Want to throw a Gilded Age dinner party?
Here’s the book for you
MINNEAPOLIS — Picture the fanciest party imaginable. We’re talking Vanity Fair Oscar Party meets Met Gala, with a couple of royal weddings thrown in the mix.
Fountains of champagne? Check. Platinum bracelets as parting favors? Check.
A sculpture of Hercules holding a steak on his shoulders and a monkey outfitted in a tailored suit sitting at the head of the table? Welcome to the Gilded Age.
In “The Gilded Age Cookbook: Recipes and Stories From America’s Golden Era,” author Becky Libourel Diamond gives readers a peek into the opulent ballrooms, tea parties and railroad cars where the richest of the rich — socialites, debutantes, magnates and robber barons — dined in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Recipes for Waldorf salad served in tiny cups carved out of apples, potatoes á la Parisienne, lobster fricassee spooned into puff pastry and rosewater-almond “lady cake” are her own adaptations of popular dishes of that time, which she tested over years as a blogger.
An era defined by extravagance — a distraction from the corruption beneath the surface — the Gilded Age was a period of unfettered economic growth in the United States for a small portion of the population. New money flowed into society as railroads connected cities, the United States expanded west, natural resources were exploited, industrialization made a few men unbelievably rich, and food became an art.
“There was a culture of ‘if you’ve got it, flaunt it,’” said Alex Weston, program associate at the James J. Hill House and the Alexander Ramsey House, two St. Paul, Minnesota, examples of Gilded Age luxury.
luxury. “They were proud of their wealth, and their older attitudes that lingered from the Puritan founding of New England were now gone. If you had money, you built the biggest mansion possible.”
And you threw the biggest dinner party possible. Course after course would be served deep into the night, to a vulgar degree. “The more food that’s tossed in the slop bucket, the higher the status,” Weston said.
Libourel Diamond isn’t encouraging such obscene hedonism with her book. Instead, on the heels of the popular HBO television series “The Gilded Age,” she is offering home cooks an attainable way to host their own highsociety dinner party, suitable for modern sensibilities. Monkey not included.
We spoke to Libourel Diamond about how the railroads changed what we eat, easy ways to think about presentation and the environmental impact of all those extravagant dinner parties. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: How’d you get interested in food from the Gilded Age?
A: I always say to people, there’s so much history we can learn through food: What didn’t we eat? What did we eat? What was overconsumed? There are so many different angles. So after my first book (“Mrs. Goodfellow: The Story of America’s First Cooking School”), I found out about this dinner that took place in 1851 called the Thousand Dollar Dinner that was like a 19th-century “Top Chef ” competition. This was the prelude to the Gilded Age, and these men of means could try to oneup each other by putting on this really fabulous meal. I wrote about these 17 courses that this meal ended up being, and it was really unbelievable (“The Thousand Dollar Dinner: America’s First Great Cookery Challenge”).
The whole time I’m writing these books I was researching recipes and deconstructing them and making them myself. And I was blogging about it. You can’t just take a 19thcentury recipe and make it as it’s written because ingredients are different, measurements are different. And I was learning all about that, and eventually I thought, I have all this on my blog, why not put this into a cookbook?
Q: Your book is not connected to “The Gilded Age” television show, right?
A: I had heard of the TV show because I always loved “Downton Abbey” and everything that Julian Fellowes did. The TV show had been in the works for a while, and I thought, this is great because I can tag-team what he’s doing. It worked out beautifully, because my book came out right before the second season. I really think it’s helped with the interest in the era and in these recipes.
Q: What are some of the defining characteristics of food during that era?
A: It was definitely an era of innovation and technology. The railroads really built the Gilded Age. There were other industries as well, like steel and even some food things like the cattle industry and canned goods, but the railroads really helped connect all of that and get food on the tables that maybe they wouldn’t have had before, like foods that were out of season. Food was much more of a differentiator than it is today. I mean, it still is now, especially with food deserts and such in big cities, but if you had these fine foods and certain things that were out of season, you were much more ahead of other people.
But I also have to preface that the Gilded Age — and I don’t want to be a downer about it — but it isn’t necessarily an endearing term, because it was gilded on the surface and then underneath there was this layer of corruption. There were people having all these fine meals and the craziness, but then there was also the servants that were making all of that possible. And people living in tenement housing. It’s important to realize that it wasn’t just the glam.
Q: There are a lot of rich stories — and outlandish stories! — about dinner parties in your book. Someone even brought a monkey to be the guest of honor. It just seemed like there was no limit to what was possible.
A: It was all about, ‘How can I one-up the person that had the last dinner?’ They would hire personal chefs and they would often steal them from each other. And that’s why women were going to these cooking schools to know what they should they be putting on their tables that would make them rise above everyone else and be talked about for months afterward. That’s when they incorporated live animals into it, which was kind of bizarre. I don’t know why they thought that was a good idea.
It was all about presentation, too. Ornamentation on foods, like having a game bird with its feathers still attached, where they would reattach them after cooking, or the head was still attached on a platter. And the gelatin dishes are the ones that are so different than we think of today. Everything would be coated in a clear gelatin and then you would see the sparkling colors underneath. It was almost like museum pieces under glass.
Q: I didn’t notice a lot of gelatin-encased recipes in your book.
A: What I wanted to do with this book is make it accessible. I knew if I included so many of the over-the-top things, nobody could make those. And I wanted it to be where people could actually enjoy them. I do have one gelatin, it’s a chocolate jelly, which is actually really good.
Q: Were the people who were hosting the dinners actually making anything?
A: Not at all. It’s the people behind the scenes. Q: Did you represent in this book the other side of the coin, what the servants or the people living in tenements were cooking and eating?
A: Not a whole lot. I do mention stories about the Black elite, and one recipe I have was from a cookbook written by the first formerly enslaved woman in the U.S. Her name’s Abby Fisher, and it’s the ginger cookie recipe. I wanted to make sure that her story was known. I did try to include a few things that would highlight people that weren’t necessarily that upper echelon.
Q: What can we learn about food by cooking the recipes of that era?
A: One is to know that things evolve over time, like techniques. And if there is a newfangled ingredient or kitchen tool, go for it. I mean, that’s what made their lives so much easier, to have egg beaters instead of whipping eggs by hand. Baking powder changed the game for tall layer cakes, because before that they just had to either beat eggs to make the cake rise or use yeast. For people to embrace technology but also be mindful of sustainability. I don’t want to be environmentally preachy here, but some of the dishes that they really loved so much got overconsumed, like lobster and turtle, and even oysters to an extent. Luckily, we’ve been able to figure out how to replenish some of the supplies, especially seafood. But just to be mindful that sometimes it is just a special dish that we have once in a while, you know, everything in moderation. I feel like that’s something that I’ve learned researching the 19th century, that we just want to make sure that things don’t become extinct because we’re eating so much.