Tag Archives: 1860s

August 28, 2016 · 3:12 pm

Dining for a cause

During the Civil War, fairs were held in over twenty Northern cities to raise funds for the United States Sanitary Commission, a private organization that supplemented the Union Army Medical Corps’ efforts to care for wounded soldiers.

New York state held five fairs, in Albany, Poughkeepsie, Rochester, Brooklyn, and New York City. The Brooklyn and New York City “Sanitary Fairs” were massive endeavors resulting in donations of enormous amounts — $300,000 and $1,000,000, respectively — to the Sanitary Commission.

The fairs featured music, displays of art and curiosities, tableaux vivants, and other entertainments. Restaurants were an especially popular attraction. This week, a friend whose ancestors were involved with the Brooklyn fair gave me a wonderful printed-in-gold bill of fare from that fair’s Knickerbocker Hall Restaurant.

There were two main eating places at the two-week-long Brooklyn & Long Island fair, the larger one located in the temporary, specially built two-story Knickerbocker Hall located next to the Brooklyn Academy of Music [shown above]. The other restaurant, The New England Kitchen, occupied another temporary building across the street [shown below].

The Refreshment Committee in charge of the two restaurants was quite successful in getting donations of food supplies, including almost $20,000 worth of wine. But public opinion nixed serving wine, along with holding raffles, as improper for a fair in the “City of Churches.” So the wine was given instead to the New York Metropolitan Sanitary Fair which was held about a month after Brooklyn’s, in April of 1864.

Despite the absence of wine, the Brooklyn fair outdid the Metropolitan NYC fair in how much money its eating places cleared. Compared to the Metropolitan NYC fair, the Brooklyn menu was simplified, with no relishes or fruit, and few soups, cold dishes, or pastries. Brooklyn netted $24,000 for the cause, while the Metropolitan fair cleared only a little over $7,000 because, unlike Brooklyn, they received little donated food (uh, what happened to the wine?). Brooklyn’s New England Kitchen added perhaps as much as another $10,000 for the Sanitary Commission.

Brooklyn’s Knickerbocker Hall Restaurant, which could seat 500 at a time and took in about $2,000 a day, was under the direction of the men’s refreshment committee, while the New England Kitchen was run by a committee of women. The Kitchen was tremendously popular, serving 800 to 1,000 persons daily. But it occupied too small a space and, as the commemorative volume issued by the fair noted, would have made a greater profit had it been able to accommodate larger crowds.

Unlike the Knickerbocker, the Kitchen’s bill of fare did not replicate that of a fine restaurant. Nor did the Kitchen follow the prevailing custom of hiring Afro-American men as waiters. The Kitchen used (white) women volunteers who served meals dressed in mid-18th-century costumes that visitors found ugly yet fascinating. For a set price of 50 cents, considerably less than a typical dinner composed from the Knickerbocker Hall’s a la carte menu, they served a down-home meal of such things as pork & beans, brown bread, applesauce, baked potatoes in their jackets, hasty pudding, and cider. Food was eaten from old china with a two-tined fork. The Kitchen also hosted events such as spinning wheel demos, apple paring bees, and an actual wedding.

Though it’s hard to draw a straight line from The New England Kitchen to women’s tea rooms of the early 20th century, it is notable how many tea rooms adopted a similar theme, right down to the old-style cooking fireplace and spinning wheel. It was also significant that so many women assumed executive and managerial positions on fair committees, especially in the New England Kitchen, and it’s probable that many of them remained active in public life after it ended.

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Filed under alternative restaurants, menus, odd buildings, Offbeat places, proprietors & careers, uniforms & costumes, women

Tagged as 1860s, menus, restaurants at fairs

March 31, 2015 · 6:55 pm

Famous in its day: Fera’s

In the second half of the 19th century wealthy families patronized Fera’s Confectionery and Restaurant in Boston, which had earned a reputation for high quality pastries and candies throughout the East. The business was established ca. 1855 in the basement of the Temple Club on West Street, and after 1876 was located on Tremont across from the Common and near the Boston Theatre. [The trade card shown front and back in this post is probably from the 1880s.]

At Fera’s, patrons could enjoy dainty luncheons or after-theater suppers or could arrange to have the firm cater their next dinner party, complete with table ornaments. Women shoppers might stop there for lunch or bon bons after a visit to the shopping district where, in 1866 for instance, they could consult a clairvoyant or pick up such things as freckle lotion, a new perfume from Mexico called Opoponax, potted meat, or library slippers. Fera’s was especially popular with female patrons, as was always the case with confectioneries in the days when many other kinds of restaurants were considered off-limits to respectable women. [see 1866 advertisement below]

Respectability in eating places was not easily achieved then and it’s surprising that Fera’s was able to rescue its reputation from a scandal it was caught up in not long after opening. It was constantly in the newspapers in 1857 because of a sensational divorce case in which a husband alleged that his wife had committed an “adulterous act” in Fera’s. Although the defendant’s lawyer argued that no such occurrence took place since the restaurant was “a wide hall” that was “open all the way through” (i.e., not divided into small private rooms or boxes), the divorce was granted, branding the defendant as an adulteress and leaving in doubt what had occurred where.

Somehow Fera’s survived the scandal, as well as George Fera’s own marital breakup, fires, robberies, changes of address, and a couple of bankruptcies.

At the Tremont address Fera’s was divided into two sections with the restaurant occupying space behind the confectionery and separated by an arched doorway. After redecorating in 1887, the restaurant was painted in cream and gold, with lower walls in marble and upper walls hung with large mirrors. Electric lights were installed, producing a bright and glittering style that emulated a Paris café.

Like many Europeans in the culinary trades who came to this country, George Fera had traveled a prestigious career path before arriving on U.S. soil in his early 20s. Born in Lübeck, Germany, he compressed a lifetime into a few years. Starting out at a young age he had trained in confectionery in Paris, succeeding so well that he was appointed confectioner to the Czar of Russia in St. Petersburg, where he remained for a number of years. Upon his arrival in the United States, he went to work at a New Orleans hotel, moving from there to New York City where he was employed by the famed confectioner Henry Maillard. He was said to have made for Maillard’s the first caramels produced in this country.

George Fera retired around 1890 and his two sons, who had been working with him for years, took over. In 1892 Fera’s closed and the furnishings and equipment were auctioned, including in part: “30 marble-top saloon tables, 75 bentwood chairs, 5 nickel plated show cases, one show case with deck, one square [show case] with fancy chocolates, two large mirrors, candy jars, 50 doz. wine, cordial and hot water glasses, decanters, Eper[g]nes punch bowl, triple plated spoons, knives and forks, plated castors, water pitchers and cold water urn, 600 decorated French china plates, platters, compotes, pitchers, cups and saucers, &c., Jap. plates, fine lot candies, French wedding cake ornaments, fruits and marmalades in jars, costume crackers, candy machines, bon bons, ice cream apparatus, &c.”

A chef’s life: Charles Ranhöfer

Or, how Americans got dishes fit to set before a king.

In the middle of the 19th century highly trained European chefs began arriving in the United States. Many were lured to California by the inflated gold mining economy while others stopped on the East coast. Charles Ranhöfer (he soon dropped the umlaut) arrived in 1856, first working for a Russian diplomat in NYC, then for a Washington DC restaurant and a private family in New Orleans. After spending some time in his home country of France in 1860, he returned to New York and in 1862 accepted a position as chef at the “uptown” Delmonico’s on Fifth Avenue near Union Square.

At this time New York City was engorged with wealth from the Civil War. The rich bought up yachts, race horses, fancy carriages, and real estate. It was the perfect time to introduce them to fancy French cuisine. Despite his young age, 26, Ranhofer had extensive experience, having begun his career as a child and running Paris restaurants and the kitchens of European royalty.

The reputation of Delmonico’s as the premier American restaurant, the one most nearly resembling the finest in London and Paris, was built largely during Ranhofer’s reign which lasted from 1862 to his death in 1899, with a brief interruption when he returned to Paris in 1876 around the time Delmonico’s moved from Union Square to Madison Square (shown).

The restaurant’s glory was founded less on regular patronage than on lavish banquets given to honor prominent men. Grand dinners of the 1860s included one given by British railway tycoon Sir Morton Peto and one for President Andrew Johnson and another for Charles Dickens. The Peto dinner, costing $30,000 in 1865 (over $400,000 now), spread Delmonico’s fame across the nation. Another celebrated dinner planned by Ranhofer featured a 30-foot pond set into the banquet table, banked with flowers to protect guests from splashing by four live swans.

Ranhofer’s name became widely known after he published his vast cookbook, The Epicurean, in 1894, divulging how “haute” restaurant cuisine was produced. The cookbook reveals just how many props and quantities of plaster of paris and glue (jelly) are needed to turn out highly decorated French dishes. The illustration of salmon steaks from The Epicurean shown here exhibits salmon coated along the sides with butter paste onto which circles and diamonds cut from truffles have been attached. Truffles also cover the yolks in the boiled egg border. On either side of the salmon dish are decorative spears (hatelets/attelets) of prawns. Ranhofer is also known for inventing baked Alaska – in his recipe ice cream is stuffed inside a hollowed out cone-shaped cake before the meringue is added.

Although his early training was similar to other top chefs, he was atypical in holding one job for over 30 years. Perhaps his percentage share of profits explains his long tenure with Delmonico’s. His base pay was good for its time – $300 ($7,300 today) a month in 1890 – yet not the highest on record. William K. Vanderbilt’s top kitchen man reportedly earned $6,000 a year. However when his share was added, it’s likely Ranhofer’s income exceeded Vanderbilt’s chef’s as well as those of the top men at New York’s Savarin Café and Hoffman House.

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Tagged as 1860s, 1870s, Charles Ranhofer, chefs, cookbooks, New York City

January 12, 2010 · 8:53 pm

Between courses: don’t sniff the food

Although most etiquette books seem to be directed at the female reader, S. A. Frost’s Laws and By-Laws of American Society published in 1869 appears to be aimed at men. Judging from the recommendations he makes below, there were some diners who sorely needed his advice if they didn’t want to be branded with “the certain mark of ill-breeding.”