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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205–213 of 213 recipes

  1. A whole pale golden roast chicken on an oval white dish, with a light scattering of buttered breadcrumbs, chopped chives and tarragon in the juices around it.
    Roast Fowl. Savory Crumbs.

    Meat & Poultry · 1 hr 45 min total

    Roast Fowl with Savory Crumbs (1911) 

    Roast fowl with savory crumbs from the 1911 paper-bag supper: a whole chicken roasted in a closed bag with its liver, a shallot and buttered crumbs with chives and tarragon.

  2. Braised quail halves with diced bacon and button mushrooms in a pale white-wine sauce, sprinkled with parsley, in an oval white dish on a marble table, with a carafe of white wine behind.
    a salmi of game

    Meat & Poultry · 40 min total

    Salmi of Quail (1868) 

    A salmi of quail after Jules Gouffé’s quick household salmi of larks of 1868: quail browned with bacon and mushrooms, dusted with flour and finished in hot white wine with parsley.

  3. A black cast-iron pot of soaked hardtack layered with boiled salt pork, onion and parsley in a little broth, a tin plate serving with a spoon, and two dry square hardtack biscuits on weathered gray planks.

    Meat & Poultry · 2 hr 30 min total

    Salt Pork and Hard Bread (1896) 

    Salt pork and hard bread from the field-cooking pages of the War Department’s 1896 Manual for Army Cooks: hardtack soaked soft and layered in a pot with boiled salt pork, onions and parsley, then stewed gently.

  5. About fifteen thin round biscuits with a sugar sparkle, pricked with fork holes, on a white plate, one broken in two, beside a small unlabeled bottle of rose water and a dried rose petal on a pale blue painted table.

    Breads & Cakes · 1 hr 45 min total

    Shrewsbury Cakes (1747) 

    Shrewsbury cakes from Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy of 1747: thin, crisp biscuits of flour and sugar bound with eggs, cream and rose water, with no butter, rolled out in sugar and baked in a quick oven.

  6. A dented aluminum mug of thick hoosh, ground dried meat and swollen broken crackers, with a spoon standing in it, beside a block of granular pemmican with one corner cut and two square crackers on a gray painted bench.
    hoosh

    Soups & Broths · 30 min total

    Sledging Hoosh (1911) 

    Sledging hoosh, the thick camp soup of Scott’s sledge journeys, made at home: beef pemmican boiled with water and broken ship’s biscuit, with an optional pinch of curry powder.

  7. Two scoops of pale pink strawberry ice cream in a footed pressed-glass dish on a linen cloth, with two fresh strawberries and a silver teaspoon beside it.
    Strawberry Ice Cream

    Desserts & Sweets · 6 hr total

    Strawberry Ice Cream (1896) 

    Fannie Merritt Farmer’s strawberry ice cream, from her Boston Cooking-School Cook Book of 1896: fresh berries sugared, mashed and sieved, folded into a light cream base thickened with a little arrowroot.

  8. A molded block of pale, vanilla-flecked ice cream on a frosted white plate beside two squares of plain cake, with a silver spoon on gray marble.
    Ice Cream: Vanilla

    Desserts & Sweets · 7 hr 5 min total

    Vanilla Ice Cream (1840) 

    Eliza Leslie’s vanilla ice cream, 1840: cream sweetened with vanilla-steeped milk and sugar, churned, then packed into a mold and frozen a second time.

  9. Six round, glossy golden-brown yeast buns on a wooden bread board, one split open in front to show a soft pale crumb with a pat of butter, beside a linen cloth and a bone-handled knife.

    Breads & Cakes · 3 hr 10 min total

    Very Good Wigs (1747) 

    Very good wigs from Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy of 1747: rich yeast buns of flour rubbed with butter, sweetened and spiced with nutmeg and ginger, wetted with eggs, sherry and warm milk.