Image: Scan by NYPL · Public domain
Delmonico's menus
- Year
- 1860-1920
- Era
- 19th century
- Origin
- USA · Americas
- Language
- English
- Category
- Menus/Ephemera
Delmonico's menus document the bills of fare issued by the celebrated New York restaurant from roughly the 1860s through the 1920s, spanning its rise as the foremost dining establishment of the American Gilded Age. Printed in English and often in French, they record the dishes, banquet structures, and pricing conventions that shaped fine dining in the United States, preserving evidence of haute cuisine's transatlantic transmission and the social rituals of elite New York.
Cooking from this book
Lobster Newberg
Signature dishFew dishes evoke Delmonico's Gilded Age glamour like Lobster Newberg, a rich preparation of lobster bound in a sherry-laced cream sauce enriched with egg yolks and a whisper of cayenne. Reputedly devised in the 1870s after a sea captain named Ben Wenberg demonstrated his version in the dining room, it became a fixture on Delmonico's menus and a shorthand for the opulent New York table the restaurant defined for half a century.
An editorial note on a dish associated with this book, written for The Coquinist. It is not a reproduction of the book's recipe.
