Boiled beef is a regular offering at the canteen at work here in Germany. And there is still nothing good about it.
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The drinks seem expensive… mostly a buck or two, where a buck back then is about $25 today according to a web inflation calculator I found. I guess these were classy hotels, which makes sense with multicourse meals included with the room.
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I’d be curious to know what the ‘expected’ breakdown of spending on food/housing/clothing/etc. was at the time. This suggests that food was historically a larger chunk of the household budget(presumably both because of greater production cost pre green-revolution and because we didn’t have a line item for cellular data plans); so it could also have been that the percentage of income spent on food that suggested dire, subsistence-level, poverty was considerably higher than it is today.
That’s purely speculative, though, I’m trying to find actual data; but it seems like the other variable worth considering.
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When I visited French Lick in 1999 I had a blast studying the place’s history. I was there for a dog show but learning that Al Capone and FDR had been regular guests as well as taking a short train trip to nearby Cuzco made it extra fun.
It’s hard to say which I enjoyed more: the sulphurous-smelling gazebo out back that had the legend “Nature’s finest laxative” on one side and “If nature won’t Pluto will” on the other or the statues of “Pluto” that used to be on either side of the entrance. He was a rather dapper gentleman with a Van Dyke beard and horns. I loved the implied message: “You’ll be cured…but the price will be your soul.”
That was almost topped by the fact that when I was there kids were invited to join “The Pluto Club” led by…Plutoman! They’d redrawn him as a goofy superhero in an oversized leotard.
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The Austrian equivalent of a high school prom ends with sparkling wine for breakfast (“Sektfrühstück”). But then, that’s basically a once-in-a-lifetime occasion for people to get completely drunk with full parental approval, so I would count it as an exception.
Very credible. Whenever I read an old novel, I get the feeling that people must have been drunk all the time. War of the Worlds is just [Aliens destroy house. Protagonist flees. Protagonist seeks shelter in another house. Protagonist helps himself to / is offered a stiff drink] repeated a few times.
Not-nearly-as-old-but-still-before-my-time TV series, too: Gerry Anderson’s UFO showcases nice futuristic dispenser machines, and shows a main character helping himself to what looks like about 100ml of whiskey during a visit to his superior’s office.
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Served at almost all fine dining restaurants in Chicago…what does that say about us, other than our proximity to Wisconsin?
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Mimosas? Bloody Marys? It’s pretty common for weekend brunch menus.
And my mother.
edited to add: that’s what I get for coming to the party late…@SamWinston beat me to the same point.
What’s interesting to me about the menus isn’t how different they are from modern times, but how similar.
Potage, au Puree de Pois: That’s pea soup, and a potage is still a common way to do a starchy vegetable soup. It’s basically what a puree would have been in the era before Cuisinart and Vitamix, which is to say mostly broken down but still with small chunks in it rather than velvety smooth.
Cod Fish, Egg Sauce: That’s almost certainly some version of Hollandaise sauce, still served at breakfast everywhere on Eggs Benedict.
etc., etc.
Depends what its boiled in. There’s an Italians near me does beef cheeks boiled in red wine and molasses. Iz tasty.
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