Top London Foodie Destinations in 1788

Ever wondered when and where the modern restaurant review got started?

In 18th century London, there weren't really restaurants, but eating establishments of all shapes and sizes –– taverns, coffee-houses, inns and cookshops –– abounded.  And while you couldn't exactly stop in all of these places and order a la carte, the fare offered could be incredibly sophisticated, and many taverns became renowned for their talented cooks.

In fact, in the same way that Spago launched the celebrity of Wolfgang Puck in the early 1980s, or French Laundry is today intertwined with the celebrity of Thomas Keller, the cook was integral to a tavern's culinary reputation.   English cooks even wrote cookery books, which always mentioned the well-known tavern where they were employed.

Check out the bottom: Collingwood and Woollams used their jobs at the
Crown and Anchor Tavern as advertising gimicks

Yet the modern restaurant review that attempts to be objective and useful to patrons, the kind that we read in newspapers and blogs today, was quite a different beast.  In 1788, however, I found such a review in the monthly New London Magazine.  And not only did the magazine run it once, but these reviews were featured for not one, not two, but three consecutive months!

Here they are ... plotted on a modern day map:

Obviously I'm not terrible surprised by the inclusion of Wood's and Dolly's: the places I've run across in 18th century literature.  But I'm surprised that so many less expensive and less assuming places are included.  Who knew that home-made barley broth could be a chic Enlightenment treat?

Stay tuned, loyal readers, for there will be more in July.

To the Curious in Fish Sauce...

On August 12 1784, Faujas de St Fond, a respected French geologist, was invited to dine with the Royal Philosophers, the elite London dining club composed of British scientists and intellectuals.  He wasn't terribly impressed.  In his memoirs, he disdainfully observed the bad flavor of the coffee and the lack of napkins.  (Messy English tables were apparently common complaints among "enlightened" French visitors.  Faujas's famous contemporary, Arthur Young, remarked that "dining without napkins seems ridiculous to a Frenchman, but in England we dine at tables of people of tolerable fortune without them.")

Detail from a Rowlandson caricature, 18th century
(Observe the absence of napkins.  Even forks, at this time, were a rarity)

When it came to the food, our French visitor seemed slightly more bewildered.  "The dishes were of the solid kind, he recalled, "such as roast beef, boiled beef and mutton prepared in various ways, with [an] abundance of potatoes and other vegetables, which each person seasoned as he pleased with the different sauces which were placed on the table in bottles of various shapes."  The poor guy, however, had no idea what, exactly, these bottles contained, and his account makes it pretty clear that he didn't exactly eat very heartily that night.  "The dinner, he concluded, "was truly in the English style."

Dinner that night included soles, cold ribs of lamb, veal cutlets, and fruit pies
Faujas was one of 12 guests that day; his name is fourth from the top right

Venison attracted a lot more literary
attention than the seasonings did

What was in those bottles?  While the bill of fare from that afternoon (listed above) recorded boiled chicken, roast mutton, veal cutlets, a minced lamb's head, and yes, potatoes, no sauces are mentioned.  This is not an uncommon dilemma in culinary history.  While one needn't look very long in order to find various literary and cultural references to "sir loyns" of beef or haunches of venison, I've had a lot more trouble discerning attitudes towards the hot condiments of the age: "Zoobditty Match" –– a popular East India fish sauce –– and "Sauce Cherokee" from North America.

We do know, however, that these various condiments were both well-known and relatively standardized by the turn of the century.  In fact, the authenticity of a particular condiment became the subject of a well-publicized lawsuit in 1814, when James Cocks sued a London oilman for replicating his celebrated Reading Sauce and passing it off as his own.  Cocks' sauce, invented "twelve years earlier" and named after his small town on the Thames (about 50 miles west of London) was a fish sauce that paired with fish, game and cold meat.  At the time of the lawsuit, Cocks' brand was sold by about 100 different retailers from London to Edinburgh, from Oxford to Dublin.

The fact that a lawsuit even happened tells us that as much as metropolitan Londoners wanted curry powder from Bengal and genuine pepper from Cayenne, this didn't put a damper on the demand for authentic regional condiments.  By the turn of the 19th century, the average London oilman (a seller of preserved condiments and other goodies) acted as a one-stop shop for all of these things, hawking India soy and Gorgona anchovy paste next to genuine Stilton cheese.


To determine the outcome of the case, the judge assembled a panel of witnesses from Dover, Taunton, Chichester and London.  All of them claimed that the London version was far inferior to the 'real' Reading version, the former apparently "being thick, and leaving a sediment" and "bringing great dissatisfaction to the parties who purchased it." (Sadly, no blind tasting occurred.)  Regardless, James Cocks ended up winning 100 guineas in damages.  This was certainly nothing to sneeze at in those days, but perhaps the most lucrative aspect of his victory was the fact that he could use it as the basis of a future advertising campaign (here's an example to the left).

So the authentic flavor of Reading, England –– a product demarcating a geographical region rather than an individual or an idea –– was not a centuries old artisanal tradition only uprooted in the 18th century, but was consciously invented and marketed as a local product by a savvy retailer.  But even so, the considerable interest that this case piqued in the reading public (I've found record of it printed in at least six or seven newspapers) makes plain that Englishmen cared a great deal that they were getting the real thing.

Venison Surprize

I returned from the archives in London last fall with a hard drive full of JPEGS and vague but eager dreams of storing this information within some sort of database, with which I could map quantitively the psychology of social connections forged over food.  I had uncovered the records belonging to the Thursday's Club call'd the Royal Philosophers, an 18th century dining club semi-officially affiliated with the Royal Society, and the Philosophers' meticulous attendance and dinner records lent themselves well, I thought, to this sort of thing.

Here's the contents of the dinner books
found in the archives
(Please excuse my pinkie)

I had never really worked with these kinds of sources before, and my inspiration, admittedly, was at first largely literary.  The project I had in mind reminded me of that scene in David Lodge's Small World: An Academic Romance (1984) in which a respected novelist is invited to a new cutting edge academic department –– the Centre for Computational Stylistics –– only to witness his entire literary oeuvre deflated by the state-of-the-art computers into a single adjective: "greasy."  With a few effortless keystrokes, a machine could analyze a career's worth of subconscious mores and social hang-ups, revealing literary proclivities unnoticed by the naked eye.

30 years before the Digital Humanities
became an academic buzzword,
Lodge anticipated some of its
humorous pitfalls

Nearly 30 years after this fictional work was published, I stubbornly believed that the ability to analyze my 18th century records in a similar fashion would significantly contribute to our understandings of friendship and social networking.  Linking these patterns to the elaborate records of weekly meals shared by the Thursday's Club illustrates how consumption of particular dishes in particular contexts engendered new collective tastes and civic identities.  Indeed, the the era that exalted the so-called "man of taste" it is hard to dispute the fact that the provision, sharing and connoisseurship of food were integral to the making of the gentleman.

The problem was that my rudimentary Excel spreadsheet was full of holes and wasn't able to answer the queries that I asked of it.  So this past semester, I have been working with an OpenOffice database that allows me the flexibility to address a range of queries as well as generate new ones.

The same information in the OpenOffice database

Over the course of the summer, my worthy and efficacious readers will learn of my findings.  But because my very first post on Homo Gastronomicus, over one year ago, addressed the special status of venison among members of the Thursday's Club, I'll begin by playing around with the database as a tool ... to track man's love of tasty treats.

First, I tracked all the venison references made in the first fifteen years of the club's weekly meetings.  Below, I show how often it was served as a gift versus how often it was served in the bill of fare without reference nor further comment.  Venison was obviously something out of the ordinary, appearing as a gift 47% of the time it was served.  But that's nothing too surprising.

Moreover, out of the venison references listed in the bills of fare, the ones that were received as gifts were larger and more expensive cuts –– such as haunches and necks.  On the chart below, you can see that the venison dishes that frequently appeared on the normal bill of fare mostly comprised of pasties and pies, dishes typically prepared with less expensive cuts of meat mixed with giblets, vegetables and herbs.  (Gifts are marked as blue, while dishes on the regular bill of fare are red.)

Finally, I wondered what attendance looked like when a juicy haunch was gifted to the club.  One would think that it would be disproportionately higher.  After all, who would turn down this aristocratic delicacy, especially when washed down with a few glasses of claret?  Surely its consumption would be a pretty big deal.

But surprisingly, the mean attendance between 1748-1762 was only marginally higher when a haunch of venison was on the table.  Venison dinners attracted an average of 15.8 members per meeting, while the average attendance hovered around 15.5.   What does this mean?

It seems hard to believe that the members didn't care whether venison was served or not.  After all, venison was the most frequently gifted food to the club, and annual gifts of a haunch could secure honorary membership for the donor.  Perhaps the evidence suggests instead that gifts were not very well publicized.  Venison dinners, as a result, took place on a largely ad-hoc basis.  Sort of like a secret pop-up catering to the well-connected gentleman "in the know."

Adventures of a Bouillon Cube: c. 1750

Who plays the English tastemaker?  The cook?  Or the customer always right?  This question has reared its head several times as I've been mining old newspapers for references to sauces and condiments.  Unlike the main ingredient, such as a chine of beef or a leg of mutton, the garnishing powerfully illustrates the individual's will in the construction of a national "taste."  Late 18th century advertisers believed that the application of a sauce could transform British cuisine into French, Italian, American or even Indian food.  As much as plumb pudding and roast beef were considered hallmarks of English cuisine, it appears that the possibility of choice, variety, and convenience of good eating were also crucial parts of that story.

Meet Elizabeth Dubois.  I haven't been able to find much biographical information about her as of yet; it seems like she might have been married to someone in the book trade.  I have only heard of her through her advertisements printed in the 1740s and 1750s as a seller of delicious and practical "Portable Soups" all over London.

She starts running the ads in the London Evening Post for what appears to be solid cubes of bouillon in 1744.  "This useful Commodity never spoils if kept dry," she claims, "and is dissolved in a few Minutes in boiling Water; and for Gravy Sauce is much cheaper and better than any usually made on the Spot."  Apparently, the single-serving sized cubes were the brainchildren of her uncle, the reputed cook to the late Duke of Argyll, invented while the Duke was engaged with wars overseas.  But she points out that they are perfect for other occasions ranging from long hunts "when the chace proves long" (you could chew it like a protein bar) to prolonged naval engagements abroad (when the diet of salted meats rendered good English gravy particularly difficult to obtain.)

As advertised in the London Daily Advertiser, 1747

A new (portable) means of preserving the flavors of herbs and fresh meat?  And it happened to be cheaper by the dozen (with a nifty tin box thrown in)?  Indeed, Dubois's advertising scheme had a sophisticated plan of attack.

A 21st century incarnation of Mrs Dubois's invention

But Mrs Dubois was constantly revising her advertising scheme.  In late 1749, she starts offering a special soup made of "shell and other types of fish, which is very palatable" for her customers who keep Lent.  Clearly, she saw these folk as an important untapped market.

Before long, she begins to expand her enterprise, selling her products in taverns and coffee shops all over London: from Billingsgate to Westminster, from her own place in Long-Acre all the way to Bath.

As her market expanded beyond the parish,
she vigilantly protected her ideas from theft

Bath, you say?!  The fact that her bouillon cubes made it all the way to this famous spa-town over one hundred miles away suggests that she believed that these portable soups would appeal to a fashionable health conscious crowd.  Wonder if Elizabeth Montagu, given her love of spa water and other health fads, ever got into these.

Service becomes more and more personalized.  After a few years, Du Bois begins to encourage customers to experiment with mixing her four flavors –– veal, chicken, mutton and "gravy" –– to their own personal liking.  She suggests adding salt to taste.  But still unsatisfied, she decides to take custom-orders beginning in October, 1752.  An ad in the London Evening Post proclaims:

"Having been often asked, why I did not make some solid Soups of Venison, this is to inform such who may be inclined to send their own Meats, of what kind soever, with Directions as to what Spice or Herb are approved, may have their Commands punctually obeyed by their laudable Servant Elizabeth Du Bois, at tte Golden Head ... near Long-Acre; where her strong Gravy Soup, Mutton Broth, Veal Broth, and Chicken Broth, may be had in the utmost Perfection..." 

Who knows whether her venture succeeded?  I never hear of her after 1756.  Regardless, Elizabeth Dubois's marketing ploys suggest that conceptions of eating "on the go" changed drastically around mid-century.  No longer would bread and hard cheese monopolize the market on portable foods.  Moreover, Du Bois wasn't just selling five different types of bouillon cubes.  Her use of culinary expertise –– selling something you couldn't get at home –– and her regard for customer choice imply that she was also selling an idea of English convenience to bring to the the most far flung corners of the earth.

Bringing on the Sauce

Well before the early 19th century culinary celebrity Antonin Careme postulated the four classic French "mother sauces," France enjoyed an international reputation for its rich and flavorful seasonings.  The introduction of fricassees and ragouts into the British culinary lexicon was lauded by bon-vivants, yet decried by cultural commentators.  "I look upon a French ragout to be as pernicious to the stomach as a glass of spirits ... [f]or as I in everything love what is simple and natural," Isaac Bickerstaff observed in the Tatler in 1709, "so particularly in my food."

From the Classified Section, The Daily Post, Wed, January 6 1731.

Fortunately for us, the naysayers didn't prevail.  If we take a look at contemporary newspapers, it becomes obvious that cosmopolitan Londoners loved to season their food with exotic sauces and condiments.  So important were these novel commodities that in 1739, the London and Country Journal felt compelled to report the breakage of a single bottle of soy sauce at the Custom House.  "Soy is a rich catchup," the article explained, "the best is made in India, and gives the highest Gust of any Sauce in the World."

By the late 18th century, enthusiasm for bottled condiments seemed to reach its height.  Many of these bottled sauces were advertised especially for merchants, traders, and men in the navy.  And while the condiments weren't exactly 'English,' this doesn't mean that there wasn't some sort of patriotic message implied –– why shouldn't people on the go be able to enjoy the fruits of the British commercial empire?

I did a little sleuthing, and found five major condiment retailers operating in late 18th century London:

1.  T. Young, 44 Bond Street.  While many vendors obtained their goods from abroad, this guy whipped up his sauces in-house.  On April 4, 1788, he advertised a concoction of "extracts from the Gorgona Anchovies.  This sauce, which is most general, and one of the best Sauces for most kinds of fish, has many advantages over the common mode made use of."  He followed up on the success of his "essence of anchovies" with a new sauce specifically designed to be eaten with "real and mock Turtle, Game Pies, and roasted Game and Fowl or any kind, but is a great heightened and finisher of all kinds of Fricandos, Harricoes, Daubs, Stews, and Hashes."

I also noticed a dramatic rise of "sauce-boat"
advertisements in the 18th century
(Here's a simple pewter one)

2.  Skill and Son, Italian and French Warehouse, 15 Strand, near Charing Cross.  While they touted themselves as the cheese-merchants to the Prince of Wales (the hard partying glutton later to be crowned George IV) the tone of their ads seem to cater more so to the polite middle classes, emphasizing their "family friendly" nature and convenience –– using their products, a meal could reputedly take only two minutes time to prepare.  They also win out in terms of variety; 16 different sauces and 12 different vinegars –– ranging from "imperial sauce" to "walnut ketchup" to "chilly vinegar" –– appear in their ads.

3.  J. Burgess, No 107 Strand.  He competed with T. Young to prepare the best essences of anchovies, which produced "an excellent sauce in a few minutes, for all kinds of Tendons, Harricots, French Pyes, Ragouts, Cutlets, Collops, Stewed Beef, Pigs Ears and Feet, Broiled and Brazed Poultry of all kinds."  Added bonus: each bottle of sauce came with printed recipe suggestions.  J. Burgess also dealt in a bunch of other foreign delicacies as far flung as "Bengal Currie Powder" to authentic reindeer tongues from Russia.

Purveyers of sauce had to innovate to stay relevant
The World (1787) 

4.  The New Warehouse for Foreign Rarities, No, 79, New Bond-Street.  Seemed to specialize in "sauce verte a la d'Artois" priced at 4 shillings a bottle.  Ouch!  For that, one could buy a whole dinner at a nice tavern.  
** If any kindly readers of this Blog happened to know what exactly that entailed, as contemporary cookery books abounded in different versions of 'green sauce,' and would care to share this important information with the Authoress, she would be incredibly grateful.  

5.  The Depository, No 34, St James Market.  Didn't advertise as much but touted its "sauce a la Provencal" 'Saluci tout fait" and "Remoulade."  With these three sauces, the ad explains, "there is scarcely three dishes in French, English or Italian Cookery, that cannot be made either with any one, or any two of them combined."

One mere bottle can fashion boring old beef-steaks into specialties of three different culinary traditions? Well, who can argue with that?

The Best Turtle-house in Town

The 18th century epicure is an elusive character, slippery to pin down and all too cryptic when he rests his fork and knife for a brief moment and tells us of his gastronomical adventures.  And all too often, I find only brief, posthumous traces of him, as this satirical will illustrates:  

Memoirs of the dying, or, a collection of wills, executed by several
of the most eminent characters, of both sexes, now living, in Great Britain (1784)

Who was B---- G----ne?  Perhaps a thinly veiled reference to particularly gluttonous City alderman, or maybe an East India Company official hooked on the good life.  (The famous London Tavern was their unofficial hangout throughout the second half of the 18th century.)  Maybe he was based on nobody at all, a mere invention for the public's amusement.  But whoever he was, he must have been very well-to-do, because only the upper crust –– both in title and in wealth –– could afford to dine "at the best Turtle-house in town" on a semi-regular basis.  And only the most zealous connoisseur would select a turtle house as his legacy to posterity.

Out of many breeds, "green turtle" was the most highly valued

Indeed, "this pleasant and salubrious meat," in one contemporary's terms, was not so easy to come by. The astronomical prices paid for it –– it could get as high as 4 shillings, 6 pence a pound (shell included) –– likened it to imported luxuries like truffles or caviar today.  I guess the price starts to make a little more sense when one considers the hardships of the reptilian middle passage.  One contemporary lamented:

"The green turtle Indeed has become a branch of commerce, and ships are provided with conveniences for supplying them with water and provision ... this cannot, however, always be effected; for though they scarce require any provision upon the voyage, yet the workings of the ship occasions them to be beat against the sides of the boat that contains them, by which they become very lean and battered; so that, in order to eat this animal in the highest perfection; instead of bringing the turtle to the epicure, the epicure ought to be transported to the turtle."
   - A new, complete and universal body, or System of natural history, being a grand, accurate and extensive display of animated nature (1785) 

Given the fact that 18th century Jamaica was not considered the healthiest climate for the fragile and delicate English constitution, many decided not to take the trip.  But this did not slow the public's insatiable craving for luscious green turtle fat.  But where did fashionable men get their hands on it?  Where was the best turtle house in town?  The question is still unresolved, but I've noted a few potential candidates;

1. Wood's Hotel, Tavern and Coffee House, Covent Garden:  The New London Magazine noted "if any preference to it can be given in preparing any particular viands, it is that of turtle and game" (Volume 4, Issue 6, 1788).

An Ad from the Morning Herald, 1793

2. The Queens Arms Tavern, St. Paul's Churchyard: A long time hang-out of City politicians, one source observed "great numbers of these animals are dressed at the Queen's-arms-tavern... where we remember to have seen them in two extremes ... three Turtles, two of which together did not weigh three ounces, and the other exceeded nine hundred pounds in weight." (A new, complete and universal body, or System, of natural history, 1787)

3. The London Tavern, Bishopsgate Street: One of the chicest places in town; on August 24, 1787 The World and Fashionable Advertiser published a bill of fare reputedly from an alderman's dinner that featured no less than 10 dishes of it.  Check out the first course below:

Spring Soop

In my last post, I mentioned a peculiar breed of 18th century cookery books that catered to primarily to vegetable lovers.  Or did they?  For I fear, goodly reader, that many of these self-professed Pythagoreans delighted in vegetables more so out of necessity rather than out of hatred of beef-stake pyes and harricos of mutton.  Nope, meat didn't come cheap in those days.  But what were these cookery books all about?  Who read them?  What kinds of knowledge did they impart?

We know that they were remarkably savvy when it came to marketing themselves to target demographics.

"This little Treatise of Kitchen-Gardening is chiefly design'd for the Instruction and Benefit of Country People," opens the vegetable friendly Adam's Luxury and Eve's Cookery (1744) "who most of them have a little Garden spot belonging to their House, and at the same time let it lie useless, for want of knowing how properly to manage it..."

You've guessed it, reader.  The cookery book to the left isn't exactly in the same league as the botanical virtuoso Philip Miller's The Gardener's Dictionary ––  which I've discussed in previous posts.  No "Aegyptian Lettuces" or fancy cantaloupes discussed in this text.  To the contrary, this is much closer  to an early modern "Gardening for Dummies."  The section on "Melon," for example, pooh poohs the idea of enumerating all sorts of this fruit, as "there being annually new Sorts brought from abroad, a great many of which prove good for little."  Hmmmph.  Good old utility trumped exotic tastes.

While the first portion of the book explains how to cultivate a host of different vegetables and herbs at home, the remainder devotes itself to simple recipes that one could whip up in a minimal amount of time.  Flipping through the (electronic) pages yesterday evening, my appetite was piqued by recipe below:

Asparagus, you say?  Once considered a socially exclusive treat, the Enlightenment actually witnessed great strides in the democratization of this particular vegetable.  In 1727, Stephen Switzer, one of the most well-known horticulturists of the era, gushed over the considerable improvements made in the art of Salleting, pointing out that "the raising of the asparagus and artichoke, especially the first, has been the most advanced of any one vegetable the garden produces." He reveled in the fact that Britons could now enjoy them as late as Christmas, and that they were "near as green and as good as that which comes by nature."

It often comes up in cookery books as "Sparrow-Grass" too

Switzer's enthusiasm was infectious.  By the time I had finished the preface of his The Practical Kitchen Gardener, he was proclaiming visions of "asparagus piercing the ground in a thousand places," exclaiming:

"these! these! are the innocent and natural dainties, where they present themselves and grow for the nourishment and the delicious entertainment of mankind."

Time to start that asparagus soup.  I'll be the first to admit, however, that I didn't follow the above recipe to the letter.  I liked the idea of cooking a bunch of different green vegetables together (this is common in many 18th century soups) but I didn't include the beets, for I feared they would muddy the bright green color of the soup.  I also skipped the flour, since I wasn't really worried about the thickness.  I also threw in some leeks and shallots, and topped it off with creme fraiche and toasted pine-nuts.

It was good with a beer, too

My noble Readers should be informed that I greatly enjoyed this modest meal, and found it relatively healthful as well as pleasing to the palate.  Who says that the flavors of 18th century Britain can't occasionally be inspired by a 21st century San Francisco sensibility?