Old-Fashioned Dinner Menus

By Edith Wells

What might the economical dinner menu consist of in 1905? What was on a vegetarian menu in 1910? If you visited the White House in 1913, what might be served? In this recipe and menu collection, you'll find a variety of old-fashioned dinner menus from the late eighteen hundreds through the early nineteen hundreds. There are simple menus perfect for an old-fashioned dinner night and six to twelve course formal dinners great for an old-fashioned dinner party. You'll also find suggestions and advice from antique cook books on how to serve dinner without a maid, old-fashioned table etiquette, and setting and decorating a table the old-fashioned way.

(1914) Menu
A "Calendar of Dinners" with 615 Recipes
Marion Harris Neil
Chicken Stewed with Olives
Chartreuse of Spinach
Baked Squash
Rhubarb Tarts
Coffee

"The palate that craves cakes , candies, and pastry may not be tickled by plainer diet, and the girl whose ideal of an agreeable lunch is realized in coffee and 'sinkers,' may turn with scorn from a meal that makes less strain upon digestion." - The National Cook Book (1896)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edith Wells
• Release date: Jan 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9780463546581

Edith Wells

Edith Wells collects and cooks antique recipes. Visit the website for more old-fashioned recipes. The vlog features old-fashioned dessert recipes made paleo, spiced up antique vegetarian recipes, and old-time bean pot recipes. On the blog, you'll find old-fashioned menus for an old-fashioned dinner night, crazy old-time recipes, and antique recipes recreated. Books include: Old-Fashioned Salads, Old-Fashioned Fruit Salads, Old-Fashioned Dinner Menus, and Old-Fashioned Afternoon Tea.

Book preview

A Word About White Sauce

White and Cream Sauce are popular sauces used for many meat and vegetable recipes. For those who don’t eat dairy, margarine is an easy substitute for butter and you could experiment with different milk substitutes. If you can’t find a milk substitute that you enjoy or a white sauce doesn’t appeal to you, try one of the following milk or cream free recipes.

Sauce Hollandaise

Various Brown Sauces (that use brown stock instead of milk)

Vinaigrette Sauce

Chestnut Sauce

In addition to the above, here are some additional sauces from The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1918) that do not contain milk or cream:

Brown Mushroom Sauce II

1 can mushrooms

¼ cup flour

¼ cup butter (margarine)

2 cups Consommé or Brown Stock

½ tablespoon lemon juice

Salt and pepper

Drain and rinse mushrooms and chop finely one-half of same. Cook five minutes with butter and lemon juice; drain; brown the butter, add flour, and when well-browned, add gradually Consommé. Cook fifteen minutes, skim, add remaining mushrooms cut in quarters or slices, and cook two minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Use fresh mushrooms in place of canned ones when possible.

Sauce Finiste

3 tablespoons butter (margarine)

1½ teaspoons Worcestershire Sauce

½ teaspoon mustard

Few grains cayenne

¾ cup stewed and strained tomatoes

1 teaspoon lemon juice

Cook butter until well browned, and add remaining ingredients.

For vegetables you can also use plain margarine or the more modern combination of olive oil and garlic. Choose the sauce substitute you think will work best for the recipe.

1891 Menu: Quail on Toast

Lizzie’s Cook Book

K. V. Darling

Mutton Broth.

Salad. Tomato and Lettuce

Quail on Toast.

Boiled Sweet Potatoes.

Corn.

Jelly.

English Fruit Pie with Cream.

Mutton Broth

2 lbs lean mutton

½ cup rice

Salt and pepper

Onion (optional)

Buy about two pounds of lean mutton from the shoulder, cut into small pieces, put into cold water and cook very slowly. Skim well, as the grease of mutton is not good. Cook about three hours, then strain and add one-half cup of rice. Salt and pepper to taste. Boil until rice is done and serve hot. Some people like a little onion, but when made for invalids, the onion should be omitted.

Tomato and Lettuce Salad

Tomatoes

Lettuce leaves

Salad dressing

Peel tomatoes and cut into round pieces. Take lettuce leaves and lay on salad dish. Lay the slices of tomatoes on the lettuce leaves, and pour the dressing over, or serve the dressing in a separate dish.

Quail on Toast.

6 quail

Hot water

Salt pork

Butter

Pepper and salt

Flour

Toast

Clean six quail carefully, slit up the back, and lay over them thin slices of salt pork, a little butter, pepper and salt. Have a good hot oven and lay the quail in a pan with a little hot water and flour. Bake about one hour, then lay toast on the platter, put the quail on top of the toast and serve very hot.

Boiled Sweet Potatoes.

Sweet potatoes

Sweet potatoes require more time for cooking than Irish potatoes. Take large, fine potatoes, wash, clean and boil with the skins on in plenty of water, but without salt. They will require at least one hour for cooking. Pour off the water, set them back on the stove in the pot in which they were cooked to dry for a few minutes. Peel them before sending to the table.

Green Corn.

Corn

Take as many ears of corn as are needed for dinner. Pull off the husks and boil the ears about twenty minutes before they are to be served. Pour on boiling water and cover tightly. When done, take out of water and serve on platter, wrapped in clean napkin.

Crab Apple Jelly.

Crab apples

Sugar

Wash and cut into halves nice crab apples. Put over fire in preserving kettle with a little boiling water. Stir constantly to keep from burning. When done, put the jelly into a bag, and let it drip from it. When the juice stops dripping, add to it an equal amount of sugar, measuring first a cup of juice, then of sugar. Boil until done. This takes longer than currant jelly. It is done when it drips clear from the spoon.

English Fruit Pies.

Fruit

Sugar

Spices

Cream

Biscuit Crust (see below)

Take a deep earthen dish and fill it with any fruit, adding sugar, spices or any seasoning desired. Lay over the top of this a thick biscuit crust and bake until well done. Serve with cream or with some liquid sauce. Fruit pies made in this way have no heavy undercrust, soaked with fat and juice, but are very appetizing and digestible.

Baking Powder Biscuits.

Flour, 1 pint.

Warm milk, 1 pint.

Salt, ½ teaspoonful.

Baking powder, 2 teaspoonfuls.

Butter, 1 tablespoonful.

Put the flour and salt in the bowl, rub in the butter with the hand and add the milk. Sift the baking powder into a half-cup of flour and add to the mixture, working gently with the hand until the dough is flexible, but not stiff. Roll out an inch thick, cut with a biscuit cutter and bake in a moderately hot oven (or in this case, lay on top of English Fruit Pie).

20th Century Cook Book (1900)

1892 Menu: Fillet of Beef, Larded

Gillett’s Magic Cook Book

E. W. Gillett

Cream of Asparagus Soup

Baked White Fish with Egg Sauce

Fillet of Beef, Larded

Mushrooms

Scalloped Potatoes

Peas

Browned Parsnips

Tomato and Lettuce Salad with French Dressing

Bent's Water Crackers

Neufchatel Cheese

New York Ice Cream

Coffee

Cream of Asparagus Soup.

1 bunch asparagus

1 quart milk

2 tbs corn starch

1 tbs butter

Salt and pepper

Wash one bunch of asparagus, tie up and put in a sauce pan of boiling water. Let it boil for three-quarters of an hour, take out the asparagus, cut off the tops and set aside until wanted. Put one quart of milk on to boil in a double boiler, then press the asparagus stalks through a colander and add them to the milk. Rub two tablespoonfuls of corn starch and one tablespoonful of butter together until smooth, add to the boiling milk and stir constantly until it thickens, then add the asparagus tops; salt and pepper to taste and serve. When you cannot get the fresh asparagus, canned asparagus may be used. Also one pint of white stock and one pint of milk instead of one quart of milk.

Baked Fish.

Fish

Salt pork

Pork fat

Fish will cook better if placed upright in the pan, instead of on one side. Fish that are flat like shad may be kept in place by propping up with stale bread or pared potatoes. Others may be made into shape of letter S. Run a threaded needle through the head, middle of body and tail, and draw string, fasten the ends. Thus prepared fish will keep their shape and can be better served. In putting fish to bake, rub the pan well with salt pork, and put small pieces of pork under the fish, which will prevent it from sticking. Baste often with pork fat; bake until brown.

Egg Sauce.

½ cup flour

½ cup warm butter

1 pint milk

Salt and pepper

3 hard-boiled eggs

Mix half a cup of flour with half a cup of warm butter; then have a farina boiler ready with a pint of milk and a little salt and pepper; let it boil, then stir in the butter and flour, and stir rapidly until it becomes creamy. Chop fine three hard-boiled eggs and add to the sauce, beating them thoroughly, and serve in a boat. You can substitute cream for butter, and by leaving out the eggs you have a very good white sauce.

Fillet of Beef, Larded

Recipe from: Smiley’s Cook Book and Universal Household Guide (1895)

Fillet of beef

Bacon

TO LARD.—This consists in sticking bacon or other specified articles into poultry, meat, etc. It is done with a larding needle. It is sometimes thought a difficult operation, but is really exceedingly easy. It improves dry, lean meats, and though it needs to be done neatly, to look well, a little practice teaches this readily. The method is to cut fat bacon into narrow strips of equal length and thickness; for poultry and game, these should be about 2 inches long, ½ inch thick, ¼ inch wide; for fillets of beef, loins of veal, or other solid joints, the same length, and ½ inch thick and wide. Notice that for all white meats, the bacon used must be cured without salt petre, as that tinges meats red in cooking. Put each of these strips of bacon (which is called a lardoon) into a larding needle, and pass the point of this through enough of the fowl or joint to hold the lardoon safely; then draw the needle through, leaving the bacon in the meat, with both ends projecting equally. Do this in regular rows, and at equal distances, until the meat is covered with a regular pattern. Generally the breasts only of poultry and feathered game are larded, and the backs, or backs and thighs of rabbits and hares.

Smiley's Cook Book and Universal Household Guide (1895)

Stewed Mushrooms.

Mushrooms

1 tbs butter

Flour

Salt and pepper

2 tbs rich cream (optional)

Wash the mushrooms carefully in cold water, cutting off the stalks, then pare the skin. Put a tablespoonful of butter in a saucepan, add the mushrooms and a little flour; let the mushrooms cook for twenty minutes in their own liquor, then add pepper and salt; serve hot. Some add a couple of tablespoonfuls of rich cream to the sauce.

Scalloped Potatoes

10 medium-sized potatoes

Butter

Salt and pepper

Cream or milk

Chop fine ten medium-sized potatoes, rub inside of baking dish well with butter, then put layer of potatoes, pepper and salt, and small pieces of butter, carefully over the potatoes, then another layer, and so on, till the dish is three-quarters full; fill up with cream or milk, bake half an hour in moderately hot oven.

Green Peas.

1 pint shelled peas

1 teacupful (¾ cup) milk

1 tbs butter

Pepper

1 tsp flour dissolved in a little milk

Put one pint of shelled peas into boiling salted water if young, boil half an hour, older ones need a longer time; when done pour off the water, add one teacupful of milk, tablespoonful butter, pepper; set on the stove and boil slowly, dissolve one teaspoonful of flour in a little cold milk and stir in as soon as they commence to boil; cream may be used instead of milk and flour.

Fried Parsnips.

5 or 6 parsnips

Flour (or egg and bread crumbs)

¼ teacup (3 tbs) butter or drippings

Scrape and wash five or six large parsnips, boil until tender in salted water, cut in slices lengthwise, dredge in flour and fry in quarter teacupful of butter or drippings, turning when brown. The parsnips are nice dipped in egg and bread crumbs instead of flour.

Tomato Salad.

1 head lettuce

6 large ripe tomatoes

½ cup mayonnaise

One head lettuce, six large ripe tomatoes, half-cup of mayonnaise; peel the tomatoes, and set on ice, wash and dry the lettuce, cut the tomatoes in halves, and lay on the lettuce, and pour over the mayonnaise.

Fruit Ice Cream.

1 quart milk

1 ounce gelatin

3 eggs, well-beaten

1 lb sugar

1 cup strawberries

1 cup chopped raisins

1 cup chopped almonds

Part of a grated cocoanut

1 cup currants

One quart of milk, one ounce of gelatin dissolved in the milk, three eggs well-beaten, and one pound of sugar. When partially frozen add one cup of strawberries, one cup of chopped raisins, one cup of chopped almonds, part of a cocoanut grated, and a cup of currants. Freeze.

1893 Menu: Breast of Mutton with Carrots

Aunt Babette’s Cook Book

Green Kern (Corn) Soup

Breast of Mutton with Carrots

Lemon Pie

Cheese

Fruit

Green Kern Soup

1 small teacupful (¾ cup) green kern

1 carrot

1 onion

Celery

Parsley

1-2 tomatoes

1 potato

Salt

Meat

Toasted bread

Soak about a small teacupful of green kern in a bowl of water over night. Put on the soup with meat as early as eight o'clock in the morning, half-past eight at the latest (provided you have dinner at noon); add a carrot, an onion, celery, parsley, one or two tomatoes, a potato, in fact any vegetable you may happen to have at hand. Cover up closely and let it boil slowly on back of the stove until dinner time. Put the green kern on to boil in water slightly salted, at least two hours before dinner, and as it boils down keep adding soup stock from the kettle of soup on the stove, always straining through a hair sieve, until all has been used up. Serve as it is or strain through a colander and put pieces of toasted bread into the soup. Cut the bread into little squares and fry in hot fat. Another way of using the green kern is to grind it to a powder. Also very fine.

Breast of Mutton with Carrots

Mutton

Salt

Ground ginger

Carrots

½ dozen potatoes

Sauce

2 tbs fat from mutton stew

1 tbs flour

1 tbs brown sugar

Cinnamon

Salt the mutton on both sides, adding a little ground ginger; put on to boil in cold water in a porcelain-lined kettle and cover up tightly and stew slowly. In the meantime pare and cut up the carrots and add these and cover up again. Pare and cut up about half a dozen potatoes into dice shape and add them three-quarters of an hour before dinner. Cover up again, and when done, make a sauce as follows: Skim off about two tablespoonfuls of fat from the mutton stew, put this in a spider and heat. Brown a tablespoonful of flour in the fat, add a heaping tablespoonful of brown sugar, some cinnamon and pour the gravy of the stew into the spider, letting it boil up once, and then pour all over the carrots and stew until ready to serve.

Lemon Pie

Puff paste

1 large juicy lemon (juice and grated peel)

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

4 egg yolks

1 tsp cornstarch

1 tsp butter

4 egg whites

A few tbs powdered sugar

½ tsp cream of tartar

Line a deep pie-plate with a rich puff paste, and bake a light brown. Remove from the oven until the filling is prepared. Take a large juicy lemon, grate the peel and squeeze out every drop of juice. Now take the lemon and put it into a cup of boiling water to extract every particle of juice. Put the cup of water on to boil with the lemon juice and grated peel, and a cup of sugar; beat up the yolks of four eggs very light and add to this gradually the boiling lemon juice. Return to the kettle and boil. Then wet a teaspoonful of cornstarch