The Astonishing Table

The full forty, ranked

The marvels above are the showpieces, told at length. Here is the whole reckoning — forty oddities from Ranhofer’s 1894 treatise, ordered by how good they are, each one linking to the recipe or chapter it came from.

1. Recipe No. 2552 is Roast Peacock Adorned With Its Plumage: dry the tail into a fan, wire the neck upright, roast the bird, then re-dress it in its own feathers on a carved rice pedestal.Read it: Roast Peacock Adorned with Its Plumage
2. Delmonico’s menus were engraved on sterling silver leaves, printed on satin, cast in celluloid with relief figures, or bound in little Russian-leather books — originals costing several hundred dollars.Read it: Delmonico’s Menus — 1862 to 1894
3. At the 1867 Dickens banquet the dishes were named for novelists: stuffed lamb à la Walter Scott, grouse cutlets à la Fenimore Cooper, asparagus cream à la Dumas, timbales à la Dickens.Read it: Delmonico’s Menus — 1862 to 1894
4. Delmonico’s standard market list included bear (in season December–February), buffalo, antelope, squirrel — and peacock, marked “in season” all twelve months.Read it: The Market — Tables of Supplies
5. In the same 1894 game table, robins carry the note “Law against selling” — an early conservation law printed right in the shopping list. The recipe section still tells you how to roast them, stuffed with truffles and foie gras.Read it: The Market — Tables of Supplies·Thrushes and Robins, Roasted and Broiled
6. Recipe No. 352 opens: “Lay the turtle on its back, and when it stretches out his head, seize it with one hand…” — instructions for butchering a one-hundred-pound green turtle.Read it: Preparation of a Green Turtle Weighing One Hundred Pounds
7. Ice cream came in disguise: molded as asparagus stalks with maraschino sauce, as a hen with eggs, as a swan in the reeds, as a “surprise rabbit,” even as a nougat tree surrounded by little rabbits and bears.Read it: Delmonico’s Menus — 1862 to 1894
8. At the 1884 “Union of the Titans” dinner the whole menu went mythological: oysters on Neptune’s shells, consommé of Leda’s eggs, bass à la Divine Medusa, salad of Hebe’s tears, Bacchus’s grape jelly, and coffee of Divine Nectar.Read it: Delmonico’s Menus — 1862 to 1894
9. On swallows’-nest soup, the book reports that “certain naturalists affirm” the nests are fish spawn gathered from the sea — then gives the recipe as made by “the Chinese in New York.”Read it: Consomme with Swallows' Nests and Chinese Birds' Nest Soup
10. Delmonico’s timed dinners like railroads: the book prints a timetable showing a 14-course dinner takes 2h20m at ten-minute intervals, 1h52m at eight.Read it: Table Service & the Art of Dining
11. The 1875 Wright Sanford dinner served snail croustades stuffed with partridge brains.Read it: Delmonico’s Menus — 1862 to 1894
12. The oyster “R” rule, codified for kitchens: suppress oysters in May, June, July and August, and serve Little Neck clams instead.Read it: Table Service & the Art of Dining
13. Frog broth was food for invalids: frogs’ legs simmered with lettuce, strained through a napkin, and “served in cups” to the sick.Read it: Frog Broth and Puree
14. On arrival at a formal dinner, each gentleman was handed an envelope containing a card with the name of the lady he was to escort to the table.Read it: Table Service & the Art of Dining
15. A ceremonial dinner for 24 required nine staff — steward, butler, carver and six waiters — in dress suits, white ties and gloves, “and wear no jewelry whatever.”Read it: Table Service & the Art of Dining
16. If no ladies were present, cigarettes were passed around WITH the sherbet — in the middle of dinner.Read it: Table Service & the Art of Dining
17. Recipe No. 109 is veal udder: boiled, pressed under a weight, and used instead of butter in forcemeats.Read it: Veal Udder
18. Menus were sized to slip into a pocket without folding, because “it is the general desire to keep the bill of fare of a dinner at which one has assisted.”Read it: Table Service & the Art of Dining
19. Eighteenth-century banquet tables were decorated with beds of colored sand in arabesque patterns, mirror-glass platforms called “dormants,” and cardboard scrollwork edged in green chenille.Read it: Last Century Tables
20. One recommended old-style centerpiece: the palace of Circe, “who metamorphized Ulysses’ companions into swine.”Read it: Last Century Tables
21. Setting a table for 24 required 72 large forks, 72 steel knives, about 240 glasses (ten per person) — and silver toothpick holders.Read it: Table Service & the Art of Dining
22. Buffet showpieces included peacocks, young swans and pheasants served “ornamented with their natural feathers,” beside a boar’s head and a suckling pig.Read it: Table Service & the Art of Dining·Menus — Suppers, Buffets & Parties
23. The great kitchen’s spit roasted 48 quails at once — six 20-inch skewers, eight birds each.Read it: Kitchen Utensils
24. The clockwork roasting jack wound up like a clock “and strikes an alarm when slackening.”Read it: Kitchen Utensils
25. The omelet pan must never be washed: scrape it, heat it, and rub it clean with a cloth and salt.Read it: Kitchen Utensils
26. Delmonico’s kitchen brushes were homemade — about fifteen turkey tail feathers tied together with string.Read it: Kitchen Utensils
27. Menu doctrine: for ladies, light fancy dishes and a pretty dessert; for gentlemen alone, “shorter and more substantial”; for a foreign guest, dishes of his own nation; and never let two sauces of the same color follow each other.Read it: Table Service & the Art of Dining
28. “Almost everything, not fresh killed, may be found in good condition frozen, nearly every day in the year” — frozen food was routine in 1894.Read it: The Market — Tables of Supplies
29. At the 1863 ball for the Russian fleet, the sugar centerpieces were Peter the Great, Alexander II, Washington and Lincoln — plus “The American Eagle.”Read it: Delmonico’s Menus — 1862 to 1894
30. For the 1868 Chinese embassy dinner the showpieces were “The Mandarin’s Pavilion” and “The Arrival of the Hong Kong Clipper, the Child of the Sun.”Read it: Delmonico’s Menus — 1862 to 1894
31. Delmonico’s named sorbets after guests of honor: Sorbet à la Sir Morton Peto, Sorbet Columbus (for Grover Cleveland), Sorbet Young America, Sorbet Elsinore.Read it: Delmonico’s Menus — 1862 to 1894
32. In February 1891 Mr. Frank Work sat down to a printed, full eight-course Delmonico’s banquet — for three people.Read it: Delmonico’s Menus — 1862 to 1894
33. Delmonico’s once catered a steamship: four full services a day — déjeuner, goûter, dîner, souper — for 300 people aboard the Pacific Mail’s City of Peking (1874).Read it: Delmonico’s Menus — 1862 to 1894
34. At the 1887 St. Andrews Society dinner, “Haggis à l’Ecossaise” appears mid-menu between the French entrées.Read it: Delmonico’s Menus — 1862 to 1894
35. Mr. Benson’s 1883 “Buffet Russe” opened with a cocktail course — vermouth, sherry-and-bitters, absinthe — and later served grilled ham with fried bananas.Read it: Delmonico’s Menus — 1862 to 1894
36. Crumbs were never brushed from the cloth: waiters lifted away the extra napkins so the table stayed clean “without being obliged to use a brush or scraper.”Read it: Table Service & the Art of Dining
37. Dinner service had to be silent — “a look alone from the steward sufficing for each man to do his duty.”Read it: Table Service & the Art of Dining
38. Confectioners made trompe-l’oeil “Imitation of Natural Green Almonds” — fake almonds with real almonds hidden inside — and molded punch cake as an imitation boar’s head, a book, or a ham.Read it: Imitation of Natural Green Almonds·Punch Cake, Punch Biscuit, Imitation of Boar's Head, a Book or a Ham
39. Elsewhere in the recipe list: Chariot of Swans, Sheep’s Ears à la Westphalian, sea-gull eggs, spinal marrow à la Villeroi, and Woodcock Cutlets à la Sarah Bernhardt.Read it: Chariot of Swans·Sheep's Ears a la Westphalian·Eggs, Bustard, Plover and Sea-Gull·Spinal Marrow of Veal a la Villeroi·Cutlets of Woodcock a la Sarah Bernhardt
40. Cocks’-combs and cocks’-kidneys were standard fine-dining garnishes — as in Aspic of Cocks’-Combs and Kidneys à la Mazarin.Read it: Aspic of Cocks'-Combs and Kidneys a la Mazarin·Cocks'-Combs Stuffed, Duxelle