Soyer’s Magic Stove

If only that man lived long enough to see a cat food can.

Fancy dancy (combining several quips in one ; ).  Hey, maybe you’re the reincarnation of Soyer?

I’ve seen, but never used, some remote fuel stoves. But I haven’t ever heard of a recent one with a second flame to heat the remote fuel. Is that just unnecessary because there are better ways to pressurize the fuel? As amazing as I’m sure that stove was, on thinking about it, it seems like it might have been a bit dangerous and not terribly efficient.

I’d love to try one.

That is

1. really, really cool, and
2. probably a good way to set your yak-hide yurt on fire.

I have one of these little guys:

That would come handy if you needed to sweat in some plumbing while hiking.  Saves several pounds over the propane tank/torch.

Can you imagine having lunch on top of a pyramid with an alcohol stove?(ancient man made mountain)

“You reproach me for not sending you one earlier,” Alexis Soyer wrote in the introduction to the 1851 edition of his book of recipes The Modern Housewife. “That which I intended for you has been taken by the Marquis of N. [Normanby] and party to Egypt, with the view of having a dinner cooked on the top of the Pyramids.”¹The Marquis of Normanby was an eccentric, somewhat Jules Vernesque aristocrat to whom Soyer apparently had lent his latest culinary invention: a proto-camping gas cooker called the Magic Stove.

It was probably really fun to be an upper class Brit before 1914.  I think today you have to bring cold food to climb the pyramids.

I see references to “spirit lamps” in reading books from the 19th century (alcohol burners with wicks).  I assume those must have come first, before a Soyer-type burner.  At least they had them for science labs.  I don’t know if anybody took them out in the woods.

I would guess the lab “students” took the alcohol lamps out into the woods/prairies to heat their spot-o-tea water after a having a go at it in the grass ;-)

Oh the magic of google:

Modern portable stoves emerged from the mid-19th century. French-born chef, Alexis Soyer, became chef de cuisine at the Reform Club in London from 1837. He instituted many innovations, including cooking with gas, refrigerators cooled by cold water, and ovens with adjustable temperatures. In 1849 Soyer began to market his portable “magic stove” which allowed people to cook food wherever they were. The design of Soyer’s “Magic Stove” was based on the same principle as a kerosene lamp, in which a wick is used to draw fuel from a tank or reservoir to a burner.

Alexis Soyer’s “Magic Stove”, used by British troops during the Crimean War.[7]
During the Crimean War, Soyer joined the troops at his own expense to advise the army on cooking. Later he was paid his expenses and wages equivalent to those of a Brigadier-General. He designed his own field stove, the Soyer Stove, and trained and installed in every regiment the “Regimental cook” so that soldiers would get an adequate meal and not suffer from malnutrition or die of food poisoning. Catering standards within the British Army would remain inconsistent, however, and there would not be a single Army Catering Corps until 1945. This is now part of the Royal Logistics Corps, whose catering HQ is called Soyer’s House. His stove, or adaptions of it, remained in British military service into the late 20th century.

In the 1850s, the famous Alpine mountaineer Francis Fox Tuckett developed an alcohol stove for campers and mountaineers known as the “Russian furnace.” It was also known as the “Rob Roy,” after John MacGregor, the renowned canoeist who was nicknamed “Rob Roy.” MacGregor’s 1866 book, “A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe” was an international success and described his camping methods. Tuckett’s stove and integral cook kit was designed to hang from a cord in the interior of a tent.

Fridtjof Nansen also developed an alcohol stove in the 1880s based on the work of Adolphus Greely. This improved on early designs and later became the basis for the Trangia cooker.