Gilded Age Meals and Etiquette

The diagram above was for the placement of silver at a regular, family breakfast in the Gilded Age. A “Breakfast Party” was another type of breakfast altogether — “… a breakfast party was an enormous meal with six or seven courses, various kinds of meats and fish, a variety of breads and pastries, and at least one or two different wines.” 

On the Gilded Age Cookbook by Mrs. Mary F. Henderson, “Practical Cooking and Dinner Giving,” of 1877

Based on her sample menus, a breakfast party was an enormous meal with six or seven courses, various kinds of meats and fish, a variety of breads and pastries, and at least one or two different wines. Lunches were even more elaborate and alcohol-soaked. For example, one of Henderson’s lunch menus — a twelve-course ladies’ lunch — had three different alcoholic drinks (milk punch, claret, and champagne), and such disconcerting details as a course of chocolate (probably hot chocolate) with whipped cream, served in between courses of beef fillet and spinach on tongue. Even while describing such abundance, Henderson found ways to make clear that nothing was terribly grand by her standards. 

For instance, after outlining the intricate steps involved in making preparations for a formal, multi-course dinner, she wrote offhandedly, “one can see that it requires very little trouble to serve the dinner . . . It is a simple routine.” She went on to refer blandly to the possibility of stamping personalized menu cards with a family crest and to entertaining “foreign embassadors.” In calling such advice “practical” and such elaborate preparations “simple,” Henderson emphasized her own privilege by making it clear that, for her, having vast resources, sophisticated connections, and a staff of servants to command was absolutely ordinary. — From “Food in the American Gilded Age,” Edited by Helen Zoe Veit

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia