With the aid of paper-bag cookery, the up-to-date householder may eliminate the kitchen altogether, thus gaining another room.
Better flavour, increased nutrition, fuel saving, time-saving, no smells, and no cleaning! With such positives, Nicolas Soyer’s book dedicated to cooking food in a paper bag burst onto the scene in 1911.
Soyer was used to cooking en papillote and had often used a trimmed sheet of foolscap to wrap fish and bake it in the oven. The only problem was that the food ended up tasting like paper. There had to be a better option. He tried various types of papers; experiments that resulted in bags catching fire or exploding. Eventually, he reached out to the paper company, James Spicer and Sons. They made a product that met Soyer’s requirements, and thus the ‘Soyer Bag’ came to be.
Soyer’s method of cooking was touted as something that would save money in the long term. But there was an initial outlay. There was a book of instructions and recipes, the special paper that retained moisture and heat, and a wire grid for the oven. The latter was deemed especially important. Paper bag cookery would not work if the air did not circulate around the food.
His demonstrations at Brooks’s Club in London soon led to rumours of demonstrations at the House of Commons. Supported by regular appearances in the press, interest in paper bag cookery grew and soon reached Australia.
Gushing articles spread through the pages of the newspapers. Soyer had “revolutionised the art of cooking.” His instructions were simple: place your meat, poultry, fish, or vegetables on the greased paper, fold it up, fasten the ends with a clip, and place it on the wire grid inside a preheated oven.
Paper bag cookery was everywhere. Newspapers regularly reported about the method, the history behind it, and provided recipes. Advertising boomed from the pages. The books will be available soon. Orders for the paper could not be filled until August. Always make sure to only buy Soyer’s paper! Use anything else at your own risk!
Training schools held demonstrations for people who wanted to see it in action. One in Melbourne had space for 100 people and attracted thousands. When the liftman refused to take any more passengers, they poured into the stairwell. At the entrance to the theatre, college authorities kept the masses at bay. When they eventually left, “the usual calm of the Empire-arcade” was disturbed by the noise of women discussing the events of the afternoon and looking as though they had had “a violent time in a bargain sale.”
Curiously, despite the overwhelming publicity, there were no Soyer-branded bags available to purchase in Australia. The Melbourne branch of James Spicer and Sons advised people not to go looking for them but to stay home and let their local agent, stationer, or storekeeper do the “pushing and fighting for you.”
Competitors quickly took advantage of the craze as well as the demand for paper. Unwilling to wait, people bought from other brands. Papermills, it was said, went into overdrive. An air of desperation permeated the advertising for James Spicer and Sons. The Soyer Bag had a special texture; the Soyer Bag was guaranteed to be free from arsenic and other substances; only the Soyer Bag had captured the European market. If you were tempted by a rival, they suggested putting “a piece of paper in your mouth and GET THE TASTE OF IT…” Did you really want your food to taste like that? Only choose Soyer Bags. Refuse all substitutes!
Their popularity in England was said to have caused the delay. When they finally arrived, it was October, and by that point, the shine on paper bag cookery had begun to tarnish.
In June 1912, a year after the first articles were printed in Australian newspapers, ‘The Sun’ announced that paper bag cookery was dead. They sought out a number of different people for their opinions on its decline.
The most common answer was its limited use. Cooking soup in it, for example, was out of the question. Food such as chicken or fish did well in the bag, but other things did not. Anyone cooking steak would have been disappointed. There was no browning of the meat; it simply stewed in the parcel.
One should not be alarmed if the dish looks uncooked when served. Such an appearance is inseparable from the method.
The superintendent for Sydney’s Technical College’s cookery department also deemed it a failure. They found the use of paper bags to be based on theatrics and described it as “one of those crazes which come and go and are forgotten within a very short time.”
One retailer blamed the failure on the manner in which paper bag cookery landed in the Australian market. Announcements were made before the Soyer Bags had even arrived. The public was eager to try it out and satisfied themselves with substandard paper that did not work as well and smelled bad. When the Soyer Bags finally arrived, it was too late, and interest had dwindled.
A chef at Holland House in Sydney had the final word. They explained: “It fails because it is impossible. One cannot cook in the paper bag. There are things which can be wrapped in paper, but only when steam can escape. The bag allows of no evaporation, and therefore soddens.”
A month later, Soyer’s Bags were advertised as reduced to clear.
While Soyer and his paper bags fizzled out, the method itself, which already existed in various forms around the world, did not. As a reporter for ‘Punch’ noted, it was “almost as old as cookery itself.” There is a sense that its popularity in 1911 was bolstered by clever advertising and the immense number of articles printed about it in the newspapers. Attention-grabbing headlines such as “Pots and Pans to be Scrapped” no doubt helped.
Among the many articles, it was Filomena, writing for the Illustrated London News, who was the most insightful about the trend. They remarked, “There is nothing new under the sun” perhaps, but human forgetfulness may be trusted to afford a new lease of life to many an old notion.”
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Sources:
The Illustrated London News; Saturday, Apr. 15, 1911; Volume 138; Issue: 3756; Page 556.
Paper-bag Cookery; Vera Serkoff; 1911; Page 70; Courtesy of Project Gutenberg
Soyer’s Paper-Bag Cookery; Nicolas Soyer; Sturgis & Walton Company; 1911; Courtesy of Google Books
1911 'PAPER BAG COOKERY.', The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), 28 June, p. 9. , viewed 02 Jul 2023, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article196204481
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1911 'Advertising', The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), 15 July, p. 5. , viewed 04 Jul 2023, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article196207818
1911 'Advertising', The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), 30 October, p. 15. , viewed 07 Jul 2023, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article197390143
1911 'PAPER-BAG COOKING.', The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW : 1883 - 1930), 13 July, p. 9. , viewed 10 Jul 2023, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article238850944
1912 'PAPER-BAG COOKERY DEAD.', The Sun (Sydney, NSW : 1910 - 1954), 2 June, p. 22. , viewed 10 Jul 2023, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article228858901
1912 'Advertising', The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW : 1883 - 1930), 5 July, p. 1. , viewed 10 Jul 2023, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article238629698