Hot Dogs and Flesh Days: Menus That Made History returns

“Push it into your mouth and keep pushing it until it is all gone.”

I’m delighted that Menus That Made History which I wrote with Vince Franklin and came out in 2019 is being reprinted and is scheduled to be back on the shelves next month. For those of you who have, unaccountably, not read the book, here is a little taster from it, two menus featuring a US President, Henry VIII, and an intriguing technique for eating hot dogs.

Franklin Roosevelt’s State Picnic with King George VI, June 11, 1939

Official state dinners at the White House in the U.S. have almost always been formal sit-down affairs. King David Kalakaua of Hawaii was the first invitee, hosted by Ulysses S Grant in 1874. The King came with his own royal food testers and enjoyed a 20 course meal.

Sometimes these dinners are merely forums for genteel diplomacy, but President Franklin Roosevelt had a much more serious motive when he invited George VI in June 1939.

The King was the first reigning British monarch to visit America, pre- or post-revolution, and relations between the two countries had not always been delightfully cordial. Roosevelt though was keenly aware that Europe was once again close to plunging itself into a major conflict and wanted to allign the U.S. and Britain more closely, despite a powerful isolationist lobby keen to make America great again.

Long story short, the President’s carefully-laid plans went swimmingly. Roosevelt and the King discussed military tactics and the importance of naval collaboration while crowds packed the streets of Washington DC to catch a glimpse of the King and Queen Elizabeth. There were various pleasant music concerts, an enjoyable trip on the presidential yacht down the Potomac to Mount Vernon, and at Arlington Cemetery they laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Then things became more informal. The Potus and Flotus hosted the monarchs at their Hyde Park home ‘Springwood’ in New York to show that they were all just regular people, hanging out together, going for a swim in their private swimming pool. And instead of a ceremonial banquet, they went for a picnic on the estate at their Top Cottage retreat.

As the menu above indicates, hot dogs were the order of the day (served on a silver tray but eaten off paper plates) and made the headlines in the newspapers, not least because they were a culinary first for the King. “King tries hot dog and asks for more,” chuckled the New York Times. “And he drinks beer with them.” They were a palpable hit. The King ate his “with gusto” and asked for seconds although apparently the Queen was unsure how to consume them and went for the knife and fork option rather than following FDR’s advice: “Push it into your mouth and keep pushing it until it is all gone.”

The tour was a success, the American public was captivated, and when war did break out, the path to co-operation between the two nations had been successfully smoothed out.

Roosevelt was not the only President who could play it cool. When West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard visited Lyndon Johnson a month after JFK had been assassinated, the President served him barbecued spare ribs, pinto beans, coleslaw, and apricot pies, with plenty of strong coffee and beer. Erhard gave Johnson a bottle of lovely sweet white wine, a fine 1959 Piesporter Goldtröpfchen from the Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt estate. In return, Johnson gave Erhard a Stetson.

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The menu for Henry VIII on Flesh Days

In 1526, as part of an ongoing battle with his opponents at court, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey issued the Eltham Ordinances, a reform to regulate Henry VIII’s daily life and enable himself to continue as the power behind the throne. In addition to key moves such as who had access to Henry’s bed chamber, part of these new regulations focused on the royal menu.

This was an everyday bill of fare, so bears little relationship to the headline banquets of Henry’s reign, such as the feasting at the Field of the Cloth of Gold to impress Francis I of France in 1520 - in her book At the King’s Table, Suzanne Groom itemises the extravagant arrangements for this which included 216,000 gallons of wine, 78 storks, and two peacocks (probably in the form of Peacock Royale, a whole peacock, carefully skinned with feathers still in place, then roasted and the skin/feathers re-attached, usually with its beak gilded).

However there was a vast array of meat on offer at dynner – at a time we would call a very early lunch - including swan and red deer, as well as custard and fritters followed by a second course which included a huge variety of birds (including herons, pheasants, plovers and shovelard, a spoon-billed duck). There was also jelly and ipocras, a spiced wine drink which was a forerunner of sangria.

The early evening supper was along similar lines on dinner, with the addition of dowcetts (sweet tarts, sometimes with meat added into the mix, a longstanding favourite and served at the coronation of Henry IV) plus blancmange, fruit, butter, and eggs for the second courfe. All the food was carried to the Great Hall at Hampton Court in ‘messes’, dishes to be shared between up to four people. Nobody would eat everything off the menu, it would all be cooked and made available, a little like an all you can eat buffet.

Two types of bread were on offer for both meals, ‘manchet’ the best, made with flour finely sieved through a cloth. ‘Cheat’ consisted of inferior quality flour and was heavier. Of course there were gallons of ale to wash it all down.

On ‘fish days’ - Wednesdays, Fridays and special occasions such as Lent – the menu switched to seafood, which also included seal. Diners could choose from herring, eels, lampreys, pike, salmon, whiting, haddock, mullet, bass, plaice, gurnard, sea bream, sole, congers, porpoise, carp, trout, crabs, lobsters, sturgeon, tench, and perch. 

Plenty of protein, but a notable absence of green veg, although some hints of the royal taste in fruit such as baked pippin apples and oranges. Henry liked marmalade which was introduced to him by Katherine of Aragon, while Wolsey is generally regarded as the first person to serve strawberries and cream together, at a banquet in 1509.

Henry himself ate in private while the rest of the court ate together, the most powerful courtiers in the Great Watching Chamber at Hampton Court, and up to 600 others in the Great Hall in two sittings. Right at the bottom of the pile came the maids, servants, porters and children. They had beef and mutton for dinner, and beef and veal for supper. Food that was untouched went to the poor.

The Ordinances also went into detail about the cost of each meal and exactly how much food the varying level of people at court were allowed to eat, as well as enforcing working practices to ensure that master cooks clothed the scullions, the lowest kitchen menial servants, who had previously been going about their kitchen duties naked.

Sadly for Wolsey, his powerplay was not a long-term success. By 1530, he had failed to get a marriage anulment for Henry, lost possession of Hampton Court, and died on the journey to London where he was to face a charge of treason.