1913 picnic menu

I wonder what German ham sausage was? Salami? Keilbossa? and what is bloater? I guess tuna wasn’t much of a thing then.

1910 picnic menu

Bloaters are a type of whole cold-smoked herring. Bloaters are "salted and lightly smoked without gutting, giving a characteristic slightly gamey flavour" and are particularly associated with Great Yarmouth, England. Popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the food is now described as rare.

you can find out what other food items are by using google.

1914 picnic menu

“ham sausage” seems like saying “pie cookie”, or “pancake waffle”, google did not give me clear results, I can only guess they are saying it’s not breakfast sausage, the egg anchovy sandwich sounds like a proto caesar salad

Fascinating. I love learning about foods of yore... Some I even try.

I have my American/German Grandmother's Little Black Book of recipes - circa early 1900s. The cut-out recipes look very similar in style.

Ham sausage is probably not unlike the “ham salami” that used to be sold here when I was younger, a kind of manufactured meat (mostly ham) shaped like a large salami and sold in thin slices. Not quite ham, but not really salami either.

Proto-spam?

What I find most interesting is how similar the menus are with their galantines and pounded almond sweets and all. Like an mid-20th C. American picnic with cold fried chicken.

The last true picnic I was on had a charcuterie plate, several stinky cheeses, brioche and sour epi, and really good wine. And several forgettable salads.

We picnic all the time at the beach and on holiday all over the place. Is it a particularly European thing? The Brits tend to sit on a blanket on the ground, but the French do it in style. Tables and chairs, cloths, stemmed glasses.... great fun.

Our picnics usually have fried chicken (the only time I make fried chicken) and G—dd-mn Waldorf Salad (anyone who’s watched Fawlty Towers will get this) as the must haves. Then there’s often potato salad, Shooter’s Sandwich, maybe pizza bread (a sort of fancy cold calzone), devilled eggs, crudités and hommous, fruit and potato chips, all depending on how many we are and the cook’s whim.

When I was in London in early April nearly two years ago, I was surprised to see so many mothers and children having a picnic on a blanket at Kew Gardens on a day that in the US, we would have not thought of as "picnic weather". Certainly easier than trying to keep a group of toddlers confined in a restaurant while their mothers visited!

We drove some of my husband's hand carved furniture down to the San Diego area and the buyers treated us to a weekend at their "lodge" in Baja Mexico. It was a main lodge with several small granny unit type cottages owned by different people.

They suggested a picnic at the beach which sounded great.

We went for a walk on the beach and came back to a table up on a bluff looking over the ocean, set with white table cloth and china, and a full Mexican meal! Best "picnic" ever!