[OSMH] Dining in the Gilded Age
Jan. 10th, 2008 04:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidThis month's lectures are about the Victorian Era, co-sponsored with the Victorian Society. Today, the focus was on fashionable dining, with the lecture given by Susan Williams.
It didn't feel like a coherent narrative, so my notes are a bit disjointed.
A number of things changed in the 1850s. For one thing, dining rooms became a more usual part of the house for middle class people (rather than an eating parlor), though it was oftentimes used for more than just dining. Another thing that changed was the trend towards fancier dining, which required more elaborate table settings, and sets of things (china, silver (with ever more specialized implements), crystal), rather than whatever one happened to have. If one could afford it, many different sets would be used, a dinner set, a tea set, and a dessert set (in ascending order of fanciness).
As part of this increasing formality, napkins migrated from in a ring beside the plate (read: one could reuse one's napkin from meal to meal) to folded in some fancy way atop the plate, often with a roll somehow inside. The style also changed from having the food as what went in the middle of the table to purely ornamental centerpieces.
There were all sorts of fancy, specialized implements, designed to eat all sorts of foods without having to touch them (now that forks, first introduced in the States in the 1600s, finally were the standard, rather than fingers), such as asparagus tongs, ice cream forks (which had a spoon-like bowl, and wide tines on the end, for eating pie a la mode), fruit knives, strawberry forks (very long tines), and lemonade sippers (long silver straw with a fancy lacework-like piece on the end in the glass, for scooping out/blocking seeds or other undesirable bits). And there were butter dishes that not only kept the butter chilled, but had somewhere to put the butter knife (other than the table; greasy knives = more laundry, which was a huge task). Instead of a lazy susan (or something) for condiments, there was a "castor set", with mustard and pepper and vinegar, etc.
Other specialized pieces were designed for status foods. Thus, the banana boat (picture a footed glass cake plate that bends up like a taco on both sides, for holding a bunch of bananas), because bananas were new and trendy, because you can only get bananas once there's refrigerated transportation. Or the celery vase, so one could have celery stalks upright, both to decorate the table and for later ease of serving. For some reason celery was a luxury vegetable, cultivated and served at fancy/holiday meals. And then there were all sorts of sardine-specific things, because sardines were among the first canned foods, and imported from France, very much with the fashionable.
By the 1820s-30s, cookbooks were published, and by the 1870s, cooking was becoming professionalized, with classes for both the working/immigrant woman, so she could go into service, and the upper class lady, so she could manage her staff. Along with this was the transition to more standardized measurements.
The glass canning jar was invented in the late 1850s, which allowed more reliable preservation of food. Also invented in the 1850s: the can opener. Which came along about the same time as canned food, not surprisingly. The first canned items available were fish (see sardines, above), tomatoes, and soup. Interestingly, soup had transitioned from being seen as a way to use stuff up that was filling to being something more important, even French, so soup became much more obligatory at fancy meals, and there were recipes for many kinds of soup. Also seen as French (= stylish): salad.
Egg beaters were also invented around this time, and there was a cake revolution because of it. Before then, most cakes were eggless, relying on things such as baking powder for any kind of leavening. Once egg beating was less onerous, they found their way into cakes, making them much lighter, more like today's cakes.
Someone asked about dinner times. Apparently an 1850s dictionary says it is eaten in the evening, except in the country, where the custom is still to eat it at midday (with tea/supper in the evening). "Lunch" wasn't needed until dinner migrated later.
It didn't feel like a coherent narrative, so my notes are a bit disjointed.
A number of things changed in the 1850s. For one thing, dining rooms became a more usual part of the house for middle class people (rather than an eating parlor), though it was oftentimes used for more than just dining. Another thing that changed was the trend towards fancier dining, which required more elaborate table settings, and sets of things (china, silver (with ever more specialized implements), crystal), rather than whatever one happened to have. If one could afford it, many different sets would be used, a dinner set, a tea set, and a dessert set (in ascending order of fanciness).
As part of this increasing formality, napkins migrated from in a ring beside the plate (read: one could reuse one's napkin from meal to meal) to folded in some fancy way atop the plate, often with a roll somehow inside. The style also changed from having the food as what went in the middle of the table to purely ornamental centerpieces.
There were all sorts of fancy, specialized implements, designed to eat all sorts of foods without having to touch them (now that forks, first introduced in the States in the 1600s, finally were the standard, rather than fingers), such as asparagus tongs, ice cream forks (which had a spoon-like bowl, and wide tines on the end, for eating pie a la mode), fruit knives, strawberry forks (very long tines), and lemonade sippers (long silver straw with a fancy lacework-like piece on the end in the glass, for scooping out/blocking seeds or other undesirable bits). And there were butter dishes that not only kept the butter chilled, but had somewhere to put the butter knife (other than the table; greasy knives = more laundry, which was a huge task). Instead of a lazy susan (or something) for condiments, there was a "castor set", with mustard and pepper and vinegar, etc.
Other specialized pieces were designed for status foods. Thus, the banana boat (picture a footed glass cake plate that bends up like a taco on both sides, for holding a bunch of bananas), because bananas were new and trendy, because you can only get bananas once there's refrigerated transportation. Or the celery vase, so one could have celery stalks upright, both to decorate the table and for later ease of serving. For some reason celery was a luxury vegetable, cultivated and served at fancy/holiday meals. And then there were all sorts of sardine-specific things, because sardines were among the first canned foods, and imported from France, very much with the fashionable.
By the 1820s-30s, cookbooks were published, and by the 1870s, cooking was becoming professionalized, with classes for both the working/immigrant woman, so she could go into service, and the upper class lady, so she could manage her staff. Along with this was the transition to more standardized measurements.
The glass canning jar was invented in the late 1850s, which allowed more reliable preservation of food. Also invented in the 1850s: the can opener. Which came along about the same time as canned food, not surprisingly. The first canned items available were fish (see sardines, above), tomatoes, and soup. Interestingly, soup had transitioned from being seen as a way to use stuff up that was filling to being something more important, even French, so soup became much more obligatory at fancy meals, and there were recipes for many kinds of soup. Also seen as French (= stylish): salad.
Egg beaters were also invented around this time, and there was a cake revolution because of it. Before then, most cakes were eggless, relying on things such as baking powder for any kind of leavening. Once egg beating was less onerous, they found their way into cakes, making them much lighter, more like today's cakes.
Someone asked about dinner times. Apparently an 1850s dictionary says it is eaten in the evening, except in the country, where the custom is still to eat it at midday (with tea/supper in the evening). "Lunch" wasn't needed until dinner migrated later.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 10:04 pm (UTC)Could the celery vases also have been to allow the stalks to sit in water? When I cut up celery for snacking, I keep the stalks upright in a jar with (slightly salted) water so that the strings (xylem? phloem?) drink in the water and stiffen. This way, my celery is not "stringy."
no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 11:06 pm (UTC)celery apparently doesn't grow very well around here. perhaps they had to wait until there was a good place to grow it available?
celery
Date: 2008-01-11 02:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-11 02:26 am (UTC)I believe that the celery vases would allow the stalks to be in water. I hadn't known that letting them drink would help with the stringiness. Thanks.