profound effect on the cooking and eating habits of several generations of Britons". The Times reported that the book had taken the author ten months to prepare, and during that time, as well as writing it, the chef had "furnished 25,000 dinners, 38 banquets of importance, comprising above 70,000 dishes, besides providing daily for 60 servants, and receiving the visits of 15,000 strangers, all too eager to inspect the renowned altar of a great Apician temple". Ireland During the Irish potato famine, which began in 1845, Soyer was among those agitating for action by the British government to alleviate the starvation. He had recipes published in The Times for cheap but nourishing soup that could be made in large quantities to feed the hungry; he put theory into practice, first in a soup kitchen in Spitalfields in the East End, where Huguenot silk weavers had been impoverished by cheap imports. Under the pressure of public opinion Parliament passed an act authorising the establishment of soup kitchens in Ireland. At the government's request Soyer sought leave of absence from the committee of the Reform in 1847 and went to Dublin, where he set up a kitchen capable of feeding a thousand people an hour. Soyer's recipes were attacked by the anonymous "Medicus" of the rival Athenaeum Club, who maintained that "Every physician and physiologist knows that the digestive organs in man are incapable of assimilating sufficient nutriment for health or strength from any liquid diet". The Queen's doctor, Sir Henry Marsh, stated that although a liquid diet would suffice for children and for adults in sedentary occupations, labourers needed solid food as well. Soyer responded by providing solid foods such as "pea panada", which an independent report found "only one-fourth the price of bread, while it is fully five times as nutritious". The report concluded that Soyer: While in Ireland Soyer wrote a sixpenny book, Soyer's Charitable Cookery, or The Poor Man's Regenerator, and donated part of the proceeds to charity. Return to London In 1849 Soyer brought out what Ray calls "his most ingenious production", Soyer's Magic Stove, a compact cooker with which food could be prepared at the table. The Morning Chronicle commented that it was certainly portable: "the whole apparatus can be carried at the bottom of your hat". It was a development of earlier devices, and was further developed after his day: an essentially similar device remains