The students of 1924 were painting the town red. Banquets, galas, teas, fêtes, suppers, vacations, gatherings, parties, and balls -- of the ephemera left behind, we were tickled by the menus peppering the Memory Books.
We had the good fortune of chatting with UVM faculty and culinary anthropologist Amy Trubek, PhD.
Here is what transpired from that conversation which spanned the topics of New England, UVM, menus, and culinary legacies.
On Culinary Legacies
Dr. Trubek is a Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences at UVM. She teaches experiential and immersion courses based in the Foods Lab (including Basic Concepts of Food and Foods for Planetary Health), as well as seminar courses on food systems and food and culture.
Her research interests include the relationship between taste and place, cooking as cultural practice, and food and climate change. She is the author of three books: Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession (2000); The Taste of Place (2008); and Making Modern Meals: How Americans Cook Today (2023).
We sat her down with several menus -- primarily from Dorothy Harvey's scrapbooks -- and asked for more context on what these reveal about UVM, food, and its culture.
Much of Dr. Trubek's scholarly interests have centered on the intricacies of culinary legacies. In particular, she has had a keen eye on the influential role of French Haute cuisine in shaping the modern culinary landscape.
"So I'll tell you my process, given how I would look at these menus, given the way I've done research. I did a lot of research -- the first big project that I did, which was my doctoral dissertation that then turned into a book.
And in those days, I was very focused on doing what we would call culinary history. So trying to understand the organizations of cuisine in relationship to culture.
"And for me in particular, I was interested in what are these sort of legacies, legacies of certain kinds of culinary practices. And the work that I did was on the importance of French Haute cuisine to the creation or development of the modern culinary profession.
I was interested in the ways in which a set of standards of integrated practice or system, which would be the cuisine that came from France, beginning in the late 19th century, became the standard order of practice for people doing professional cooking all over, particularly the Western world, but also in the colonized world."
When Dr. Trubek examines American menus, she says "a lot of what I do is line up what I see as being, what are the structures or the dishes or the meals that are clearly influenced by French practice. And then what might also then indicate ways in which you could talk about regional cuisine and the sort of integration of a regional cuisine."
Popular New England Foods, Ingredients, and Legacies
Dr. Trubek reflects on the evolution of dining trends, particularly highlighting Vermont's embrace of the Farm-to-Table movement over the past three decades.
She points out how this culinary ethos has permeated various facets of dining culture, from restaurants in the Burlington community to menu offerings at University events.
Ingredients, techniques, menu, and environment become a vehicle to convey significance and importance of both occasion and guest.
"Even if you looked at some of the menu design that happens at the University -- particularly for the catered events, the special events, the events for, let's say, the Board of Trustees or Alumni -- where, again, you're trying to make it fancy and say something about the significance of them as guests and what you're trying to present about the University:
"You're not having them go to the Marche, to the Broccoli Bar, to the Davis Center [...] because you're saying something that you don't want to say about who they are or how seriously you take them.
"You're still going to find in those kinds of menus a really interesting combination of French technique and a commitment to regionality."
The New England Culinary Institute (NECI), where she taught for many years, drew classically-trained chefs to teach and who then also stayed in Vermont.
This resulted in "a lot of people who started restaurants, catering companies -- sort of are still, it's now aging out a little bit, but you have people who went to NECI and so they have that classical training, but they also were trained in a place that had a very strong commitment to local and regional sourcing of food. You really see those menus reflecting that. I think that would be one of the legacies you would see."
A Coastal Massachusetts Menu
The first menu we presented to Dr. Trubek was from Dorothy Harvey's 1925 scrapbook -- from a historic all-day sail from Boston to Plymouth, called the Plymouth Boat - The Steamer South Shore. Guests on the Plymouth would cruise to the historical town to take in Mayflower relics and stunning views of the Boston Harbor.
"There's a few things that I would say are super typical of menus in general that would come at these kinds of places up until basically the 1940s or 1950 where you have some transformation. You would always have a soup as a first course. So, soup as a first course is sort of, again, the classic kind of fine dining French-inspired model is that that's, in a sense, signifying a meal that's more than the everyday. You have a soup course, then you have what they call the main course. And with main courses, you would understand there to be usually some kind of, historically it would be what we would now call animal protein."
Dinner would be served in dining staterooms, possibly to the sounds of a live orchestra.
The space allotted in the menu for autographs invites the idea that novelty characters or acts were part of the dining experience. Poetry ("Recipe for a Salad") and lyrics tucked into menu corners lent charm.
"Meat was a sign that you had some disposable income, you had some access to money. So if you were having a meal that you wanted understood to be fancy, you would definitely be having meat.
"Even the kind of meat you eat is related to status. So in this first one, you have cold boiled lobsters or lobster salad or sirloin steak.
"So lobster, which actually in the early days of colonialism, there were so many lobsters it was considered -- lobsters and oysters were considered fast food. Everybody ate it and it was cheap. But as it got more and more fished, and it got more and harder and harder to get, it became more and more kind of considered a fancy dish."
"And then if you were eating parts of a cow, there are parts that are considered more tender and more expensive. And so you would have a sirloin steak and lobster. You wouldn't have hamburger and sardines. Those would be considered to be like, no, that's not what you're going to have when you're eating out at a restaurant and you're marking yourself as having a fancy meal.
"What's unusual in this, they don't name the potage, which is kind of interesting. And I don't even know what that might've been."
Potage is a catch-all term to describe a hearty dish of seasoned vegetables, grains, fruits, and -- if available -- animal protein, boiled until they coalesced into a thick consistency, ranging from soup- to stew-like.
They often included cream, as with potato-leek or oyster potage. It would eventually give way to still-popular regional dishes like the New England Clam Chowder.
The Hotel Meal
Something that called out to us were the inclusion of special hotel meals. One especially sweet menu of a meal Dorothy had at Hotel Vermont includes the penciled-in memento of "Dad and me" around Valentine's of 1922 (February 5).
"There's so many things about this menu that are interesting," says Dr. Trubek.
"It used to be in the United States that most hotels were run on what was called the modified or the American plan.
And especially in places where people would go on long holidays like Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, Maine, probably even Hotel Vermont.
"You would basically be staying there for a while. You were traveling long distances. You might not have driven, you weren't flying, you were taking the train.
"And you would go and you'd stay at a place and they would serve you breakfast and dinner."
Watch this clip from our interview:
"And then, oftentimes, they'd give you a lunch to go, or you would go out. And remember the idea that we have now in the United States, over 50% of all meals consumed are consumed outside of the home, or 50% of all the dollars spent on food is on meals taken outside of the home.
"And then there's all the meals that you get already prepared for you and brought into the home. We expect other people to do almost all our cooking now, and we expect that you go out to eat as per matter, of course.
"But in the 1920s, you would only be going out to a restaurant and there would probably be five restaurants. In Burlington, you would only go out for a special occasion or if you were traveling and staying in a hotel. So hotel meals are a big part of what anybody's experience is, food that's unusual or above and beyond what you might be eating at home."
This meal began with oyster stew, which is "very classic. And again, it's a kind of New England-y French where you're serving oysters and you're making some kind of a cream sauce, or it's almost like a chowder, but slightly different.
So chowder is kind of a New England style way of serving fish hot with milk."
We also noted the choice of cold meats and how these might fare on the dining table of a contemporary diner.
How popular might boiled ham, cold veal, sardines, or beef tongue be at a special supper, alongside a potato salad?
What choices might delight -- or alarm -- today's diner?
A Feast Fit for Ancients
This menu stood out, both for its hand-rendered qualities and its evocative offerings -- all in Latin.
Find it and its translation below:
From Dorothy Harvey Mayo's 1925 Scrapbook | UVM Special Collections
A translation of the Latin menu. Thanks, Google.
Past the characteristic Mediterranean fare, crusta mellea stands out in this themed menu. Translated crudely as 'honey crust,' this may in fact refer to honey cakes, a 2000-year-old sweet rife with myth and history -- just the sort of thing that would appeal to bookish early twentysomethings, then or now.
We feel it likely UVM students of ancient drama or Latin may have been inspired, at least somewhat, by Aenid, the Latin epic poem. In it, Aeneas and a guide come upon the three-headed dog Cerberus, guarding the entrance to the underworld -- and feed the creature "a loaf with honeyed herbs imbued and drowsy essences" (Verg. A. 6. 417, Book 6, line 417-425). This allows them to gain entrance past Cerberus, who grows drowsy from the laced treat.
Honey cakes also feature in Aristophanes' Lysistrata (411 BCE) as "melittouta" and a few other ancient texts.
Another item that catches our eyes is the uvae sucus, or "grape juice." This is a good time to remember the event commemorated here was either sponsored in part by the University, and/or held on University grounds -- during the federal Prohibition.
It is also likely what might have been served to all, or select few guests, was instead homemade wine, grape juice spiked by the wine bricks that proliferated at that time.
Vintners, their livelihoods in sudden jeopardy, pivoted to selling congealed bricks of concentrated grape juice with tongue-in-cheek instructions on how to not ferment them into homemade wine. Because doing so would have been illegal.
Menus from Greek Life
Next, Dr. Trubek examined a Kappa Alpha Theta menu, which is printed alongside a program of designated toasts.
"Whoever designed this menu had another level of skill or else wanted to make this meal even sort of a higher-end meal," she observes.
"You've got tomato bouillon. So that is basically kind of like a consommé," a clear soup that is "a little bit more technically difficult to make."
"And then you have filet of halibut, au vin blanc, and then you have pommes soufflé. Those are both much more classic French preparations. They're more technically complicated. [...] This was super fancy. And the other ones were like everyday meals that you might get.
"Pommes soufflé are super interesting -- it's a twice-fried potato that in some ways French fries emerge from, but you actually make them with a very small round disc, and they're much more delicate than French fries.
"And then au vin blanc with a filet of halibut that's -- you're actually pan searing and you're quickly cooking, and then you're doing what you call as a reduction sauce. And that is kind of state of the art, kind of French cuisine. And it is not a Yankee practice at all. Nobody was learning that in their Yankee homes. So that's interesting to me."
"I don't know what Sherwood Rolls are at all. I don't know if they're like a dinner roll.
"And Waldorf salad is a classic that the Waldorf was a hotel in New York City that was considered to be like a Ritz of France hotel in New York City. And this became one of their signature salads. And then everybody just ripped it off, and everybody was making it. Apples nuts, a kind of mayonnaise dressing -- and mayonnaise dressing is a very American approach. That's not something you're going to get in France."
While we are not food historians, we can lend up one theory about the Sherwood rolls -- having stumped our expert as well as all of Google:
Given their placement alongside the Waldorf Salad -- a salad named after the hotel through which it rose to fame -- we propose the Sherwood roll is a nod to the Sherwood Hotel, an early-twentieth century Burlington exclusive that, like a lot of buildings of a time, relinquished to a fire in 1940.
We cannot confirm this theory, though it is not for a lack of exhausting viable means, including a fruitless search for a Kappa Alpha Theta house recipe book and plumbing the murky depths of the internet.
An alternate theory buzzing in our office centered on the rolls being made of a namesake flour, but this did not hold as strongly as that above.
Reader, do you know what a Sherwood Roll is? Is our theory correct? Off track? Do you have a better one? Let us know.
Related links:
Cook a classical feast: nine recipes from ancient Greece and Rome | British Museum
Amy Trubek, PhD | Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences | The University of Vermont (uvm.edu)
During Prohibition, Vintners Sold "Wine Bricks" Rather Than Wine | Smithsonian (smithsonianmag.com)
Making Modern Meals: How Americans Cook Today Volume 66 a book by Amy B. Trubek (bookshop.org)
Burlington, Vermont - Early 20th-century Postcard Views (uvm.edu)
1920s Recipes | Leg of Mutton | Cold Norwegian Pudding | Lobster | 52 Sunday Dinners Project | (youtube.com)
Recreating Recipes From The 1920s | Roast Chicken | Aspic Salad | 52 Sunday Dinners Project | Week 7 (youtube.com)
24 Then and Now - Dishing On Menus and All Things Food With Dr. Amy Trubek
Lisa Wartenberg Vélez
May 23, 2024