In May 2018, food writer, librarian, and research historian Becky Diamond wrote a guest post for The Historical Cooking Project. Her post, "Eating Turtles and American Identity," was based on her book The Thousand Dollar Dinner (2015) and covered the history of turtles as once one of America's most fashionable foods. Becky Diamond's work is interested in the intersections of food history and taste-making. Her work thinks critically about consumption, class, production, and foodways. This week I have had the pleasure of reading Becky Diamond's newest book, The Gilded Age Cookbook: Recipes and Stories From America's Golden Era (2023).
The Gilded Age Cookbook mixes food history with recipes updated for the modern kitchen. In this book, Diamond uses the culinary, dining, restaurant, and hosting practices from the period of 1868 to 1900 to discuss American social and political history. Do not mistake this book for light fare. Amongst the brightly coloured photos of ginger cookies, lady cake, roast turkey, and lemonade, Diamond discusses class, race, and gender politics within the Gilded Age. Her description of train car dining is not only a history of technology but also an analysis of the ways that the recent end of the Civil War and ongoing racism impacted the economics of travel and workers' rights. Depictions of lavish meals enjoyed by men's clubs and societies also include histories of African American clubs' dinners (96). While the Gilded Age was a period of decadence for the elite, the Black elite experienced this period differently than the white elite due to systemic racism. Furthermore, Diamond explores how the Gilded Age elites' dining, eating, and socializing practices impacted people across racial, gender, and class lines in an intersectional way. For example, Diamond explains how domestic workers and restaurant workers had to adapt to the fashion of French cuisine, needing to take night classes to please employers (17) and learning to write menus in French to various degrees of success (110). Diamond interweaves political history with food history, such as when she explores the women's suffrage and burgeoning feminist movement within a larger discussion of Fourth of July Meals (66). Readers with an appetite for history will not be disappointed.
The book is beautifully designed. Each chapter focuses on a large theme of Gilded Age food cultures: culinary innovations, eating outdoors, dining out, formal social occasions, and holiday meals. The chapters begin with 5-10 pages of context and history about the theme. Within these introductory sections, there are insets with shorter histories providing greater details about specific topics such as the Pullman loaf (a type of break served on Pullman Dining Cars on trains)(4), how people were advised to pack picnic baskets (as detailed by Mrs. Grace Townsend's 1891 Dining Room Kitchen book)(41), Mark Twain and the Clover Club (95), and the making of Thanksgiving as a national holiday (197). The rest of the chapter is then filled with recipes speaking to the chapter's larger themes. Specific recipes, such as the recipe for strawberry ice cream (88), are introduced with their own specific history sections. This recipe, in particular, is framed by a history of ice cream socials within the period (85-87), the history of Ladies Aid Societies' ice cream socials (85), and an inset about the history of the development of the ice cream cone (86). The historical sections are illustrated with photographs of historical devices, archival materials, illustrations, paintings, and photographs from the period. Most of the book's recipes have an accompanying photograph. Food stylist Dan Macey and photographer Heather Raub have done a fantastic job bringing this history to life. The book is printed on thick, glossy paper that will also withstand kitchen use.
Although it is possible to devour this book without spreading sprinkles of flour, splashes of liquid, and smears of butter on its pages, this book also functions within the kitchen. Diamond has taken historical recipes and adapted them for the modern kitchen. She begins each recipe with a history of the dish and cites 19th century cookbook recipes that she has based the recipe on. This discussion is followed by an estimate of how many servings the recipe provides and an ingredient list. She finishes with clear instructions using modern kitchen equipment. Most of the recipes use ingredients you can source at a standard American grocery store, using common kitchen tools. I appreciate Diamond's decision to include historical information while providing a recipe that readers are more likely to make; this choice means that I have the information to readily look up the original recipe while knowing that Diamond already did the hard work of translating it for the present time.
Inspired by Diamond's book, next week I am inviting a group of archivists and librarians over for an ice cream social. I'm excited to serve my guests some of these historical treats, cooked straight from the recipes in this text. If you are looking for a beautiful book, an informative read, and a new collection of recipes, I highly recommend that you check out The Gilded Age Cookbook: Recipes and Stories From America's Golden Era (2023).
