History at the table
What was on the menu
Moments in history told through what was eaten, each with period recipes to cook today.
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60 stories
Ancient Rome 3 stories
What Did a Roman Farmhouse Bake?
Cheese bread baked on leaves, honeyed cheese fritters, must cakes on bay leaves and an olive relish: the kitchen of Cato’s farm manual, second century BC.
5 recipes
What Was Actually Served at Trimalchio’s Dinner?
Olives in a bronze donkey’s panniers, sausages on a silver grill, a boar hung with baskets of dates: the food of Petronius’s dinner, and three Roman recipes.
3 recipes
What Did Pompeii Buy at the Street Counter?
Hot wine, stews of duck, pork, goat, fish and snails, beans, and bread from the bakery next door. What Pompeii’s street counters sold, and four Roman recipes.
4 recipes
The Middle Ages 5 stories
What Did the Vikings Actually Eat?
Viking Age food, from the finds at Birka, York and Hofstaðir: barley bread, milk and curds, eels and herring, and beef when a hall gathered its people.
3 recipes
What Did a Medieval Countess Give the Poor to Eat?
Eleanor de Montfort’s 1265 household roll gives the poor 120 herrings, bread, beer and once beef, while her own kitchen took herrings by the hundred.
3 recipes
What Did a Medieval Bishop Eat at Christmas?
Bishop Swinfield’s Christmas of 1289: herring, eels and salmon on the Eve, then beef, pork, a boar, partridges, geese and venison, with some meat kept back.
3 recipes
Show 2 more from the Middle Ages
What Did a Paris Household Eat in 1393?
Medieval Paris recipes from Le Ménagier de Paris, about 1393: watercress porée, a herb omelette with cheese, crespes and fried cheese fingers for fish days.
4 recipes
What Was Served at Henry IV’s Coronation Feast?
Henry IV’s coronation feast of 1399: boar’s head, peacocks, cranes, a custard tart of dates and marrow, rice cream and quinces, in three courses.
5 recipes
The 1500s and 1600s 3 stories
What Was Really Eaten at the 1621 Harvest Feast?
One letter describes the 1621 feast at Plymouth: wildfowl from a day’s shooting and five deer from Massasoit’s men. Here is what it names, and what came later.
3 recipes
What Happened to the Dutch Herring Fishery in the War of 1665?
In 1665 the Dutch navy needed seamen, and the herring fleet is said to have been kept home. A painting cheered its return in 1667; the catch records tell more.
3 recipes
What Did Buccaneers Eat When They Reached Guam in 1686?
What buccaneers ate at Guam in 1686: breadfruit baked by islanders and brought out hot each day, coconut-fed hogs and melons, then rice and salt pork for sea.
3 recipes
The 18th century 5 stories
What Did Captain Cook Feed His Crew to Keep Them Well?
Cook credited sauerkraut, portable soup and malt for a healthy crew. The soup was dried beef glue for the pease pot, and Hannah Glasse printed how to make it.
3 recipes
What Was on the American Tea Table Before the Boston Tea Party?
Boston Tea Party food: no Boston account names what was eaten at tea before December 16, 1773, but the colonies’ cookbooks point to wigs, biscuits and cakes.
4 recipes
What Was the Soup Meagre John Adams Liked in France?
John Adams liked a French soup on 31 March 1778 and later wondered if it was soup meagre. A Paris cookbook of 1771 shows what a meatless soup could be.
2 recipes
Show 2 more from the 18th century
Did the Dutch East India Company Really Burn Its Spices?
Yes: a minister at Batavia saw surplus and spoiled spices burned while invited guests took refreshments in a tent. Whether it kept prices up, he could not say.
3 recipes
What Was in London’s Penny Soup in 1799?
London’s soup houses of 1799 sold the poor a penny quart of beef, shin, split peas, Scotch barley and onions, simmered all night in iron boilers on Brick Lane.
3 recipes
The 19th century 23 stories
Was Chicken Marengo Really Cooked on the Battlefield?
No record from 1800 says Bonaparte’s cook invented chicken Marengo. The cookbooks tell another story, with three recipes from 1868 to 1907.
3 recipes
What Did Grimod’s Tasting Jury Judge in 1805?
Samples sent carriage paid, a weekly jury and a mention in print: how Grimod judged the food of Paris in 1805, from Champagne mustard to a giant ramequin.
3 recipes
Where Did the Victors Dine in Paris After Waterloo?
In the restaurants of Paris: Véry’s full of red coats in July 1815, and Beauvilliers, famous for his suprême and Soubise cutlets, who printed an English menu.
4 recipes
Show 20 more from the 19th century
What Was in the Pot Accum Warned About in 1820?
Fredrick Accum’s 1820 Treatise warned of poisons cooks added at home: cherry-laurel leaves in custards, and copper or brass to turn pickles green.
4 recipes
What Did the Cratchits Eat for Christmas Dinner?
In A Christmas Carol the Cratchits eat roast goose with sage and onion, apple sauce, mashed potatoes and a flaming plum pudding, then chestnuts and hot gin.
4 recipes
How Did a Cook Make Ice Cream in Four Minutes in 1844?
In 1844 a London magazine saw two and a half quarts of ice cream made in under four minutes. How the machine worked, what the clock left out, and the flavors.
4 recipes
What Did Soyer’s Dublin Soup Kitchen Serve in 1847?
Alexis Soyer’s Dublin famine soup kitchen of 1847 served a little beef, vegetables, flour and barley in timed batches; doctors said it held too little food.
3 recipes
What Did Catherine Dickens Plan for a Winter Dinner Party?
Fresh herrings, mutton stuffed with oysters, stewed kidneys and a greengage tart: a winter dinner for six or seven from Catherine Dickens’s 1852 menu book.
3 recipes
What Was Served at the Dinner Inside the Iguanodon?
Mock turtle soup, cod with oyster sauce, roast turkey, game, a Bavaroise and five wines: the bill for Hawkins’s 1853 dinner in the Iguanodon mould.
3 recipes
What Did Soyer Cook for the Soldiers at Scutari?
Mutton and barley soup, beef tea, broths and rice pudding, cooked by weight from the army ration: the hospital diets Alexis Soyer set up at Scutari in 1855.
3 recipes
What Was Richmond Cooking in the Year of the Bread Riot?
In April 1863 hungry women marched through Richmond. A receipt book printed in the city that year shows how its kitchens were told to make do.
4 recipes
What Was in the 1864 Sanitary Fair Cookbook?
A Poetical Cook-Book, dedicated to Philadelphia’s 1864 Sanitary Fair, set verse over oyster loaves, pudding and gingerbread, and gave its stewed duck in rhyme.
4 recipes
What Was on the Sweets Table at Lincoln’s Inaugural Ball?
Lincoln’s 1865 ball bill of fare: ornamental pyramids, a dozen cakes and tarts, charlottes and creams, six ice creams. What they were, and four to make.
4 recipes
What Was Served When Dickens Dined at Delmonico’s in 1868?
Oysters, asparagus cream à la Dumas, timbales à la Dickens and a fish for Queen Victoria: the 1868 press dinner, and why its two witnesses disagree.
3 recipes
How Was Bread Baked at a Frontier Fort?
One brick oven, two soldier bakers and an army rule that the bread be cold: how Fort Larned on the Santa Fe Trail baked its bread in the 1860s.
4 recipes
What Was on the Menu at the Suez Canal Opening in 1869?
The Suez Canal opening supper at Ismailia, November 18, 1869: a fish named for two seas, English roast beef, Suez shrimps and Russian salad. Three recipes.
3 recipes
What Did Paris Eat Under Siege in 1870?
Horse first, then dog, cat, rat and the zoo’s elephants, and by January a daily ration of 300 grams of bread with straw in it. What Paris ate, and four to make.
4 recipes
What Did a Total Abstinence Candy Society Eat Instead?
In an 1889 novel written for a real New York charity, schoolgirls swear off bought candy to pay for a poor boy’s keep: what they gave up and ate instead.
4 recipes
What Did the Southwest’s Tamales Look Like in Print?
In 1893 Vicenta Labadie de Chaves of New Mexico sent her tamales, in Spanish, to the Chicago World’s Fair cookbook, and half the method landed 118 pages away.
4 recipes
What Did People Eat for Breakfast in the 1890s?
Fruit, a cereal with cream, eggs, fish or chops, hot breads, potatoes and coffee: the Waldorf’s breakfast card of April 22, 1896, priced line by line.
3 recipes
What Did a Chafing-Dish Supper Serve?
One hot dish cooked at the table, such as cheese, oysters, shrimps or mushrooms on toast, beside a cold salad made ahead: the chafing-dish supper, 1896 to 1914.
4 recipes
What Did Klondike Stampeders Eat on the Trail?
Beans and bacon, bread and butter, dried peaches and coffee: the 75-cent trail meal of 1897, and why much the same plate cost $3.50 once it reached Dawson.
3 recipes
What Was the ‘Embalmed Beef’ Scandal of 1898?
In 1898 a general said the army’s beef was embalmed. An inquiry found no chemicals, but agreed the canned beef was unpalatable as issued in the tropics.
4 recipes
The Edwardian years 9 stories
What Was Served at the First Nobel Dinner in 1901?
The first Nobel Prize dinner, Stockholm 1901: brill in the Norman style, fillet of beef, roast hazel grouse with an Estrée salad, and a Grand Hôtel pastry.
3 recipes
What Did London’s Poor Eat at the King’s Dinner in 1902?
Roast beef and sauce, potatoes, bread ad lib. and plum pudding: Fulham’s card for the King’s Dinner to London’s poor, 5 July 1902, and what it leaves out.
3 recipes
Why Did Butter Make Margarine Expensive?
Artificially colored margarine owed ten cents a pound in tax, uncolored ¼ cent. In 1904 the Supreme Court ruled that dye arriving in the butter counted too.
4 recipes
Show 6 more from the Edwardian years
Why Did Kitchens of the 1910s Cook Dinner in a Box?
The fireless cooker was a packed, insulated box: food boiled on the stove went in hot and finished on its own heat, saving fuel and watching.
3 recipes
Why Did London Cook Dinner in Paper Bags in 1911?
In 1911 a London club chef promised dinner from a greased paper bag: no pans, no smell, no shrinkage. The craze, the rules and four recipes from his book.
4 recipes
What Did Scott’s Men Eat for Midwinter at Cape Evans?
Scott’s men at Cape Evans ate seal soup, roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, plum pudding and mince pies for Midwinter 1911, and pemmican hoosh on the march.
4 recipes
What Did Third-Class Passengers Eat on the Titanic?
The Titanic’s third-class menu for April 14, 1912: porridge and ham and eggs, roast beef and plum pudding, stewed figs at tea and gruel at supper.
3 recipes
What Was Served at the Pan American Society’s Dinner in 1912?
The Pan American Society’s 1912 Waldorf Astoria dinner for Latin America’s envoys: sorrel soup, sea bass meunière, squab chicken and alligator pears.
4 recipes
What Was the Last First-Class Dinner on the Titanic?
On April 14, 1912, the first-class dinner card offered salmon with mousseline sauce, roast duckling and punch romaine. The menu and four recipes.
4 recipes
The First World War 3 stories
What Did the Soldiers Share in the Christmas Truce of 1914?
In the Christmas truce of 1914, cigarettes, cigars, rum, wine, cake and, by December 26, plum puddings crossed no man’s land, as soldiers’ letters tell.
3 recipes
What Did the Suffragists Cook?
In 1915 Pittsburgh suffragists sold a cookbook for the vote. Its leaders sent bacon and cheese, a caramel custard, a pudding and an accidental quince.
4 recipes
How Did You Feed a Hundred People Without Wheat in 1918?
When the 1918 wheatless days reached America’s lunch rooms, one manager wrote down how to feed a hundred: corn, barley, rice and peas, weighed to the ounce.
4 recipes
Between the wars 5 stories
What Did You Eat on the Last New Year’s Eve Before Prohibition?
By New Year’s Eve 1919 a wartime law already barred selling alcoholic drinks. A 1900 bartender’s manual and a 1920 cookbook show the free lunch that went with the saloon, and a midnight supper.
4 recipes
What Did the Peacemakers Eat in Paris in 1919?
Two days into the 1919 peace conference, the French Senate gave Wilson lunch for 250. The menu survives: bass, Pauillac lamb, artichokes. Three to make.
3 recipes
What Did Americans Cook When the Bars Closed in 1920?
Saloons closed on January 17, 1920. The cookbooks of the dry years show the food they offered for home entertaining: cheese on toast, waffles, cookies, sundaes.
4 recipes
Show 2 more from Between the wars
What Did You Nibble With a Cocktail in the 1920s?
Salted nuts, olives, cheese straws and rolled brown bread-and-butter: what a London cocktail book of 1925 set out with the shaker, and what dry America served.
5 recipes
What Did Aunt Sammy Tell Listeners to Cook in July 1931?
On 7 July 1931 the USDA’s radio aunt read out creamed mushrooms and toured her new cookbook, whose July dinner ran from broiled chicken to strawberry ice cream.
4 recipes
The Second World War and after 3 stories
What Did the King and Queen Eat at the Roosevelts’ 1939 Picnic?
The menu for the Roosevelts’ 1939 hot dog picnic for King George VI at Hyde Park: Virginia ham, hot dogs, cold turkey, cranberry jelly and strawberry shortcake.
4 recipes
What Was on the Royal Train’s Menu in 1945?
A typed menu dated 1 July 1945 survives with the timetable of the Sultan of Morocco’s train from Mauriac to Paris: spring consommé, rolled sole, apricot ice.
4 recipes
What Did Concorde Serve on the Way to Washington in 1978?
The Concorde menu from Paris in 1978: caviar, truffled duck, lobster with Sauternes, mushrooms with green beans and apricot Bavarian cream.
3 recipes
