On his journeys which became The 24-Hour Soup Kitchen, author Stephen Henderson often imagined himself accompanied by the 19th century chef, Alexis Soyer.

Born in 1810 into humble circumstances in Meaux-en-Brie, France, Soyer rose to become the most famous chef in Victorian England.  A true bon-vivant, Soyer was an excellent singer, mimic, raconteur, and a prolific inventor of labor-saving devices for the kitchen.  He also essentially invented the “soup kitchen,” or a highly-efficient way of feeding masses of poor people, when he went to cook in Ireland in 1847, after the country was devastated by the great potato famine.