I’m busy planning Thanksgiving dinner, and as I do every year, am frustrated by the tyranny of today’s menu, and my family and friends’ expectations. People are so hidebound nowadays, demanding turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. It hasn’t always been the case. I found a treasure trove of old Thanksgiving menus from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at the UNLV Libraries digital collection, and I discovered that Thanksgiving menus in days of yore had so much more variety. Oysters, calves’ feet, turtle soup, and frogs’ legs factored into many of the menu offerings, as did a variety of boiled meats. And more meats. Not so much with the vegetables.
Come along with me on this trip through time!
If we were at the Charleston Hotel in 1849, our Thanksgiving feast could start with clear calf’s foot, au madiere. We might move on to boiled jetty sheepshead, with a sauce Hollandaise, to be followed with sweetbreads (no, that’s not Cinnabon—it’s the thymus gland of a calf), roast larded quail, and candied green apples with cream.
Getting hungry? Imagine the pages flying from the calendar, and now it’s November 29, 1883, and we’re at the Teegarden Hotel in La Porte, Indiana.
We could start with mock turtle or ox tail soup, then have the boiled cod with oyster sauce, followed by your choice of boiled tongue, boiled heart, or boiled ham. Then another choice: should it be roast beef, turkey, mallard duck, pork, or saddle of venison? But hey—they served vegetables eventually, around the fifth course (celery, cold slaw, beets, “horse radish,” potatoes, succotash).
Some of the menu designs are quite beautiful, like this one from Revere House in 1884:
Or hip late-fifties, like the Sands Hotel and Casino in Vegas, 1958:
Some are flat-bizarre, like this one from the Grand Hotel in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Note that the chef is reading a “proclamation” to the turkeys (a signed death warrant?), and holding a cleaver behind his back.
Or this one, from the Revere House Hotel in Clinton, Iowa, 1884. Note how the turtle in the tureen holds the crab, which clamps down on the frog, its mouth agape, desperately trying to escape. They’re all on the menu.