New York Luncheonettes: No-Frills Dining in the Gilded Age

One problem confronting early twentieth-century New Yorkers was where to find a flea dip to go with a proper dish of ground beef. The Canine Luncheonette, one of the Gilded Age's more charming innovations, supplied the remedy. To those four-legged companions of women who would disappear into the shops on Fifth Avenue the establishment offered comfort and refection. There pooches could dine in grand style and could even steal a nap. (Longer reposes, however, had to take place down the street at the doggie hotel, whose appurtenances naturally included a savory bone for gnawing.)

Of course, the dog-eat-dog spirit of the times meant that opulence often existed side-by-side with the most extreme privation. The Walther League Messenger reminds its readers that even as the Canine Luncheonette cossetted its clients, "human beings in Hungarian 'Siberia' are eating dog flesh in their despair." In such a condition "the meat and biscuits which are fed to those pampered pets of New York society" these poor unfortunates would no doubt regard as "a rare delicacy."

For luncheonette customers of the two-legged variety, delicacy took a back seat to expedience. Quick, simple fare was the order of business, and it proved popular among students, shoppers, transients, and others on the go. Initially adjuncts to soda fountains, luncheonettes featured vanilla milkshakes, toasted English muffins and hamburgers – all items that could sate pangs that surfaced between ordinary meal times. As an 1915 issue of The Dispenser's Formulary reports, many a Manhattanite was delivered comfortably to the dinner hour thanks to the timely intervention of "a well-made bowl of soup, an individual service of chicken pie, a sandwich, and a strawberry dessert."

The hustle and bustle of luncheonettes attested to their convenience. Customers perched above Formica counters gave their orders directly to the line cooks. Those seated in booths dealt with waitresses who translated their meal requests into an exotic idiom. "Doughnuts and coffee" became "sinks and suds." "Make it high and dry" meant "Hold the mayonnaise and mustard."

Indeed, bread, meat and cheese never admitted of as much combinatorial variety as they did at luncheonettes, where sandwiches dominated the menu. Bread "spread thinly with butter" The Dispenser's Formulary considers best for sandwiches, provided the accompanying meat isn't "dragged from its covers as the consumer bites through it." To avoid such a mishap it's better to swap cold cuts for fruit. The Dispenser's Formulary thus presents this recipe for a tutti frutti sandwich, which you can be sure makes for quick, easy, orderly eating.


Tutti Frutti Sandwich

One pound stoned and chopped dates, two ounces of shredded ginger, one pound ground roasted and salted peanuts, one pound of seeded and chopped raisins, one half pound strained honey and the juice of two lemons. Pack in a jar and keep in refrigerator. Use as needed.

The Mighty and the Offal: Humble Pie

Some carried long bows and forked arrows; others harquebusses, muskets and Lochaber axes. They wore thin-soled shoes, tartan hose, knotted handkerchiefs, sky-blue caps, and garters fashioned from wreathes of straw. Thus equipped and adorned, they, the Irish nobility of Braemar, ventured into the Highland countries to hunt deer.

Numbering fourteen or fifteen hundred, these noble hunters would rise with the sun to consult on the particulars of the day's enterprise. After deciding the best place to herd their quarry, they dispersed in all directions. Sixteenth-century Londoner John Taylor,  ferryman by trade and chronicler by avocation, relates the details of one such hunting party. The participants were intrepid. No obstacle proves too formidable to overcome. They waded "up to their middles through bournes and rivers" in search of cover. Upon a signal from scouts charged with spotting game, the "tinchel," or circle of sportsmen, would close in, driving the startled ruminants toward other hunters lying in wait, who greeted them with hundreds of snapping Irish greyhounds and scores of "arrows, dirks and daggers." In less than two hours' time "fourscore fat deer were slain" for the noble hunters "to make merry withal."

The choice cuts of venison went to high-born hunters and were baked into a pastry served on the manor lord's dais. Seated lower because a few rungs down on the social ladder, the master of the hunt and his fellows received their due in the form of a pie containing the heart, liver and other inward parts of the deer. Known colloquially as "humbles," "umbels" or "numbles," these ingredients have since come to be associated with acts of mortification and obeisance. An old saying goes, "Whence, as the haunch and neck were for 'Lordings' and the umbles ... for the yeoman."

Victorian writer George Augustus Sala insists, however, that humble pie's reputation is wholly unearned. "He who first decried Humble Pie, and libelled it as a mean and shabby kind of victuals," he observes in his 1862 tome The Seven Sons of Mammon, "was very probably some envious one who came late to the feast, and of the succulent pasty found only the pie-dish and some brown flakes of crust remaining."

If you wish to secure yourself a piece of savory humble pie, the recipe below, which also appears in Sala's work, should, despite its fragmentary character, spare you any unwarranted culinary humiliation.

Humble Pie

"Take the humbles of a deer," says the recipe, – you see, there is venison for you to begin with, – and then it goes on to enumerate slices of bacon, condiments, buttered crust, and so forth.

Full Fathom Five Thy Father Dines

A New York newspaper (the exact one is unkown) reported that one evening in the summer of 1907 a dinner was given thirty-five feet under the sea by the inventor of a submarine christened The Argonaut. He along with thirteen guests boarded his vessel, which was was anchored at Bridgeport, Connecticut, and sank below the waves to travel several miles along the ocean floor. Postprandial entertainment consisted of two divers exiting via a special compartment in order to display the virtues of "the patent diving suits" they had donned.

This extravehicular exhibition was followed by some sight-seeing. The Argonaut passed near a sunken coal barge before floating back to port, its passengers delighted and astonished, and no worse for the "slight headaches" of which they complained. All in all, the captain of The Argonaut and his guests suffered "no inconvenience ... from the submarine voyage."

For all the novelty that it no doubt presented for its inventor's dinner guests, The Argonaut was not without long historical precedent. The first such underwater craft appeared in 1620 and underwent multiple tests in the fetid waters of the Thames. The first military application came in 1776, when a small, acorn-shaped machine named "Turtle" tried, and failed, to sink the HMS Eagle, a British warship. During the American Civil War the French-designed Alligator was the first submersible to feature compressed air. It moved by means of a screw propeller powered by a hand crank.  Yet like its predecessor "Turtle" it proved fortune's fool, disappearing on April 1, 1863 in a storm off Cape Hatteras while en route to its first combat deployment at Charleston. Indeed, it wasn't until the First World War that submarines acquitted themselves.

But throughout the centuries-long wriggling toward seaworthiness, submarines remained consistent in one respect: their cramped, stuffy quarters, which were hardly a fit setting for a spendid repast. The Argonaut apparently proved the exception. What dishes that ship's passengers enjoyed on their voyage is left a matter of speculation, but it is safe to assume they were more sumptuous than the austere fare characteristic of the life aquatic. This was no more true than while aboard a Soviet submarine during the Second World War. Herring was a staple, red wine a rare treat. And that elixir vitae of Russian folk, vodka, was strictly rationed, each crewman receiving a mere three-and-a-half ounces a day. To combat cuisine-induced ennui, Soviet submarine cooks exercised tremendous creativity, and in so doing managed to turn the usual rations of groats and canned beef into menu items that, if not delicious, were at least palatable; for with no condiments, dressings or spices available, food on Soviet submarines was dull – even by British standards.

Should you find yourself several leagues under the sea when your hunger surfaces, try tucking into a bowl of buckwheat groats prepared according to the recipe below, which appears in the 1914 cookbook Scientific Feeding. And if you're feeling particularly creative, try garnishing your groats with sugar and cream.


Buckwheat Groats

Wash one cup of buckwheat groats several times with cold water, add about six cups of boiling water and two teaspoonsful of salt. Boil rapidly for 20 minutes or until it thickens, then allow it to cook 50 or 60 minutes longer on the stove or in the oven. Serve with hot cream. Cooked or stewed dried prunes may be eaten with it, or added to the mush just before serving. Buckwheat is a winter food. People who suffer from eruptions on the skin after eating buckwheat should let it alone.

Neither Fish Nor Flesh: Creatures That Swim the Air

Only when they leap in the air do flying fish, with their small, box-like heads and gunmetal-gray bodies, betray their avian affinities. Aloft on broad pectoral fins, they sail just above the ocean waves. Should an impediment in the form of a ship cross their path, they in a body take flight in order to avoid it, rising as a glittering, undulating cloud to glide diagonally to the ship's course, against the wind and seemingly also against gravity. Rough seas prod flying fish to greater feats: They glide without ever touching water, thus behaving more like gulls than like any gilled creature.

The singular ability of flying fish has occasioned rather fanciful speculation by some of history's most formidable philosophical and literary minds. Aristotle conjectured that flying fish spent their days in their watery environs but decamped at night for dry land. And Victor Hugo likely drew from them inspiration for the seaside reflections of Gilliatt, the meditative Guernseyman of his 1866 novel, The Toilers of the Sea. Gilliatt refused to believe the air a "mere desert." He thought it must be teeming, rather, with "creatures colorless and transparent." Indeed, this "man of dreams" sees no evidence to suggest why this should not be the case. "Since the water is is filled with life," he wonders, "why not the atmosphere?" After all, the sea harbors creatures which, out of the water, resemble "soft crystal," and when returned to their natural habitat disappear in "that medium by reason of their identity in transparency and color." Why then cannot other transparencies inhabit the air? If men were to "fish the air as we fish the depths of the sea," Gilliatt argues, "we should discover a multitude of strange animals." Upon such discovery, he concludes, "many things would be made clear."

When not engaged in metaphysical speculation on the nature of etheric beings Gilliatt earns a living by harvesting the sea's bounty. His skill in that trade is such that he often brings home "heavy takes of fish," which he shares with the poor of the island -- who, it should be noted, "were little grateful" to receive these donations.

The ingratitude of the needy proceeds from their distrust of Gilliatt, whom they consider strange, as well as possessed of unnaturally good luck. Whatever their attitude toward him, the Guernsey poor would no doubt find their condition remedied upon the discovery that the odd fisherman's daydreams are correct: Creatures do exist that swim the air as fish do the sea. The air would become, then, a second hunting ground from which humankind could draw sustenance. Having the air to "fish" as well as the sea, even the most unfortunate would never again know want. Growning under their sumptuous burdens, the poors' tables and cupboards would be mere deserts no longer.

An 1875 issue of  The Guernsey Magazine reports that most of the creatures caught in the familiar medium of the sea were mackerel, which "abounds round the island." Perhaps the beneficiaries of Gilliatt's largess fixed dishes similar to this recipe for baked mackerel from the 1865 tome, Mrs. Beeton's Dictionary of Every-Day Cookery.


Baked Mackerel

279. Ingredients. 4 middling-sized mackerel, a nice delicate forcemeat ...  3 oz. of butter; pepper and salt to taste.

Mode.—Clean the fish, take out the roes, and fill up with forcemeat, and sew up the slit. Flour, and put them in a dish, heads and tails alternately, with the roes; and, between each layer, put some little pieces of butter, and pepper and salt. Bake for an hour, and either serve with plain melted butter or a maitre d'hotel sauce.

Time.—1/2 hour. Average cost for this quantity, 1s. 10d.

Seasonable from April to July.
Sufficient for 6 persons.

Note.—Baked mackerel may be dressed in the same way as baked herrings ... and may also be stewed in wine.

Weight Of The Mackerel.—The greatest weight of this fish seldom exceeds 2 lbs., whilst their ordinary length runs between 14 and 20 inches. They die almost immediately after they are taken from their element, and, for a short time, exhibit a phosphoric light.

The Circus Animals' Nutrition

Of those who could claim to have rested their head on a lion's lower jaw, Isaac van Amburgh was the first. An intrepid animal trainer, Van Amburgh was said to have been unmatched in his feats of derring-do. He and his pride of tamed felines became something of an international sensation, commanding the attention of no less estimable a personage than Queen Victoria, who commissioned a portrait of him, so impressed was she by his talents. Others among the great and good stood equally astounded. The Duke of Wellington was reported to have asked Van Amburgh, "Were you ever afraid?," to which the celebrated lion tamer responded, "The first time I am afraid, your grace, or that I fancy my pupils are no longer afraid of me, I shall retire from the wild beast line."

Whether real or feigned, the fearlessness displayed by Van Amburgh remained a crucial element of his success. Doubters suspected, however, that more than courage lay behind the animal tamer's art. Some suspected that Van Amburgh kept his cats in line by means of a crowbar. It's likelier that he employed a method similar to that described by Thomas Frost in his 1875 book, Circus Life and Circus Celebrities. Frost reveals that a wise lion tamer procures his "beasts as young as he can" and wins their trust by feeding them with his own hands, first from the outside of their den, and then at closer quarters, all the while taking care to face them in order to keep in check a "dormant devil" residing in their breasts. Once a measure of trust has been won, the tamer essays a caress, stroking the cat "down the back, gradually working up to the head, which he begins to scratch." The lion responds as all cats do by rubbing his head against the tamer's hand. At this point, the tamer introduces a board and teaches the lion to jump over it.

Only once the tamer has won this trust can he attempt the showstopping feat of placing his head between the animal's teeth. Gentle lashes on the back with "a small tickling whip" condition the lion to receive his mouthful. The tamer then "press[es] him down with one hand," and with the other raises the lion's head. Taking hold of its nostril with the right hand and the under lip with the left, he parts the creature's jaws and places his head between. The perils attending his vulnerable position do not end with a possible bite; he must also ensure that the lion does not claw his face. How such an expert lion tamer as Van Amburgh achieves stardom is thus plain to see.

The marquee attractions of Victorian circuses, felines commanded the lion's share of top-quality food. The menu du jour of Alexander Fairgrieve's famous traveling menagerie offers some sense of the pecking order among the various animals. Elephants had to content themselves with "hay, cabbages, bread and boiled rice, sweetened with sugar" while the big cats feasted on "shins, hearts, and heads of bullocks." So much meat did the lions and tigers of the great circuses consume, in fact, that their fellow carnivores the bears were forced to await the onset of "very cold weather" before they were similarly provisioned. Until such time, they subsisted on bread, sopped biscuits, and boiled rice.

To be an ursine understudy to feline stars was a sad fate, indeed. Should you wish to express dietary soliditary with the dancing bears of Victorian circuses, this recipe for boiled rice with cheese, which appears in The Helping Hand Cook Book (1912), will have you looking forward to winter's chill.


Boiled Rice with Cheese

Boil a cupful of rice in plenty of boiling water. Two quarts is none too much and the water must be at a galloping boil when the rice goes in and continue at the same stage during the fifteen minutes or so required to cook it. Each grain of rice should be separate and soft, though not too soft. Drain and dry and turn into a heated vegetable dish. Have ready a cupful of white sauce, made by cooking together a tablespoonful, each, of butter and flour and a half pint of milk and seasoning to taste with salt and pepper. Add to this a heaping tablespoonful of grated cheese and when this is melted and blended, stir it into the rice. Sprinkle another spoonful of grated cheese over the top of the rice and set the dish in the oven for five minutes before it goes to table.

Café Au Lait: A Beverage Unfit for the Roll

Whether congregating in the Café de Paris on the Boulevard de Italiens or the Cabaret de la Mère Saguet at the barrier du Maine (a favorite of Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas'), Parisians of all ages and walks of life made a point of conspiciously sipping coffee or cocoa as regularly as their circumstances allowed. They did this not merely to get a jolt of caffeine, but to see and be seen. "We require publicity, broad daylight, the street, the cabaret," M. Alfred Delvan writes about himself and his fellow urbanites in his Histoire Anecdotique des Cafés et Cabarets de Paris (1862), "well or ill, we desire to exhibit ourselves from home." Delvan considers this desire the sine qua non of the Parisian character. "We delight in attitudinising," he continues, "in making a show of ourselves, in having a public, an audience, witnesses of our lives."

One particular Parisian café witnessed much in the way of history-making. Opened in 1724 by a Sicilian emigré who lent his establishment his name, the Café Procope was the favorite haunt of such estimable philosophical and literary figures as Diderot, Fontenelle, Rousseau and Voltaire. Yet the Café Procope achieved notoriety of a different sort in an event that happened after the establishment had passed from its namesake to his successor.

The event involved one Poulain de St. Foix, a dramatist of declining fortune and popularity. As if cognizant of this fact, St. Foix was often found to be in a foul mood when he took his daily coffee at the Café Procope. One morning he appeared especially saturnine. A play of his performed the evening before had been savaged by critics. It was as he was brooding over this flop that a guardsman of King Louis XV entered the café for a hasty dinner of café au lait and a roll. Overhearing the guardsman's order, St. Foix abandoned all self-restraint. Perhaps still smarting from the opinions critics aired about his latest play, he felt compelled to register one of his own. "That's a poor dinner," he snapped at the guardsman, who tactfully ignored him. This only encouraged the latter to voice his opinion again ... and again. St. Foix's behavior soon got the better of the guardsman. He asked the playwright what he meant by his outbursts. "You won't prevent me, however," St. Foix returned defiantly, "from thinking that a cup of coffee and a roll are a poor dinner."

To prevent St. Foix was exactly what the guardsman intended. He drew his sword and challenged the querulous dramatist to a duel. St. Foix accepted. The two men exited the café and crossed blades. During the ensuing swordplay the playwright received a small wound to the arm, the sight of which caused the guardsman to relent. Expecting the customary amende honorable, the guardsman instead received only further insolence. "Yes sir," St. Foix exclaimed, "I maintain that a cup of coffee and a roll make a very poor dinner!"

Incensed by this breach of etiquette, the guardsman went to renew his attack, when out from the crowd of onlookers stepped two marshals, who apprehended the combatants to bring before the senior marshal of France. The guardsman accounted for his actions, explaining to the senior marshal that St. Foix had insulted him several times. "My lord, I had no intention of insulting this gentleman, whom I consider a brave man and a gallant soldier," St. Foix blurted out, thus insulting the guardsman once more by interrupting him, "but even your rank will not prevent me from saying that a cup of coffee and a roll are a very poor, shabby, sneaking, miserable dinner!"

The senior marshal burst out laughing. Indeed, just about everyone who witnessed or heard tell of the failing dramatist's perverse insistence found the whole affair wonderfully droll. Even Louis XV is said to have cracked a smile when word of the event reached him.

Should you wish to discover for yourself whether café au lait and a roll make for a shabby, sneaking, miserable repast, the recipes below can aid you in making this assessment. The first is taken from The Godey's Lady's Book Receipts and Household Hints (1870) and the second from  The Successful Housekeeper (1882).


Café Au Lait

The French are justly celebrated for this breakfast coffee, which may be made as follows: Use an infusion, made as directed, or in a cafetière, only of double the strength, and when clear, pour it into the breakfast cups, which have been previously half or three-quarters filled with boiling milk, sweetened with loaf sugar.

French Rolls

Into one pound of flour rub two ounces of butter and the whites of three eggs well-beaten; add  a tablespoon of good yeast, a little salt, and milk enough to make a stiff dough, cover and set in a warm place till light; cut into rolls, dip the edges into melted butter to keep them from sticking together, and bake in a quick oven.