Menus That Made History | Alex Johnson
Menus That Made History
By Vincent Franklin & Alex Johnson
Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York city, sitting at her dining room table talking to cookbook authors.
Alex Johnson: I'm Alex Johnson and I'm the author of Menus that Made History: 2000 years of menus from Ancient Egyptian food for the afterlife to Elvis Presley's wedding breakfast, which I co-wrote with my friend Vincent Franklin.
Suzy Chase: For more Cookery by the Book, you can follow me on Instagram. If you enjoy this podcast, please be sure to share it with a friend. I'm always looking for new people to enjoy Cookery by the Book. On with the show.
Suzy Chase: So, you and Vincent Franklin delved into the world's 100 most iconic menus, which reveal not just the story of food, but periods of history, famous works of literature, notable events and celebrity figures; from prehistoric times up to the modern day, with over 40,000 years to choose from. How did you whittle down the menus?
Alex Johnson: Well, actually is quite difficult really. I mean, it's an embarrassment of riches, as you say, but what we were really trying to do was pick menus that tell stories. So, I'm a journalist by training and Vince is an actor, so we're both very interested in the storytelling aspect as much as the food element. What we didn't want to do was fill it with feasts that were to kind of turn a penny, although things like the George IV Coronation is astonishing, just because of the vast amount of food that was on offer.
Alex Johnson: We also wanted to make it international, we didn't want to make it... Although we're both based in England, we didn't want it to just be an English book of menus. So, there's things from India and America and Australia, South America, all over the world. And really, it's the kind of intriguing tidbits that you want to use to astonish people in the pub or in the bar, and just something to chat about really.
Suzy Chase: So each menu provides an insight into its historical moment. You're a longtime journalist and you've written eight books that range from books in reading to sheds, so what was it about historical menus that caught your interest?
Alex Johnson: Well, I'd love to be able to claim the idea was mine, but actually it was Vince's. I'd written a book two or three years ago called A Book of Book Lists and that was a list of things, not like 50 books you have to read before you're 30 or anything like that, but more lists that told stories. So things like what was on Osama bin Laden's bookshelf, that kind of thing, with little mini essays.
Alex Johnson: Vince read it and he liked it. And we were at a party and he said, "Well, you know what would also work very well as lists? The ultimate lists: menus." And I think he said it partly is a joke, and he said, "Well, what do you think about that as an idea?" And I said, "Actually, that's a cracking idea," and it really went from there. We both like food, we both know each other very well; we play snooker together every week and our children were at school together. So, the idea of working together was very pleasant.
Suzy Chase: I saw that you play snooker. Is it snooooker or snuuuucker?
Alex Johnson: Snooker. Definitely snooker, yeah.
Suzy Chase: So it's like pool, right?
Alex Johnson: It is like pool in a way, but the table is much bigger and it's... I mean, the table is two or three times the size and so the games go on much longer. So yes, it's similar and there's some crossover. I mean, the best player in the world, Ronnie O'Sullivan also plays a bit of pool, and I think he's pretty pool in America as well. But yes, we only play snooker. We're very hoity-toity about pool.
Suzy Chase: So, the word menu itself comes from a French term indicating something small or detailed. Talk a bit about where you found the first menu in ancient history.
Alex Johnson: The earliest ones go back 30,000, 40,000 years to ice age people, and we also have early ones from early Roman and Greek history. They're not, in a sense, some of these aren't menus. They've had to be put together from bits and bobs from what people have discovered and our research, but I think they... we always felt they still counted as menus because that was part of the actual diet.
Suzy Chase: You wrote that this is not really a book about food. What does that mean?
Alex Johnson: Yes, that sounds right. Rather an odd statement, isn't it really, when you're writing a book about food? But yes, it's not so much the individual elements to it, I suppose. It's going back to what I said earlier about the idea of telling stories, the idea that we are what we eat. So, rather than just recipes, although we do have recipes in the book, or just talking about individual items of food, which we do as well, it's more about the stories.
Alex Johnson: So for example, the Captain Scott failed to get to the South Pole first, was partly, largely because he wasn't as good a planner as Amundsen. He just wasn't as good at planning everything, and that's reflected in his food choices. He didn't have enough fat or calories in what he ate and what his men ate, down to smaller things like all his men had white bread, whereas Amundsen had special brown bread made. It's those kinds of stories, as well as the food elements. So it's how the food reflects the times and reflects the people.
Suzy Chase: It would have been easy to just write a book of a collection of recipes, but you categorize them into 11 chapters. Tell us about that.
Alex Johnson: We're not professional cooks, either of us, so just putting recipes together wouldn't have worked so well. And we did it, yes, with... there in 11 chapters. So things like travel and adventure, war and peace, faith and belief, and that was really... We did think about just going straight through all the menus, but we felt that cutting it up into chapters where they're naturally fitted into anyway, makes it easier to dip in and out of. It's not really a book that's meant to be read straight through. It's very much something that you can pick up, read for a bit and put down again, once you've marveled at the stories.
Suzy Chase: Although I did read straight through.
Alex Johnson: Did you?
Suzy Chase: You're welcome.
Alex Johnson: Quite right. That's thought I should've said. It's meant to be read straight through.
Suzy Chase: Some of the menus are linked to an unforgettable event like the Titanic. Describe the distinction between the three classes on the menu.
Alex Johnson: Well, one of the main distinctions is actually the wording in them. So, they're quite social distinctions. So things like dinner, tea and lunch are different depending on your class, which is something still very true today. I mean in England, supper, for example, could be your final meal of the day or it could just be a little sandwich before you go to bed, depending on your social class.
Alex Johnson: So, in actual physical terms, what you've got in first class is obviously the finest things, you've got your oysters. Whereas in third class, you're down to gruel and what they describe as cabin biscuits. And cabin biscuits sounds not too bad, but actually that's what's known as hard tacks, which were made out of flour and water and salt and a little bit of fat, which is great in terms of lasting. I mean, they lost donkey's years, and they've been used on boats for hundreds and hundreds of years, but not the most delicious thing around.
Suzy Chase: And even the times, the dining times were different?
Alex Johnson: Yes. I mean, it's all very different. I mean, it shows you what a massive operation it is and how everything was very stratified on board the boat.
Suzy Chase: Third class was the only menu that gives instructions on how to complain about the food or service?
Alex Johnson: Yeah. It's strange that that... we looked at that and we researched it, and we couldn't see any particular reason why they... It's very specific on the third-class menu. I suppose it's probably an element of being patronizing, the first and second class they thought knew how to complain. And maybe the food was just absolutely terrible in third class, so they were more likely to complain. Or maybe it was just that they wanted to suggest to the people in third class that it was best to complain rather than to go absolutely barmy and start wrecking the place.
Suzy Chase: It's so odd to think that the Titanic had a high capacity cooling unit for ice, but I guess it kept the oysters fresh for the first class?
Alex Johnson: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I mean that's... I think that's probably the beauty of the book is that, things like that which are quite ironic, which we didn't know. I mean, we were both reasonably familiar with the Titanic menus, but once you actually delve into it, they're the little tidbits, as I've mentioned earlier, they come out. And you just think, "Blimey, that's a bit strange really."
Suzy Chase: So even today, restaurants are recreating the first-class Titanic meal. Have you ever had one of those?
Alex Johnson: I haven't, no. I mean, it's interesting though, a lot of these meals become quite iconic. So we also include the meal from Babette's Feast, from the film in there, and the Independence Day meals are from India, and there's a lot of this recreation. I was talking to somebody early today, in fact, who runs dinner clubs and he was looking to do Babette's Feast and also the Titanic one.
Alex Johnson: I think they're very popular. I think you also get the same kind of thing with Lord of the Rings fanatics as well, that they're very keen to actually reproduce what they see on screen.
Suzy Chase: July 20th, 1969: four bacon squares, peaches, three sugar cookies, pineapple-grapefruit drink and coffee. That was the first menu on the moon. Who ate this and how was this menu chosen?
Alex Johnson: Well, these are the astronauts who are the first men on the moon. People like Neil Armstrong had it, I mean, Buzz Aldrin. Neil Armstrong's actual favorite from all their food was spaghetti with meat sauce, followed by pineapple fruitcake, and Buzz Aldrin liked the shrimp cocktail.
Alex Johnson: And generally, it's interesting what foods have been popular in space. Bacon was very popular for a long time, I think partly because of its strong flavor. But also, there's some doubt about whether this was the first menu on the moon because Buzz Aldrin actually brought a communion wafer and communion wine, and celebrated a little private communion before that meal. So, there's probably two answers to that question if you ever get it in a quiz.
Suzy Chase: Oh, I bet that communion wafer was as awful in space, it's so dry.
Alex Johnson: Yeah. It's gone a long way. It's got a long way.
Suzy Chase: King George VI was the first reigning British monarch to visit America in June, 1939. President Franklin Roosevelt hosted the King and Queen at their private home in Hyde Park, New York. So instead of a ceremonial banquet, they had sort of a buffet situation. The New York Times wrote, "King tries hot hot dogs and asks for more, and he drinks beer with them." This made me laugh. So, describe this menu.
Alex Johnson: Yes. I mean, it's a very down-to-earth, no-nonsense, straightforward American food menu. You've got Virginia ham and hot dogs and cranberry sauce, cranberry jelly I think, and then coffee, beer. There's nothing fancy-pantsy about at all. Very good, no-nonsense stuff.
Suzy Chase: The queen was unsure how to eat a hot dog with a fork and knife, and FDR said, and I quote, "Push it into your mouth and keep pushing it until it is all gone."
Alex Johnson: Yeah. Yes, it's maybe not what you would recommend today, especially in the days of YouTube and videos. That would be quite a sight, wouldn't it?
Suzy Chase: So why do you think they chose such an informal setting for the King and Queen?
Alex Johnson: Well, the whole thing really was designed as a kind of cover for Roosevelt to align the US more closely with Britain as they were heading towards war. And there was a strong isolationist lobby at the time in the US, so... and like I say, he wanted a slight, not exactly incognito, but a cover story. And his argument really, what he wanted to do, it was key to show the Royal family we're the kind of approachable people you could do business with, the kind of people you'd have a beer with.
Alex Johnson: I suppose you'd describe it maybe as gastro-diplomacy, which we mention it in a couple of other places in the book. For example, the historic Peace Summit between North and South Korea in 2018, and there's a huge amount of symbolism in all aspects of that. So, especially things like fillings, which came from the hometowns of former presidents and that kind of thing. Everything is very carefully sorted out and worked out to make it look like actually, it's very relaxed. It's a very clever piece of work by Roosevelt really.
Suzy Chase: What is your favorite menu in the book?
Alex Johnson: I really like the one for the 1870 Siege of Paris on Christmas Day. The Prussian Army had been besieging the city for a while and they were getting really low on food. They'd eaten all the normal food, they were eating a lot of the animals, pretty much all the dogs had gone. And on Christmas Day, one of the big restaurants, Voisin, wanted to serve something special. So essentially what they did was, they went to the zoo and started taking the animals out and serving them.
Suzy Chase: No?!
Alex Johnson: So yeah, it was remarkable, I don't know whether... So you have on the menu, you have things like stuffed donkey head, elephant soup, cat fringed with rats, but they went for everything. Well, they didn't go for monkeys because that's a bit too close to home, bit too much like cannibalism. They don't go for anything too dangerous like the lions or the tigers, and there were some things like the hippos that they didn't know what to do with. I mean, how do you cook a hippo? How do you serve that? So, but that seemed remarkable to me. It was again, one of those things that I've just not heard of until you start doing the research for and you think, "That's extraordinary, really."
Suzy Chase: I must talk about Elvis and Priscilla Presley's wedding breakfast at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas on May 1st, 1967. The ceremony lasted only eight minutes with 14 guests and a buffet lunch for 100 guests. That menu was: ham and eggs, fried chicken, Oysters Rockefeller, roast pig, poached and candied salmon, lobster, Eggs Minnette, no idea what that is, a six-tiered wedding cake and champagne. You wrote that Elvis only liked ham, eggs and fried chicken. Was this wedding a publicity stunt?
Alex Johnson: Absolutely. I mean, this is all down to his manager, Colonel Tom Parker. I mean, it was a very, as you'd mentioned, it was a very, very swift wedding. There were hardly any guests; in fact, even the ones that Elvis had invited personally weren't allowed in. And he didn't like a lot of the food there, especially the oyster and the lobster. A lot of their business associates were invited. It was all a bit... Like a lot of things that Tom Parker did, very much a stunt. I'm sure Parker actually sorted out the menu himself and picked it.
Suzy Chase: So, last weekend I made the recipe for buttermilk fried chicken with apple slaw from Elvis's wedding buffet. It was pretty darn delicious. And might I add that there are recipes throughout this book? Talk a little bit about that.
Alex Johnson: When we sat down to write it, we were very much looking at the history of the recipes. And when we talked to the publisher, they felt that it would be nice to also include some recipes, as well as the menus. And they asked us for suggestions and the ones that we came up with are all the absolutely ludicrous ones, like roast narwhal or stuffed swan's neck, and they picked ones that would be a bit more approachable really, and it was all done in house. There's about a dozen where people can read about the menu and then make something quite easily from it. Well, I hope it's quite easily. How did the... how was it? You said it was tasty. Was it quite easy to follow?
Suzy Chase: It was really easy to follow. You just-
Alex Johnson: That's good.
Suzy Chase: ... marinate the chicken; I did it overnight. It was really good, and the apple slaw was great too. I'm sure Elvis would've loved it.
Alex Johnson: Let's hope so.
Suzy Chase: Wait, I need to get back to stuffed swan's neck.
Alex Johnson: We did some of the Tudor Elizabethan recipes, which included peacocks and things that are just not really available anymore, and a 13th century funeral for a Bishop as well. So that was interesting, looking into just the different names and what they're eating at different times.
Suzy Chase: Yikes almighty.
Alex Johnson: Yeah.
Suzy Chase: So, now for my segment called My Favorite Cookbook. What's your all time favorite cookbook and why?
Alex Johnson: I really like, there's a chap here called Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who has written lots of cookbooks and he's a big campaigner for ethical eating and healthy eating. He's in the series called River Cottage Cookbooks and there's a very good family one, which has recipes in which are good for children, cooking with children. Well, not with them.
Alex Johnson: And Gary Rhodes was probably... who sadly died at the end of last year, was a marvelous cook. He did one called Rhodes Around Britain, which was probably about the first cookbook I bought as an adult, which has a lot of fairly classic British dishes, but with a slight twist. He has a very, very good bread and butter pudding recipe in there.
Alex Johnson: But I would have to say that probably my favorite is the Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course. Delia Smith is a real [inaudible 00:18:27] of cooks. And for somebody of my age, I'm 50, she used to have a slot on a children's television show on Saturday mornings when I was about eight or nine, and I've kind of grown up with her. She had lots of television series and produced lots of cookbooks, and they're all very good, safe recipes. So if there's anything you really want to do... They're not fancy recipes; they're nice and tasty but they're really reliable. And I think that's the one that I go back to the most.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Alex Johnson: Well, you can find the book... We're on Twitter, @FamousMenus. Personally, my website is TheAlexJohnson.co.uk. And on Twitter I'm @ShedWorking because one of the other things I do love writing about is sheds. Yeah, Vince is just all over the place because he's an actor. Type in his name, you'll find all sorts of him everywhere.
Suzy Chase: So, sheds, are you talking about tiny houses or really sheds that you put your gardening tools in?
Alex Johnson: It's somewhere in between, really. What I write about is garden offices, so the kind of sheds that you'd have in your backyard, your back garden, that you use as a home office. Which is a slight distance away from your home, but still very close. And yes, that's one of the things I've been writing about now for about 10, 15 years.
Suzy Chase: Have you heard of the term she shed?
Alex Johnson: Oh, absolutely yes. No, a big thing, especially the last five or six years. It shows us... And that's the nice thing about shed working and garden offices, is that the old traditional idea of sheds, especially in the UK has been that it's for older men on their allotments and a, "No women allowed," kind of thing. But shed working garden offices is very much an equal gender approach, so it's fantastic that I get to write about lots of women who are interested in sheds and garden offices too.
Suzy Chase: Hillary Clinton once remarked, "Food is the oldest diplomatic tool." Well, isn't that the truth? Thanks so much for coming on Cookery by the Book Podcast.
Alex Johnson: Lovely. Thank you very much, Suzy.
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