MAGIC STOVE: BARRY, SOYER AND THE REFORM CLUB OR HOW A GREAT CHEF HELPED TO CREATE A GREAT BUILDING

This little book with the lengthy title The Magic Stove: Barry, Soyer and The Reform Club or How a Great Chef Helped to Create Great Building explores the architecture and technology of the London Reform Club building (1837-1840), a noted but generally misinterpreted work of Charles Barry, Britain's most famous unknown nineteenth-century architect. Barry's fame rests mainly on two over-familiar monuments: the Houses of Parliament and Highclere Castle, the decor of television drama Downton Abbey. The other name is Alexis Soyer, almost mythical chef-decuisine who introduced not only French style of cooking but also mechanization of food preparation on a large scale, which he first practiced in collaboration with Barry in the design of the futuristic kitchen of the Reform Club. The result was a machine like building of pro to-fireproofing construction, in which a steam engine drove the spits of the kitchen, smoke and cooking odors were evacuated by a primitive form of air-conditioning and in which gas was introduced not just for lighting but for the first time for cooking. Contemporary visiting French architecture critic Cesar Daly called the building 'almost a living being'.