We're looking forward to a great community celebration on Friday, October 14, to mark the anniversary of Harvard's founding. In all the undergraduate Houses, at Annenberg, and at Dudley and Cronkhite, we'll start the celebration with a menu that reflects typical foods served throughout the centuries here at Harvard.
The menu was created by HUDS' Director of Culinary Operations, Martin Breslin, and a team of students who poured over research from the Harvard archives. Here's their menu, and brief explanations of the food's history . . .
Bill Of Fare
Beef Consommé (Jillian Smith, Cabot House)
Corn Chowder (Annie Douglas, Adams House)
A Grand Sallat (Kristin Kessel, Adams House)
Roast Leg of Lamb with Mint Jelly (Rebecca Ruskin, Quincy House)
Chicken Pie (Isabel Hebert, Adams House)
Welsh Rarebit (Yonatan Kogan,, Eliot House)
Buttered Savoy Cabbage (Sarah Rose Cass, Annenberg Freshman Dining Hall)
Griddled Potatoes (Natalie Padilla, Leverett House)
English Peas (Dana Modzelewski, Adams House)
The Root Cellar (Eric Michel, Quincy House)
Corn Bread (Rebecca Ruskin, Quincy, House)
Historical menu notes:
Beef Consommé
Beef consommé first appeared in French cuisine in the 16th century as a supplement to other recipes. It re-emerged as a soup in its own right in Europe during the early 19th century, and was even served to first class passengers on the Titanic in a fateful last dinner on April 14, 1912 before the sinking of the ship.
From classical French cuisine to the Titanic, beef consommé has been a soup that caters to the tastes of the elite. According to an article in Gastronomica, consommé “signaled not just the raw economic worth of the [first class] passengers [on the Titanic]; it aimed to reflect their own confidence and suggest their potential for success.” The Harvard Dining Association began serving beef consommé to undergraduates in February of 1786.
Beef consommé is traditionally prepared by simmering and straining a “raft” of finely mixed beef and vegetables in a pot. Egg whites and other seasonings are added and simmered, creating a foam mixture at the surface that clarifies the soup as it rises. Once the foam is removed, the remaining soup is a clarified consommé ready to be served. Today’s recipe replicates the same clarifying process and many of the same ingredients used in the traditional recipe. Consommé is still served today in higher end culinary institutions and restaurants.
Jillian Smith, Cabot House
*****
Corn Chowder – V
Corn chowder has appeared on Harvard menus since 1840. Corn bears much significance as an indigenous crop, a staple of the American diet, and a symbol of American agriculture and way of life. While the origin of chowder in the United States is less clear-cut, the starchy seafood stew likely reached America via sailors or immigrants from France or England.
The first recipe for fish chowder printed in America appeared in the Boston Evening Post in 1751. Recipes for chicken, veal, and potato chowder began to emerge in the following decades, with instructions for corn chowder appearing in the late 1800s. Ingredients included corn, water, milk, flour, as well as eggs, cream, onion, and pepper (and in non-vegetarian versions, bacon or ham and chicken stock).
Annie Douglas, Adams House
*****
A Grand Sallet – V
A grand sallet, or a great salad, is a four-hundred-year-old Elizabethan dish that is not wildly different from a salad you might make in the dining hall or order off a menu today. A grand sallet consists of many of the ingredients that we find in modern salads: leafy greens, an assortment of herbs, hardboiled eggs, almonds, and capers. Yet a unique feature of a grand sallet is its abundance of dried fruits: figs, raisins, candied cherries, dried currants, dried orange peel, and dates. Noticeably missing from an Elizabethan sallet are tomatoes and peppers, which are often considered staples of a salad today. And though the ingredient list of a grand sallet may seem long, its dressing is markedly less involved, requiring nothing more complicated than wine or sherry vinegar, olive oil, a pinch of pepper, and a dash of salt.
Typically served at evening supper rather than midday dinner, a grand sallet was featured on Harvard's dining menu in the mid-1600s.
Kristin Kessel,, Adams House
*****
Roast leg of Lamb with mint jelly
Although modern college students seldom see “Roast Leg of Lamb with Mint Jelly” as the main entrée listing in the dining halls, this was common fare 375 years ago at Harvard. Roast Leg of Lamb frequented Harvard’s early Bills of Fare because sheep – who also provided hide for diplomas – were prevalent in Cambridge. This gamey meat served as welcome nourishment for hungry students in the 17th century.
Rebecca Ruskin, Quincy House
*****
Chicken Pie
Some historians trace the roots of the pie back to 9500 B.C., when ancient Egyptians began to use stone tools for grinding and making food. Originally, these creations were referred to as “galettes,” but they were far from our common notion of a pie. It was not until the Greeks invented the pie pastry that ancient pies began to resemble modern our conception of the pastry. Even then, pies historically featured mostly meat-based fillings, rather than the sweet pies we often consume for dessert.
In the Medieval Ages, pies were popular as a staple food for traveling and working people, as the pastry shell served as a baking dish, storage container, and serving vessel. Part of the popularity of the pastry came from a chef’s ability to cook a pie over an open fire and alter the pie’s filling based on the available ingredients. Early pies were called “coffins” or “coffyns,” words that were frequently used to describe baskets or boxes that featured tall, straight sides with sealed floors and lids. Open-top pies were referred to as “traps.” Although Harvard has served many pies in its 375-year history, tonight’s pastry recalls the traditional chicken variety.
Isabel Hebert, Adams House.
*****
Welsh Rarebit – V (contains alcohol)
Welsh rarebit, or Welsh rabbit, is a dish made with a savory sauce of melted cheese and various other ingredients and served hot over toast. There are an enormous number of variations of Welsh rarebit; two recipe books published at the turn of the 19th century provide one recipe for rarebit that calls for ale and another that does not.
Although the origin of the name may be related to the Welsh love of cheese, the choice to call a cheese dish “rabbit” is more likely an ironic reference to the notorious poverty in 18th century Wales. The term “rarebit” is the result of an etymologizing alteration, first used in 1785. According to American satirist Ambrose Bierce, the continued use of rarebit was an attempt to rationalize the absence of rabbit. In his 1911 Devil's Dictionary, Bierce defined “rarebit” as “a Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit.”
Welsh rarebit is also mentioned several times in the 1895 Harvard Stories: Sketches of an Undergraduate, which clearly refers to a recipe using beer.
Yonatan Kogan, Eliot House
*****
Buttered Savoy Cabbage – V
Savoy cabbage is a mild and sweet variant of the cabbage family, which includes everything from red cabbage, to bok choy, to cauliflower. Heralded today for its plentiful vitamins and low price, cabbage has a rich history. There is evidence of the domestication of cabbage as far back as 4000 B.C.E. in China. Cabbage was a favorite food of Confucius, a ward against intoxication in Ancient Rome, and a medical remedy for sick soldiers on Captain Cook's voyage. In the Northeast, cabbage lent its name to "Cabbage Night," a popular 1970s holiday in which children threw food, including cabbage, at local homes on the night before Halloween.
Buttered savoy cabbage was common fare in the Harvard kitchens in the early 20th century.
Sarah Rose Cass, Annenberg Freshman Dining Hall
*****
Griddled Potatoes – Vgn
In 1898, griddled Russet potatoes found their way atop Harvard College’s dining hall menu, offering a crispy, yet tender side dish to a true meat and potatoes meal.
Potatoes have a long history in America. In 1836, Henry Harmon Spalding planted the first potatoes in Idaho as crop for his Christian mission. Up until the 1850s, however, many Americans planted potatoes near hog pens because they considered the crop to be for animal consumption alone. It wasn’t until 1872 that America’s most well known potato – the Russet Burbank potato – was developed by American horticulturist Luther Burbank as an attempt to find a more disease-resistant variety of the crop.
Natalie Padilla, Leverett House
*****
English Peas – Vgn
Although peas are typically boiled or steamed today, the vegetables were once grown for their dry seeds. By the 17th and 18th centuries, it became the fashion to eat peas "green" – that is, right after they have been picked off the stem and are still immature. As new cultivars of peas were grown in England, the typical garden pea became known as the English Pea. Peas have long appeared on the menus at Harvard in soup, as a lone vegetable, or in other dishes.
Dana Modzelewski, Adams House
*****
The Root Cellar – Vgn
The turnips, carrots, parsnips, beets, hubbard squash, and onions in the root cellar represent are typical of vegetables that have customarily been served at Harvard and throughout New England over the past centuries. Root cellars keep food – usually vegetables – at low temperature and steady humidity, preventing them from freezing during the winter and spoiling during the summer. At Harvard, students once had their own root cellars in which they stored beer, wine, and other alcoholic beverages.
Eric Michel, Quincy House
*****
Cornbread – V
Cornbread has been a staple in New England for centuries. Native Americans – who first made the bread – taught the recipe to European settlers, who then spread the bread across the country. Cornbread was originally made from cornmeal, salt, and water, all of which were easily accessible ingredients in the early days of Harvard College.
Cornbread evolved over the years to adapt to the character of a particular region. In the South, cornbread is often made with lard or bacon fat, but in the North, recipes are generally sweeter. Similar ingredients in cornbread were also used to make Hasty Pudding, a very popular dessert at Harvard that inspired Harvard's own Hasty Pudding Theatricals.
Rebecca Ruskin, Quincy, House
*****
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