How to Eat Like a Victorian

At the end of one month, I plan out the details of mine and my husband's menu for the next month. Part way through Thanksgiving weekend, as I look toward Christmas, I feel compelled to keep us from gaining too much weight. As a Victorianist, I remembered reading recently that Victorian diets were some of the healthiest in history - if, of course, you practice better sanitation and avoid gimmicks, like arsenic wafers (those were never good for you)!

It's easy to find meal plans, like what I normally make, online and I often turn to them for inspiration, so I did the same thing in search of a Victorian menu, with no such luck. Of course, this was complicated by the fact that I don't want to eat like a poor Victorian, who ate weird street food and rotting vegetables. I also don't want to eat like a rich Victorian because they spent too much money and wasted too much food. I wanted a practical Victorian diet.

Excerpt from William Banting's Letter on Corpulence (1864)

In my effort to create a meal-plan for the Victorian middling sort, I consulted the Letter on Corpulence (1864) by William Banting, and certainly took his advice on tea and alcohol, but I also consulted numerous other sources to decide what we would eat on a typical week in December in 1889. As the woman of the house, I would be arranging the menu, as I am today, but I would have had a servant to cook it for me. Otherwise, we wouldn't have so many homemade baked goods and puddings.

Monday

Cold puddings!

Breakfast: a large cup of tea, a biscuit, preserves, broiled bone, and devilled kidneys.
Lunch: bread, with cold leftover beef and asparagus/potato, and a cold pudding.
Tea: a cup of tea, a pear, and a biscuit.
Dinner: 2 or three glasses of madeira, shrimp creole, spinach, rice, and a pear.
Supper: 1 or 2 glasses of madeira, and a little more shrimp, or a pear.

Tuesday

Breakfast: a large cup of tea, dry toast, a soft boiled egg, and ham or bacon.
Lunch: a couple pieces of buttered bread, a slice of meat, and a cold pudding.
Tea: a cup of tea, a pear, and a biscuit.
Dinner: 2 or 3 glasses of white wine, chicken baked in rice, asparagus, carrot, and walnuts.
Supper: 1 or 2 glasses of white wine, another piece of chicken, or some nuts.

Wednesday

Eggs for breakfast in the 1890s (source).

Breakfast: a large cup of tea, bread, bacon, and eggs.
Lunch: cold chicken sandwich, a cup of warm broth, and a cold pudding.
Tea: a cup of tea, a pear, and a biscuit.
Dinner: 2 or 3 glasses of white wine, curried fish (preferably cod), carrots, turnips, and nuts.
Supper: 1 or 2 glasses of white wine, and another small piece of fish.

Thursday

Breakfast: a large cup of tea, leftover fish, a fried egg, and a biscuit.
Lunch: a couple pieces of buttered bread, a slice of meat, and a cold pudding.
Tea: a cup of tea, an apple, and a biscuit.
Dinner: 2 or 3 glasses of good claret, Spanish stew, with bread, salad, and sliced apple.
Supper: 1 or 2 glasses of good claret, another meatball,

Friday

Kitchen utensils.

Breakfast: a large cup of tea, savoury eggs, and bread.
Lunch: a couple pieces of buttered bread, a slice of meat, and a cold pudding.
Tea: a cup of tea, grapes, and a pudding.
Dinner: 2 or 3 glasses of sherry, fried fillets of sole, green peas, and grapes.
Supper: 1 or 2 glasses of sherry, and small piece of sole.

Saturday

Breakfast: a large cup of tea, and leftover fish on buttered bread.
Lunch: a couple pieces of buttered bread, a slice of meat, and a cold pudding.
Tea:  a cup of tea, an apple, and a biscuit.
Dinner: 2 or 3 glasses of white wine, beans & bacon, sauté breast of marinated chicken, boiled potato, and sliced apple.
Supper: 1 or 2 glasses of white wine, and another piece of chicken.

Sunday

Breakfast: a large cup of tea, beans & bacon, with savoury eggs, fried potato, and toast.
Lunch:  cold chicken sandwich, a cup of warm broth, and a cold pudding.
Tea:  a cup of tea, an apple, and a biscuit.
Dinner:  2 or 3 glasses of good claret, beef, potatoes, asparagus, and sliced apple.
Supper: 1 or 2 glasses of good claret, and a little chunk of beef.

The breakfast bread, bacon, and eggs of modern brunch was well-established by the Victorian era. Eggs were typically boiled, fried, or poached. Wootton Bridge Historical has several good Victorian recipes for morning eggs, including: egg fritters, curried eggs, and Turkish eggs. Broiled bones and devilled kidneys, however, were just as common. Devilled kidneys were lambs kidneys cooked in a spiced sauce. Also common was the leftover cold meat from the previous evening's meal. Friday's savoury eggs are scrambled and fried with the Spanish meatballs from Thursday's meal.

To be practical and not create a lot of waste, food from the previous evenings meal could be eaten at lunch too. Preserving food was an important part of life in a Victorian kitchen. Potted meats could easily be used at lunch and I found a recipe for potted rabbit here. I think potted meat was the reason anyone ever thought of suggesting SPAM as something to eat. In the absence of leftovers, it could be spread on bread, during lunch. My suggestion of a "cold pudding" is based on James Greenwood's Seven Curses of London (1869), as quoted here.

I will have nothing new add to existing conversations about Victorian tea. I borrowed these recommendations from Banting.

It is easy to find out about what Victorians ate when they were entertaining, but what about when it was just the family at home? Did they always have 14 course dinners? Often not! During my quest for Victorian dinner recipes that my husband would eat, I found some one-pot meals, like the chicken baked in rice, which is like a meat pie with a meat crust and none of the vegetables. I added vegetables to this meal. For dinner, most records suggest a meat dish, two vegetables, and a bit of fruit for dinner.

For dinner, I would use Wootton Bridge Historical's curried fish recipe, and found many other recipes there too, including the fried fillet of sole and on the same site, Spanish stew recipe. Sunday dinner after church was always beef.

Dinner was the main meal of the day. It happened in the afternoon, or early evening. Supper was the Victorian equivalent of a late-night snack. By all reports, most people just picked at what was leftover fro dinner when suppertime came around, as they seemingly did for all their other meals.

When all is said and done, however, I'm having a hard time believing the five glasses of alcohol a day are really good for you, but maybe because so many preservatives and weird sugars have been cut from our diet, maybe...

Follow me on Twitter @TinyApplePress and like the Facebook page for updates!

The Savoy Hotel

Though many writers in the 1890s were starving artists to be sure, some writers grew very wealthy. Oscar Wilde is certainly an example of that kind of success and the lifestyle that went with it, though, to some degree, that was by design when it came to the Savoy Hotel in London.

Not only is the Savoy Hotel a landmark in the history of writers in London in the 1890s, it is also an important place in the history of luxury hotels. In the hotel industry, "everything that’s happened in high-end hotels since the 1890s is arguably just a variation on a theme introduced by César Ritz, the Savoy’s original general manager, who counts electric lights and en-suite bathrooms among his hospitality innovations." I call that putting on the ritz!

Ritz's innovations attracted the rich and famous, which, despite the myth of the starving artist, included many members of the arts communities.

Claud Monet's Waterloo Bridge series was painted in room 618 in 1901.

This lithograph by James Whistler represents the view from his room at the Sovoy Hotel in 1896.

Sarah Bernhardt, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and future Kind Edward V11 were also early guests, after the hotel opened in 1889. Though due the scandalous trial, Lord Alfred Douglas and Oscar Wilde are arguably the most well-known occupants of this period.

Ever the critic, Wilde wasn't as awe-struck or impressed with the hotel, in spite of how hard Ritz and his staff worked to accommodate its influential and often choosy guests. The Savoy Hotel kept records of guests’ particular preferences in order to provide them in advance. The staff made hospitality history as the first to photograph a guest's toiletries so they might arrange them accordingly in his washroom. The staff provided a fireproof eiderdown to another guest, who liked to smoke in bed. Wilde, however, scoffed at the very idea cold and hot indoor plumbing at the Savoy:

What is it good for? If I want hot water, I call for it.

The grounds of the Savoy Hotel have a long history of decadence, dating back to 1126 when Peter, Count of Savoy, built his palace there (also called Savoy). The Savoy Palace became the greatest house in England, during medieval times, known as a centre for art and culture. Geoffrey Chaucer began writing his Canterbury Tales, while in residence there. During its lifetime, the Savoy Palace housed the Dukes of Lancaster. The youngest son of King Edward III was living there, when it was destroyed in the peasants revolt of 1381.

Six-hundred years later, Richard D’oyly Carte opened the Savoy theatre on the site, as a showcase for the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Gilbert and Sullivan's operas proved to be such a success, that D'oyly Carte built the Savoy Hotel next door in 1889 - enter our writers!

Wilde's connections to Gilbert and Sullivan were numerous and D'oyly Carte had organized his 1881 American Tour. They all wanted Wilde, the celebrity aesthete and socialite, as a patron at the Savoy and an all-purpose party guest. Sadly, we know so much about Wilde's days at the Savoy Hotel because they were recounted for his damning trials.

His homosexual affair with Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas brought his flamboyant lifestyle at The Savoy to a bitter end. He had taken adjoining rooms on the third floor for himself and Lord Douglas. After a ‘wilde’ time, Douglas left the hotel and Wilde moved into a suite overlooking the river. He then wrote to Douglas: ‘Dearest of Boys, Your letter was delightful, red and yellow wine to me; but I am sad and out of sorts. I must see you soon. You are the divine thing I want, the thing of grace and beauty. My bill here is £49 for a week. I fear I must leave—no money, no credit, and a heart of lead.’

Bosie’s father took his son’s homosexual relations with Wilde as a personal affront and instituted legal proceedings. In one of the most sensational trials of the 19 century, Oscar Wilde was charged in 1895 with committing acts of ‘gross indecency’ with a string of young men. A handful of Savoy employees were among the key witnesses for the prosecution.

Wilde was found guilty and sentenced to two years’ hard labour. Thus, the hotel lost one of its most flamboyant guests. After his release from prison, Wilde left England and wandered around Europe for what were to be the last three years of his life. He died in 1900, at another hotel, the Hotel d’Alsace in Paris.

This - his last - hotel stay brought us his famous comment: “This wallpaper will be the death of me: one of us will have to go.” http://www.famoushotels.org/article/1189

Follow me on Twitter @TinyApplePress and like the Facebook page  for updates!