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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169–180 of 213 recipes

  1. Slices of braised beef with small dumplings, sliced potato, carrot and turnip in a thin brown gravy, in a deep earthenware dish with a spoon.
    Beef in the good old farmer fashion

    Meat & Poultry · 3 hr 10 min total

    Beef in the Farmer Fashion (1911) 

    Beef in the farmer fashion, a whole Sunday dinner in one bag from 1911: floured flank of beef pressed among potatoes, carrots, turnips, onions and little dripping dumplings.

  2. Slices of boiled beef under a light brown sauce flecked with chopped gherkin and parsley, in an oval copper dish beside a slice of country bread.
    served up in a sauce piquante

    Meat & Poultry · 40 min total

    Boiled Beef with Sauce Piquante (1868) 

    Boiled beef with sauce piquante from Gouffé’s 1868 Royal Cookery Book: slices from a pot-au-feu warmed in broth under a sharp sauce of shallots, vinegar, gherkins and parsley.

  4. A round charlotte russe walled with upright sponge fingers and topped with smooth pale lemon icing, with a wedge on a second plate showing the sponge top, the vanilla-flecked cream and the sponge base.
    Charlotte à la Russe, Vanilla

    Desserts & Sweets · 5 hr 15 min total

    Charlotte Russe (1840) 

    Eliza Leslie’s charlotte russe, from her 1840 Directions for Cookery: vanilla custard and whipped cream set in a straight-sided mold lined with sponge cake, turned out and iced with lemon.

  8. Twelve round chocolate-coated creams in rows on waxed paper in an old tin baking sheet, one cut in half to show a smooth white fondant center, with a dinner fork on a dark wooden table.
    Chocolate Cream Drops

    Desserts & Sweets · 14 hr 10 min total

    Chocolate Cream Drops (1884) 

    Balls of soft white fondant dipped in sweet chocolate melted with a little ground cinnamon, after the chocolate cream drops in an 1884 Chicago candy maker’s trade manual.

  9. A dark chocolate loaf cake on a cream-glazed plate with two thick slices cut, beside a small glass dish of pale hard sauce, on a wooden table.
    Chocolate Cake

    Breads & Cakes · 2 hr 15 min total

    Chocolate Potato Cake (1918) 

    Chocolate potato cake from Carolyn Putnam Webber’s war-time recipes of 1918: a loaf made with oleomargarine, mashed potato and barley flour, half sweetened with corn syrup.

  10. Shaggy coconut macaroons, white with pale golden tips, piled on a white plate, with more on a sheet of parchment on a painted wooden table.
    Ornamental Pyramides: Cocoanut

    Desserts & Sweets · 50 min total

    Cocoa-nut Maccaroons (1840) 

    Cocoa-nut maccaroons from Eliza Leslie’s best-selling American cookbook: little balls of grated coconut, sugar and beaten egg white, dusted with sugar and baked quickly.

  11. A thick white hotel-ware bowl of pale, creamy corn chowder with kernels of yellow corn and small cubes of potato, on a plain counter.
    Corn chowder

    Soups & Broths · 1 hr 15 min total

    Corn Chowder (1918) 

    A wheatless corn chowder from a 1918 lunch-room book: corn and potato in a celery-leaf stock thickened with rice flour and cornstarch and finished with milk.

  12. Eight ovals of fried bread on a white plate, each topped with sliced smoked cod's roe, flecks of chives and parsley, a pinch of cayenne and a small pat of anchovy butter.
    a dainty savoury of anchovy and cod’s roe

    Fish & Seafood · 1 hr 30 min total

    Croûtes of Cod’s Roe (1906) 

    Croûtes of cod’s roe from Mrs Beeton’s 1906 Book of Household Management: smoked roe fried in butter on rounds of fried bread with shallot, parsley and cayenne, finished with anchovy butter.