ISSUE 82, SOME BOOKS, Part 2: The Gilded Age Cookbook by Becky Libourel Diamond
The Gilded Age Cookbook
Mark Twain named the period concluding the 19th century in the United States in 1873, when he published his novel The Gilded Age. Historians and cultural commentators adopted the name, wishing to spotlight the enormous industrial wealth generated by American industries and its concentration into the hands of a class of Northeastern and Midwestern plutocrats. Many claim 1877 to be the inaugural year of that era, and 1900 the end. In terms of food the Gilded Age means for most people the heyday of Gentleman’s Clubs, the hegemony of French Cuisine in fine dining restaurants, the erection of palatial hotels with superb dining rooms in major cities across the continent, the dominion of chef Charles Ranhofer at Delmonico’s, and the celebration of lobsters, champagne, asparagus, caviar, and escargots on high end menus. Becky Libourel Diamond has a more circumspect view in The Gilded Age Cookbook.
In Diamond’s Gilded Age the great women instructors—the cooking school matrons—Fanny Farmer, Maria Parloa, Mary Lincoln, Sarah Tyson Rorer—loom large in shaping public food. She rightly notes that this was the era when the dining car on the newly transcontinental railways became a place where wonderful meals might be had. She reminds us too that this was the era of the strawberry—when varieties such as the Marshall and Hoffman’s Seedling became dependably and widely available each Spring. Her riffs on Strawberry Shortcake, Strawberries and Cream, and Strawberry Ice Cream as seasonal delights and enduring fixtures of American eating are readable, informed, and stimulating. My gastric juices began percolating on reading.
In one respect Diamond’s book understandably runs counter to the spirit of Gilded Age cooking. Its recipes are adaptations of the material found in cookbooks at the end of the 19th century, opting for clarity and simplicity. It is directed at home cooks as an aid in preparing some signature recipes, particularly desserts of the era. The magisterial cookbooks of that era—I think of Ranhofer’s The Epicurian (1892), Jules Arthur Harder’s Physiology of Taste (1885), Alessandro Filippini’s The Table (1889), Felix J. Deliee’s The Franco-American Cookery Book (1884)—broke the age old reticence of professional chefs to reveal their proprietary formulae. The mind-boggling complexity of certain of the dishes defied the ability of any home cook to emulate. The cookbooks were monuments to culinary artistry and mastery of every aspect of cookery from confections to butchery, fermentation to saucing. As a joke these volumes often bore some introductory gesture at aiding home cooks in expanding their menus and dish preparation. Even other chefs boggled at Ranhofer’s most elaborate creations.
Diamond’s illustrations gesture an the elaborate creations of the era—the aspic oceans, stuffed game, food sculptures—that are not visited in the recipes. Ken Albala has worked heroically to revive the landmarks of gelatinized cuisine for the 21st century, but where are the restaurants following his lead or home cooks suspending prawns swimming through a celery forest in aspic? If there is one Gilded Age culinary eminence that Diamond hews close in spirit to it is Louis Sherry, creator of the most famous lobster palace in Manhattan, Sherry’s, where stage door johnnies courted showgirls with champagne, lobster salads, and oysters on the half shell. Sherry favored an elegant simplicity in his offerings. He also saw that the way to survive Prohibition was to pivot from one drug, alcohol, to another, sugar. He took the Gilded Age’s penchant for sweets and made the dessert cart a fixture of post-1919 hotel cookery.
Diamond is all about desserts. They are where her heart dwells. If you are moved by Charlotte Russe, Strawberry Shortcake, Lady Cake, and Pineapple Pie you will find much light in the pages of this volume.