Food History

Initially, the form of the menu looked like this:

1. cocktails with canapés (while mingling)
2. fruit cocktail (at table)
3. soup (1 clear soup, 1 vegetarian)
4. roast with vegetable (alternate main course for vegetarians)
5. sherbet
6. game or cheese and biscuits (suggest cheese and biscuits)
7. Dessert
8. coffee, cream mints

There were some compromises in it. I had dropped two courses from a moderate menu and 4 from a sumptuous one – it would not have been possible to do it for the amount of money our diners could afford, basically. It’s still within the acceptable food amounts and styles for the period, but it’s trendy (canapes rather than fish and an entrée). The final menu dropped the game, too, again because of cost and availability. Basically, whenever there were choices, I made them to fit local food possibilities, plus cost, plus adding a vegetarian menu. The vegetarian menu is the biggest compromise – vegetarians had some food possibilities in 1921, but they weren’t cheerful. The vegetarian main course was the single hardest dish to find.

Other decisions I made to simplify dietary restrictions. They worked, too. No pork, no seafood, no fish, no peanuts and changing dishes slightly to replace regular flour with rice flour (only where it didn’t affect the quality of the dishes) meant that we have very few allergy issues. Also, me being Jewish and not testing pork is always a good thing. Some vegetarians say “Ah, but I can always eat fish.” Others can’t touch fish. I find it easier to leave fish off if I can, because of this. Also, because it gives me anaphylactic shock and I’m not yet ready to die.

What was interesting is that, because I’d considered the allergies and some of the religious restrictions from very early on, the chef was more comfortable with the menu. Obviously he has to work with these things on a daily basis. One thing I had to say, though, from the word ‘go’ – I couldn’t make the menu suitable for vegans: egg and dairy were too important to it. Interestingly, a range of ‘vegetarian’ food from the period has beef stock in it, so it wasn’t just a matter of flicking through cookbooks for that, either.

From the beginning, too, we decided to have the rinks service separate from the food and have diners pay as they went. The hotel has a bar and that would be open. We decided (thanks again to The Old Foodie) to have a ’secret’ drinks menu slipped inside the other one. This would keep up the feeling of illicit activity, plus make it fairly clear that diners had to sneak out and get their drinks. In return, the hotel agreed to add our own tested cocktails to what they served. What’s more, they charged reasonable amounts for them.

Again at the initial meeting I outlined the main meats that would have been served. Some we crossed off immediately and I expected to lose immediately. Guinea fowl, for instance, was just not practical. With the main meats I included the most popular sauces and sides, so that we were looking at a type of course rather than just at the meat. I had a lot of fun establishing some of the more popular dishes and how they were served. One of my testers and I did a whole lot of them in a single evening, if you can remember back that far.