This guy:
Ate this in 1520:
And this in 1526:
More details on these menus can be found here, on Ivan Day’s phenomenal blog.
Archive for the 'menu' Category
This menu comes from Fifteen Cent Dinners for Families of Six, a pamphlet released during one of the nation’s worst depressions, the Panic of 1873.  The author, Juliet Corson, strives to lay out decent meals for families on a restricted budget (I once spent a week eating her suggested diet, read about it here).  She allows for a bit of holiday joy with this Christmas dinner for a dollar, which is the almost the exact same Christmas dinner the Cratchits ate in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
Notice the special attention paid to the price of ingredients, which she says are based on the prices at Washington Market; the 5-lb turkey, and the last line: “After you have eaten it, think if I have kept my promise to tell you how to get comfortable meals at low prices.”
The following menu was served at the first elementary or uncooked banquet ever spread in this country, given by the authors, June 18, 1903…Â The object was more to show the numerous and attractive dishes that could be prepared from uncooked foods, than to observe or follow any particular dietetic rule or law.
—Uncooked Foods and How to Use Them, by Eugene and Molly Griswold Christian.
Weight amongst the high and low classes; from Never Satisfied: A Culutural History of Diets, Fantasies and Fat
Here’s my menu for tonight’s lecture,  Reducing Recipes: Historic Remedies for Your Expanding Waistline.  If you’re in the NYC area, you can get tickets here to taste all these good things.  And I have to say, everything turned out delicous–not just delicious “for diet food!”
Click the links to learn more about each course.
Dr. Kellogg’s Protose Meatless Balls
–Fletcherizing Demo-
J.W. Wiggelsworth’s “Concentrated Nutritionâ€
Richard Simmons’ Farewell to Fat Raspberry Brownie Points
Left: What a centerpiece! From Betty Crocker’s Party Book, 1960.
Turkey has been and always will be the star of a traditional Thanksgiving menu, but 18th and early 19th century menus commonly featured multiple meats. Â Local game, like venison, often made an appearance. Â Recipes for mince meat pie and “Thanksgiving Chicken Pie” abound in historic text. Â And Sarah Josepha Hale, the Anna Wintour of the 19th century, insisted that turkey be served along side ham or tongue.
This menu, from Buckeye Cookery (1877) shows the true bounty and diversity of what could grace your Thanksgiving table in the 19th century:
But some believed turkey shouldn’t make an appearance on the Thanksgiving table at all. Â John Harvey Kellogg, of cornflakes fame, was an ardent vegetarian. Â He, like many early veggies, believed that animal flesh could make a man violent and destroy digestion. Â Below, two flesh-free menus from his kitchens:
It’s likely he may have also suggested a main course of Roast Protose with Dressing. Â Protose, a mysterious, early faux meat, was produced commercially up until the last decade. Â It was made from (possibly) some combination of peanut butter and wheat gluten.
And lastly, let’s kitsch it up a bit with a menu from Betty Crocker’s Party Book, published 1960. Â Please note the lemon jell-o and horseradish salad.
For historic Thanksgiving recipes interpreted for the modern kitchen, including pumpkin pie, squash, and stuffing, go here!
Eaten on this day in 1851 at Niblo’s Saloon. I think my favorite dishes are the Chicken Sallad and the Beef Tongues, both served in “gelee”; the Pigeons and the Widgeons; and (no party is a party without) Charlotte Russe. I don’t know which would have been my favorite ornamental piece; probably the Fruits of Industry.
The St. Nicholas Society of New York was founded by a man named John Pintard. Pintard was largely responsible for the invention of our modern Christmas traditions, along with society members Washington Irving and Clement Clark Moore. These men were obsessed with the Dutch history of New York, and they appropriated St. Nick as New York City’s patron saint.
I’m reading a fascinating book on Christmas traditions, The Battle for Christmas by Stephen Nissenbaum. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and is a wonderful read this time of year. Nissembaum outlines the transition of the Christmas holidays from a time of gluttony and drunkenness to a celebration of domesticity. On the St. Nicholas Society and its members, Nissenbaum has this to say:
…It was John Pintard who brought St. Nicholas to America, in an effort to make that figure both the icon of the New York Historical Society and the patron saint of New York City….In the 1810s, Pintard organized and led elaborate St. Nicholas’ Day banquets for his fellow members of the New York Historical Society…
In Holland, St. Nicholas brings toys to children on his saint’s day, Dec. 6th. Historically, this tradition was observed by upper class Dutch families. The working class Dutch that immigrated to New Amsterdam did not bring this tradition with them.
…Nobody has ever found contemporaneous evidence of such a St. Nicholas cult in New York during the colonial period. Instead, the familiar Santa Claus story appears to have been devised in the early nineteenth century…It was the work of a small group of antiquarian minded New York gentlemen–men who knew one another as members of a distinct social set. Collectively, those men became known as the Knickerbockers…
In short, the Knickerbockers felt that they belonged to a patrician class whose authority was under siege. From that angle, their invention of Santa Claus was part of what we can now see as a larger, ultimately quite serious cultural enterprise: forging a pseudo-Dutch identity for New York, a placid “folk” identity that could provide a cultural counterweight to the commercial bustle and democratic ‘misrule’ of early 19th century New York.
St. Nicholas evolved into Santa Claus with the aid of Clement Clark Moore’s poem A Visit from St. Nicholas.
In the above menu, note the special “Knickerbocker” recipes, various traditional Dutch dishes. Additionally, take note of the “Ornamental Confectionery.” These would have probably been sculpted out of marzipan.
In the above menu, note the special “Knickerbocker” recipes, various traditional Dutch dishes. Additionally, take note of the “Ornamental Confectionery.” These would have probably been sculpted out of marzipan.
For another piece of fascinating holiday ephemera, check out Charles Dickens’s original manuscript of A Christmas Carol currently housed at the Morgan Library and Museum. The New York Times has a high-resolution scan of the full manuscript online, and “The reader who spots the most intriguing textual change will be invited to tea at the Morgan Library and Museum.”
Today is also the one year anniversary of this blog. Thank you all for your support, encouragement, and enthusiasm. This year has been so meaningful and wonderful, and I can’t wait to see what the next twelve months will bring!
A menu from The New England Economical Housekeeper by Esther Allen Howland.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Enjoy the holiday weekend.
