‘History is written at the dining table’: what 4,000 menus tell us about royals, politicians and society
On Friday, 22 May 1896, guests of Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle had a lot on their plates. A handwritten menu shows “Her Majesty’s Dinner” offered soup with vermicelli, trout meunière, boudin (black pudding), quails, ducklings and spinach with croutons followed by peaches and cream, then cheese. For those still peckish, hot and cold meats including pork tongue and beef were laid out on a side table.
The finely decorated card is one of 4,600 menus in a unique collection being sold in Paris on Friday, spanning 150 years of high-society dining from the late 19th century.
They were collected by 56-yearold chef Christophe Marguin, and date from a banquet given by the Lord Mayor of London at the Guildhall in 1862. From there, they range from a dinner hosted by France’s last monarch, Napoleon III, in 1868 to the dinner for King Charles hosted by President Emmanuel Macron at Versailles in September last year.
“It is a beautiful collection and is unique. Many of these menus are works of art in their own right,” Marguin said. “History is also written at the dining table.”
Marguin, who runs Le Président restaurant in Lyon, France’s culinary capital, is the fourth generation of chefs in his family and began collecting menus aged 19 when working in the restaurant of the five-star Hotel Lutetia in Paris.
“I was told there was a chef who was going into a retirement home and had no family. He didn’t want his collection to go in the bin,” Marguin said. The chef turned out to be Frenchman Henri Cédard, who had worked for six British monarchs from Queen Victoria to the future Queen Elizabeth II between 1885 and 1935.
“I realised it was a bit of history and I couldn’t let it go. And that’s how the collection started,”
Today, it includes menus from dinners at the Elysée and Versailles palaces given by successive presidents marking state visits and summits. Guests included Elizabeth II, John F Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher and Colonel Gaddafi, and there are almost 600 menus from meals hosted by the British royal family.
As well as Queen Victoria’s dinners at Balmoral and Windsor, the menus record meals at the coronations of George V in 1911, George VI in 1937 and Elizabeth II in 1953 as well as the wedding breakfast of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 and the dinner following the marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton on 29 April 2011.
Marguin says the menus reflect more cultural than culinary changes and that gastronomic dinners have become simpler and shorter over the last century-and-a-half.
A menu from an April 1914 dinner given by the French president, Raymond Poincaré to mark the 10th anniversary of the entente cordiale between Britain and France shows that George V and Queen Mary dined on 17 courses including turtle soup, foie gras, poultry mousseline, trout, lamb and a champagne sorbet with Italian meringue.
On 4 April 2004, Elizabeth II travelled to Paris to mark the 100th anniversary of the treaty and was served just five courses – broccoli soup, stuffed quails, salardaises potatoes, cheese and a pudding accompanied by a 1990 Château d’Yquem, white and a 1988 Château Mouton Rothschild, followed by a 1995 Dom Pérignon.
Marguin said: “At the beginning of the 20th century, life was slower. A grand dinner was often the event of the week and could involve up to 18 courses. After the second world war, the dinners became less grand. Today, the protocol is that the meal lasts 45 minutes from when the president starts eating.
“The diplomacy is still done around the dinner but not so much at the table. It’s a pity, but people eat less and have less time for a long meal.”
The menus also reflect presidential tastes. President Jacques Chirac was a celebrated bon vivant who enjoyed traditional dishes, Nicolas Sarkozy, who did not drink or pay much attention to what he ate, took cheese off the menu to save time. His successor, François Hollande liked his food, and put cheese back on.
Marguin hopes his collection, estimated at €100,000, will be sold as one lot and remain in France. He says his favourite menus are from John F Kennedy’s visit to France in June 1961, when President Charles de Gaulle hosted two dinners for the American leader and his wife, Jackie. “They are special because it was his first visit to Paris, and [soon after] he was assassinated, so they are unique,” Marguin said.
Virginie Vernier, director of the Lyon office of Maison Millon auction house which is selling the collection, said the menus were a “marvellous history of France” through its food and showed the evolution of the French arts de la table.
“Food is a very accessible medium. Everyone has an opinion on food and can relate to it.
“The collection highlights French savoir faire and quality of life of which we are so proud, from the gastronomy to the [menu] artwork, the printing, the tableware as well as the ingredients and the wine.”
The menu collection will be on display from 10am-6pm on 29 and 30 May at 3 rue Rossini, Paris , 75009 and auctioned on 31 May at 2pm.