The Ghosts of Thanksgiving Past
Last Thanksgiving, Gut Check took a trip back in time to revisit the Thanksgivings of the good old days. Well, what we really wanted to revisit was the fabulous spread put on by the Park Avenue Hotel in New York, which started with oysters and continued through eleven courses, serving up delicacies such as "Diamond-back terrapin, Amontillado sherry" and "Sweetbreads in cases with truffles" along with good old "Rhode Island turkey stuffed with chestnuts, cranberry sauce" and "Tomato in surprise." (What could that "surprise" be, we wonder? Aspic?)
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Alas, that was not possible. We just stared at the menu for a while and drooled.
St. Louisans ate much more simply. The old Globe-Democrat printed up a sample menu in 1883 that wouldn't be out of place today: roast turkey, mashed potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie. It did, however, reprint a heart-rending tale from Baltimore of a family whose Thanksgiving feast literally crushed the table.
By 1911, exactly 100 years ago, menus hadn't changed much. But Thanksgiving promised to be more depressing that year. On October 1 the Post-Dispatch trumpeted the gloomy headline: "NEARLY ALL FOOD PRICES UP; HOPE IN DRIED APPLES."
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