Soyer

As a follow-up to Délassements culinaires, The Gastronomic Regenerator exhibits both the contradictions inherent in Soyer's status as would-be man of letters, and his efforts to make the most of this tenuous situation.

Alexis Soyer and the Rise of the Celebrity Chef 2007

So too, in Soyer's narrative, what seems ordinary never is: thus, a ragged young stowaway, in spite of his attire, looked as brisk and independent as a modern

Alexis Soyer and the Rise of the Celebrity Chef 2007

Within Soyer's career there were also suggestive parallels with that of another ambitious Frenchman living in London in the 1840s: Louis-Napoléon

Alexis Soyer and the Rise of the Celebrity Chef 2007

But, as the visual evidence of his increasingly elaborate frontispieces suggests, this was also a logical next step in Soyer's ongoing, authorial masquerade: to appear in the most exalted of guises, as

Alexis Soyer and the Rise of the Celebrity Chef 2007

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the extraordinary Alexis Soyer is that, while he too fashioned himself a man of letters, he would also transcend the constraints of this literary model and, far ahead of his time, prefigure the flamboyant personas of today's celebrity chefs.

Alexis Soyer and the Rise of the Celebrity Chef 2007

As such varied examples suggest, à la zoug-zoug might best be understood as the central trope in Soyer's creative imagination, and in his dandified public persona, emblematic of his drive to distinguish himself — both to achieve distinction, and to do so by being different.

Alexis Soyer and the Rise of the Celebrity Chef 2007

Even allowing for the ambiguities and contradictions in Soyer's relation to the masses, he had a degree of social conscience not seen again in a prominent chef before Alice Waters

Alexis Soyer and the Rise of the Celebrity Chef 2007

She listened patiently to the reading of "Soyer," and if she could not understand his French dishes, she at least tried to rival them, and soon learned to make the

Recollections of a naval life : including the cruises of the Confederate States steamers, "Sumter" and "Alabama", 1900

In fact, Baroness Staffe wasn't an aristocrat at all but plain Blanche Soyer, a product of the middle classes, who had assumed the title as her nom de plume.

A Nation Holding Out for a Hero Lennox Morrison 2011

Many great French chefs have conquered England and become culinary celebrities, but Alexis Soyer stands alone.

Cover to Cover 2008