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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181–192 of 213 recipes

  1. A white sauceboat of pale drawn butter sauce with chopped parsley, some poured over a piece of boiled white fish on a white plate with two small boiled potatoes, on a linen tablecloth.
    Drawn Butter Sauce

    Vegetables & Sides · 15 min total

    Drawn Butter Sauce (1918) 

    Drawn butter sauce from a First World War cookbook of 1918: a plain white sauce for fish and vegetables made with margarine in place of butter, sharpened with cayenne and parsley, the last of the fat stirred in just before serving.

  4. Four fillets of sole flecked with parsley and chopped mushroom in a thin buttery sauce, in an opened paper bag on a white platter, with scissors beside it.
    Filleted Soles, fines herbes

    Fish & Seafood · 30 min total

    Filleted Soles Fines Herbes (1911) 

    Filleted soles fines herbes from the 1911 paper-bag cookery craze: fillets baked in a sealed bag with parsley, mushrooms, shallot, butter and a splash of sherry.

  5. A cut-glass dish of pale ivory hard sauce swirled with a spoon, beside a baked apple in honey syrup with hard sauce melting over it, on a pale wooden table.
    Hard Sauce

    Desserts & Sweets · 40 min total

    Hard Sauce (1918) 

    Hard sauce remade for the First World War: margarine in place of butter and corn syrup doing the work of two-thirds of the sugar, flavored with vanilla, from a wartime cookbook of 1918.

  6. A round cornmeal cake cut into six wedges on a rough wooden board by a brick hearth, one wedge pulled out and split with a pat of melting butter, beside a small crock of butter and an old knife.

    Breads & Cakes · 1 hr total

    Johnny Cake (1796) 

    Amelia Simmons’s johnny cake from American Cookery, 1796: a flat, crusty cake of Indian meal scalded with hot milk, seasoned with salt, molasses and a little fat and worked stiff with cold water.

  7. A square white cake under a thin lemon glaze, cut into squares on a round white platter, with two squares on a small plate in front showing the fine white crumb.
    Lady Cake

    Breads & Cakes · 2 hr 45 min total

    Lady Cake (1840) 

    Eliza Leslie’s lady cake, from her 1840 Directions for Cookery: a white almond butter cake raised only by beaten egg whites, baked in a square pan and iced with lemon.

  8. Rows of small pale caramel-colored squares of maple cream candy on white parchment on a marble slab, one square broken in two to show its fine, grainy inside, beside a long steel kitchen knife.
    Maple Cream

    Desserts & Sweets · 1 hr 50 min total

    Maple Cream Candy (1884) 

    Maple cream candy after the one a Chicago candy maker sold over the counter in 1884: maple syrup boiled to a soft ball, cooled and stirred until pale and creamy, then set in a pan and cut into squares.

  9. Eleven small lidded mince pies of flaky pastry, each with a slit and a crust of coarse sugar, on a wire rack over a linen cloth, a twelfth broken open on a white plate to show currants, raisins and candied peel, beside an old muffin tin.
    excellent mince pies

    Desserts & Sweets · 2 hr total

    Mince Pies (1906) 

    Mrs Beeton’s mince pies from her 1906 Book of Household Management: suet, currant, raisin and apple mincemeat with candied peel and a little brandy, baked in puff pastry and dredged with sugar.

  10. A clear, pale gold jelly turned out of a fluted ring mold with peeled peach slices set through it, on a clear glass cake stand, with a cut wedge on a small white plate.
    Peaches in Chartreuse Jelly

    Desserts & Sweets · 9 hr 15 min total

    Peaches in Chartreuse Jelly (1912) 

    Peaches in Chartreuse jelly, a dessert from the Titanic’s first-class dinner of April 14, 1912, rebuilt from two of Agnes Marshall’s 1890 jellies: peach slices set in a clear, liqueur-scented jelly.

  11. One tall scoop of very pale green ice cream, smooth and without nuts, softening at the base on a blue-and-white transferware plate, with an empty white teacup behind it on a pale pine table.
    Pistachio Ice Cream

    Desserts & Sweets · 6 hr total

    Pistachio Ice Cream (1896) 

    Pistachio ice cream with no pistachios in it: a pale green custard ice cream flavored with vanilla and almond, after Fannie Merritt Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School Cook Book of 1896.

  12. A domed mid-brown plum pudding studded with raisins and currants on a white china dish dusted with sugar, with blue rum flames around its base.
    plum-pudding

    Desserts & Sweets · 4 hr 35 min total

    Plum Pudding with Rum (1868) 

    Jules Gouffé’s plum pudding with rum, 1868: suet, raisins, currants, candied peel, breadcrumbs and apple, mixed with rum, boiled four hours in a mold and flamed with warm rum at the table.