of the God who did not exist. . . . It was Syncretism . . . Pantheism. . . .
His resolution was thus announced in one of the Dublin morning journals: "SOYER'S MODEL KITCHEN. By the special desire of several charitable ladies, who have visited and paid particular attention to the working of the model kitchen, it will be opened again on Saturday next, from two to six, on which day those ladies, under the direction of Mrs. L , will attend and serve the poor.
Rundell is little consulted nowadays; but time was when Mrs. Glasse and herself were the twin stars of the culinary empyrean. It is called "French Domestic Cookery, Combining Elegance and Economy. In twelve Hundred Receipts, 12mo, 1846." Soyer's book appeared in the same year.
Sunday Observer; which journal should, for the information of posterity, have placed upon record what, if any, were the other courses in the carte at the Reform Club, the day on which M. Soyer's Irish Soup No. 1 was so highly approved of.
When they learned at last how two ounces of those little cakes were equal, when well cooked, to eight ounces of fresh vegetables, and just as profitable for a stew or with their meat, they duly prized them, and during the final healthy period those pressed vegetables were regarded in the camp as a necessary of life. By that time, Soyer's zeal had introduced good cookery into the camp.
At the same time Taste-that-which-is-good soon had a supper sent up to the table fit for a prince: a supper of six courses at that time in the morning, so that the sun was already in the sky when Old Honest closed his casement. "Dining in company is a divine institution," says Mr. Edward White, in his delightful Minor Moralities of Life. "Let Soyer's art be honoured among all men," he goes on.
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