Scutari Barrack Hospital, Constantinople,
May 1st, 1855.
To Brigadier-General Lord Wm. Paulet.—Important regulations to insure for the future a good, clean, wholesome, and nutritious class of food, and delicate beverages, to be daily produced for the comfort of the sick and wounded in all the hospitals of the East, as well as for the standing army, which will prove economical both in a saving of time, and also a pecuniary sense. Monsieur Soyer most respectfully solicits the assistance of Brigadier-General Lord Wm. Paulet in granting the following requisites, which Monsieur Soyer considers indispensable to carry out the objects of the important mission conferred on him by the Government of her Britannic Majesty Queen Victoria the First, and of which his lordship has already given proofs of his high approval and satisfaction, as well as his assistance in facilitating the introduction of a completely new system of diet, which has met with the approval of Doctor Cumming, the chief medical officer, and every medical gentleman connected with his staff in the various English hospitals at Constantinople.
First requisite.—That for every important hospital, a professed man-cook shall be engaged, with a civilian assistant, instead of military, as is now the case, and the principal to be under military rules and regulations.
Second.—That all military men now engaged cooking in the hospitals and barrack kitchens shall be immediately instructed in the art of camp-cooking. As they are already acquainted with the plain mode of cooking, it will only require a few lessons from Monsieur Soyer, under his new and simple style, to become thoroughly conversant with this branch of culinary operations, highly essential at the present crisis, and about which the Right Honourable Lord Panmure, her Majesty’s Minister-at-War, expressed the greatest anxiety personally to Monsieur Soyer, on his mission to Scutari, with a view to disseminating the system throughout the army. Monsieur Soyer feels assured that if present in the camp for a few weeks he will be enabled to carry out this important object, at the same time introducing wholesome and nutritious food made out of the usual allowances of provisions supplied to the army, so soon as his field or bivouac stove shall be adopted by the Crimean authorities.
A. Soyer.
Approved. W. Paulet, B.-General, Commanding Troops.
Scutari, May 1st, 1855.
I then returned my thanks and bade his lordship adieu. Thus terminated my Scutari duties, which were afterwards carried on to my entire satisfaction under the direction of Mr. Robertson, and supported by Lord W. Paulet; later by General Storks, now Sir Henry, who succeeded his lordship.
Shortly after the opening of my kitchen, I received a visit from General Vivian and his aide-de-camp, Captain Ramsey. During his visit, Miss Nightingale entered the kitchen. I then introduced the General to her, and we had a very animated and interesting conversation relating to hospital treatment, &c. The General expressed his high gratification at being introduced to Miss Nightingale, and I then had the honour of showing him through the hospital, not omitting the other kitchens, where the cooking was still carried on upon the old system, as I had not had, in that short space of time, an opportunity to remedy it. The General and Captain Ramsey expressed their high approval and satisfaction of the great improvement I had already made in the culinary department of that monster establishment. I may, perhaps, be pardoned for being vain enough to quote the gallant General’s remark prior to his leaving my kitchen, which remark encouraged me so much in the prosecution of my labours. It was thus:—