In 1854, a book with a charming old-fashioned title was published in Petersburg - "The Complete Confectioner".

The full title is much longer: a guide to the preparation of all confectionery products - cookies, pies, cakes, small pastries, berry and fruit preserves - compiled from twenty years of experience "under the guidance of Ivan Ivanovich Izler." Today, this rare edition from the Nicholas era appears at antique auctions in single copies.
Izler himself is an almost legendary figure for pre-reform Petersburg. Johann Lucius Izler, a Swiss from Davos, came to Russia as a child: his family fled from the famine of 1816-1817. The confectionery craft was inherited by him - his stepfather was a master of the Russian guild of confectioners, and his maternal uncle owned a famous confectionery on Nevsky, frequented by students from Pushkin's time and, according to legend, by Pushkin himself. Around 1836, Izler bought the establishment and significantly expanded it, and in 1840 he opened a café on the first floor of the Armenian church building on Nevsky, 42 - allegedly the first in Russia to arrange separate rooms there.
True nationwide fame came from another venture. In 1848, Izler rented a mineral water pavilion in New Village - the famous Petersburg "Minerashki." From a modest health resort, where people previously came to drink healing waters and take baths, he created a grand amusement garden: the Gungly orchestra, a gypsy choir, a troupe of gymnasts, living pictures, fireworks, and illuminations. Crowds flocked to it - up to eight thousand people in an evening. Nicholas I personally visited the establishment during a cholera epidemic and gifted the owner three thousand rubles - Izler was proud of this visit for the rest of his life.
The confectioner, restaurateur, and recognized king of metropolitan entertainment - this is how the man whose name opens "The Complete Confectioner" is remembered. The book preserves the taste of an entire era of Russian-Swiss culinary tradition in Russia, which was almost forgotten by the end of his life - just like its famous hero, who died in 1877 in extreme poverty.