The Forgotten Menu
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Recipes

Dishes from history’s famous tables, from the old menus and cookbooks. Each one names its source and scales to the size of your table.

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1–12 of 213 recipes

  3. A white soup plate with a gilt rim holding smooth, pale green cream of asparagus soup with five green asparagus tips laid on the surface, on a white damask cloth beside a silver soup spoon.
    Crème d’asperges à la Dumas

    Soups & Broths · 1 hr 10 min total

    Cream of Asparagus Soup (1894) 

    Delmonico’s cream of asparagus from Ranhofer’s Epicurean (1894): asparagus fried in butter, sieved with broth and velouté, finished with egg yolks and cream.

  4. A slice of toast on a white plate with a gilt rim, covered with creamed chicken in a pale sauce with red pimento, celery and parsley, with three green asparagus tips laid across the top, a fork beside it and a second plate behind.
    Creamed chicken Delmonte

    Meat & Poultry · 2 hr total

    Creamed Chicken Delmonte (1920) 

    Poached chicken in a thick chicken-stock sauce with pimentos, celery, eggs and lemon, served on toast with asparagus tips: Creamed Chicken Delmonte, the second menu in Mrs. Wilson’s New Year’s Midnight Repast of 1920.

  6. A cut-glass punch bowl of pale amber cider with banana slices, red cherry pieces and a large lump of ice, with a ladle in it, beside four glasses of the same punch on a white linen runner.
    New Year’s punch

    Drinks, Punches & Ices · 1 hr 10 min total

    New Year’s Punch (1920) 

    Fresh cider with sliced bananas and cut cherries, served in tall glasses from a bowl with a lump of ice: the loving-cup New Year’s punch of Mrs. Wilson’s Cook Book of 1920.

  7. Thick cream sauce with plump oysters spooned over slices of toast on a white plate.
    Oysters à la Newburg

    Fish & Seafood · 40 min total

    Oysters à la Newburg (1920) 

    Oysters heated in a thick cream sauce with egg yolks, lemon juice and paprika: the smaller oysters à la Newburg of Mrs. Wilson’s Cook Book of 1920, a cousin of the Newburg on her New Year’s midnight menu.

  8. Twelve small rye sandwich triangles in two rows on a white enamel tray with a blue rim, each showing a filling of white cottage cheese flecked with red pimento and green, with a layer of orange seasoned butter, beside a table knife and a blue-striped towel.
    Pimento sandwiches

    Starter · 25 min total

    Pimento Sandwiches (1920) 

    Rye bread spread with seasoned butter and a filling of pimentos, celery, onion, parsley and cottage cheese, cut in triangles: the pimento sandwiches of a 1920 New Year’s midnight menu.

  9. Four poached salmon steaks of different shapes with pale coral flesh in the middle of a long white platter, ringed by thick round slices of lobster tail with red shells, each with a thin brown wine sauce spooned over it, and a white sauce boat of the same sauce beside the platter, on a pale linen cloth.
    Saumon à la Victoria

    Fish & Seafood · 1 hr 30 min total

    Salmon à la Victoria (1894) 

    Salmon slices cooked in a ham and vegetable stock with red wine, the stock reduced to a buttered sauce, served with lobster: Ranhofer’s Epicurean, 1894.

  10. A clear golden stock in a white china bowl beside a plate of pieces of boiled veal on the bone with chopped parsley and a pat of butter.
    Stock for Clear Soup. First Lesson

    Soups & Broths · 1 hr 30 min total

    Soyer’s Stock for Clear Soup (1854) 

    Alexis Soyer’s first lesson in A Shilling Cookery for the People, 1854: veal, bacon and onion stirred down to a pale gravy, then simmered in water, skimmed and strained into a clear stock.