The table

From the librarian's dossier · AI-generated, grounded in the scanned text

The Table (1889) by Alexander Filippini is a monumental Gilded Age cookbook and menu manual, anchoring over a thousand recipe records within a structure built around daily meal planning for an affluent household or hotel. Filippini, who oversaw an elite New York culinary operation, opens with essays on American markets, seasonal fish and vegetable availability, and formal table service before launching into an extended calendar of breakfast, luncheon, and dinner menus running from January through December. Each menu entry cross-references numbered recipes found later in the book, which then unfolds through soups, stocks, sauces, forcemeats, fish, eggs, meats, poultry, game, vegetables, salads, and an extensive dessert section covering pastries, puddings, ices, and preserves. The book closes with banquet menus from state dinners, descriptions of dining customs in other nations, and alphabetical indexes. It is less a simple recipe collection than a working reference for structuring elaborate French-influenced American dining across an entire year, revealing the scale, seasonality, and technical sophistication expected in high-end kitchens of the period. Modern readers will find it a rich window into Victorian abundance, precise classical technique, and the social rituals of formal table service, though its scope and terminology require some adjustment for contemporary use.

The book opens with introductory essays on markets and seasonal food guides (section 1-2), followed by a lengthy calendar of daily breakfast, luncheon, and dinner menus organized week by week from January through December (sections 3-9), each entry keyed by recipe number to fuller instructions later in the volume. After the menu calendar, the book shifts into a recipe reference organized by category: soups (sections 10-11), stocks, sauces, forcemeats, and garnishings (sections 11-13), hors d'oeuvres and fish (sections 14-16), eggs and beef (sections 16-18), veal, mutton, lamb, and pork (sections 18-21), poultry and game (sections 21-22), vegetables (sections 24-25), salads (section 26), and a substantial desserts section covering pastry, puddings, ices, jellies, and preserves (sections 26-33). The book closes with banquet menus from historical state dinners, descriptions of foreign dining customs, and alphabetical indexes to the recipes (sections 35-36).