American Food/ History lovers might like to peruse the New York Library's

American Menu Collection, 1851-1930
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital....cfm?col_id=159

the menus here

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital...enu%20Collect...


sillage

This is so exciting to me! Thank you Sillage for posting. I'll be perusing these menus for a long time.

My great great aunt Porsha traveled across country by train in 1864. I have her feathered (Peacock) diary and one passage reads like this (in flowery ornate penmanship):

September 16, 1864
We stopped at a lovely rest in Louisville Kentucky. Lunch was served within the towering rooms of the
railway station. The menu was cucumber dill soup, roast beef, lamb with mint sauce, fried trout, creamed potatoes, fresh asparagus, carrots with cinnamon, yeast rolls, cherry pie and cake.
We had 15 minutes to eat.

(This meal was not selection from a menu. The establishment served all of it to each passenger. Portia weighed about 80-90 pounds as an adult. I still have the luncheon card listing each item).

My family still sits down to Thanksgiving with my father admonishing "You all have 15 minutes to eat".

Some years ago the NYPL did an exhibit of the NYC menus from this collection, Sillage and it was a great show. There were several menus for women's only restaurants from the turn of the century because a single lady eating at a regular restaurant (which usually had a mostly male clientele) was looked on with suspicion. Also, oysters weren't considered luxury fare, and German food enjoyed the popularity that Italian food has today.

Here's a link to the Easter menu at Luchow, a famous German restaurant that closed in 1982.
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital...Num=&pos=2#

I had to look up what an English snipe was. It's a bird.

The Rinderbrust is a beef brisket.

What amazes me about old menus is the vast amounts of meat and the dearth of fruits and vegetables. That might explain their shorter lifespans.

see "life a la henri" great read and fascinating culinary history too.