Alexis Soyer cooked for the rich and poor alike. He transformed elite restaurant kitchens in London with new technologies such as gas stoves and he provided nourishment to the starving in Ireland and the battered and the bloody during the Crimean war.

Soyer's fierce desire to feed people went against the grain of Victorian common sense and he helped change how we think about who is responsible for public nutrition today.

Joining Lewis Bassett is Pen Vogler and Miranda Carter.

Pen discusses Soyer in her book Stuffed: A Political History of What We Eat and Why it Matters and some of Soyer's recipes also appear in her book Dinner with Dickens.

Soyer is a central character in Miranda's novel The Devil's Feast.

The Full English is produced by Lewis Bassett. Mixing and sound design is from Forest DLG.

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