Delmonico's, the restaurant that now occupies a triangle of a
building down in the Financial District, is widely known as the restaurant that
changed New York dining forever. The
restaurant has existed, through different owners and permutations, over 184
years and over eight locations and enjoyed a reputation as the best fine dining
restaurant in New York for over six decades.
From the early Dutch settlements up until the late 1820's when
Delmonico's opened, there was little by way of restaurants. Taverns opened in the 1700's and oyster
cellars and coffee houses could be found relatively easily, but there were no
proper sit down restaurants, no cafes.
When the Marquis de Lafayette returned to the city in 1825, and when the
first steam ship completed a trip from Albany to Manhattan, it was seen as a
public embarrassment that New York offered nowhere for a celebration. In short, New York was a fine dining desert
until the arrival of John (Giovanni) and Peter (Pietro) Delmonico, Swiss brothers who used $20,000
in gold coins they saved to open a cafe serving French pastries at 23 William Street called
Delmonico. They opened, along with
nephew Lorenzo,
in 1827 and by 1831 they evolved into a full fledged French restaurant by
expanding into the building next door. Soon
enough, competition sprouted up in the wake of their success and a dining
society was born. The restaurant also
represented a cultural shift toward French dining. At the time, all of the best home cooks were
preparing traditional British fare, and American cookbooks were British in
nature. In 1834
the Delmonicos bought a farm in present day Williamsburg to grow produce for
the restaurant. In Appetite City,
author William Grimes notes that an 1838 menu offered squab, hare, quail,
pheasant, grouse, venison, and wild duck as well as salmon, mackerel,
artichokes a la Barigoule, salsify au jus, eggplant and more. The famous Delmonico steak was added to the
menu in 1850, and Delmonico's potatoes, mashed
potatoes covered in cheese and breadcrumbs, were a favorite of Abraham Lincoln. Nephew Charles Delmonico hired chef Charles Ranhofer to helm
the stoves. Ranhofer, considered one of
the great chefs of the day, would go on to work for the restaurant group for 35
years, host thousands of banquets, create hundreds of dishes (including Lobster
Newburg and baked Alaska), and compile them into a book called The
Epicurean. Throughout the years
several copycat Delmonico's opened up around town, including one in the
original Citadel Delmonico's building at 2 South William Street (at Beaver) in
1929 called "Oscar's Delmonico's." Though the family protested, a judge ruled
that the name was public domain after the closure of the last restaurant in
1923. Oscar's Delmonico's served many of
the restaurant's original dishes and operated until 1977. Amanda
Kludt Read more and see many pictures at
https://ny.eater.com/2011/6/29/6673317/remembering-delmonicos-new-yorks-original-restaurant
In 1919, Edward L.C. Robins purchased
Delmonico's. Its grand location at Fifth Avenue and 44th Street closed in 1923 as a result of
changing dining habits due to Prohibition.
That location was the final incarnation
of Delmonico's with continuity to the original.
Eggs Benedict were also said to have originated
at Delmonico's, although others claim that dish as well. It is often claimed that the Baked
Alaska's name was coined at Delmonico's in1867, by cook Charles Ranhofer. However, no contemporary account exists of
this occurrence and Ranhofer himself referred to the dish, in 1894, as
"Alaska Florida", apparently referring to the contrast between
extremes of heat and cold. Manhattan clam chowder also first appeared in New
York at Delmonico's. Under Oscar Tucci's
ownership of Delmonico's, he created the Wedge Salad. After a trip to a Bridgeport, Connecticut
farm, Oscar picked the ingredients that became the salad as we know it to be. Tucci added bacon to the dish shortly after. The salad became an instant favorite, though
some notable restaurateurs criticized the salad saying it was drenched in
dressing. Today the Wedge Salad is
served internationally and recognized as one of the most famous salads of the
20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delmonico%27s
Juan Vucetich (1858–1925), an Argentinian police
official, devised the first workable system of fingerprint identification, and
pioneered the first use of fingerprint evidence in a murder investigation. As a young man, Vucetich emigrated from
Croatia to Argentina, where he took a job in the La Plata Police Office of
Identification and Statistics. After
reading an article in a French journal on Francis Galton's experiments with
fingerprints as a means of identification, Vucetich began collecting
fingerprints, taken from arrested men, while also making Bertillon-style
anthropometric measurements. He soon
devised a useable system to group and classify fingerprints, which he
called dactyloscopy. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/visibleproofs/galleries/biographies/vucetich.html
Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914), the son of medical professor Louis Bertillon, was a
French criminologist and anthropologist who created the first system of
physical measurements, photography, and record-keeping that police could use to
identify recidivist criminals. Before
Bertillon, suspects could only be identified through eyewitness accounts and
unorganized files of photographs.
Bertillon began his career as a records clerk in the Parisian police
department. In 1883, the Parisian police
adopted his anthropometric system, called signaletics or bertillonage. Bertillon
identified individuals by measurements of the head and body, shape formations
of the ear, eyebrow, mouth, eye, etc., individual markings such as tattoos and
scars, and personality characteristics. The
measurements were made into a formula that referred to a single unique
individual, and recorded onto cards which also bore a photographic frontal and
profile portrait of the suspect (the "mug shot"). The cards were then systematically filed and
cross-indexed, so they could be easily retrieved. In 1884, Bertillon used his method to identify
241 multiple offenders, and after this demonstration, bertillonage was adopted by police forces in
Great Britain, Europe, and the Americas.
Canadian Bacon is a misnomer. The only place they call it that is in the United States. Just as they don’t call Philly Cheese steak in Philadelphia, or Buffalo Wings in Buffalo. Canadian Bacon probably got that name says because in the mid 1800’s there was shortage of pork in the United Kingdom and they imported the meat from Canada. They would cure the backmeat in a special brine, which the Canadians call peameal bacon, because they would roll it in ground yellow split peas to help preserve it. The English smoked it instead, and this new concoction was just referred to probably as Canadian Bacon. http://kitchenproject.com/history/CanadianBacon/ See also The Real Deal: Authentic Canadian bacon isn't what most Americans think it is by Marlene Parrish at http://old.post-gazette.com/food/20020602bacon0602fnp4.asp
World War II
began in September 1939 but it was not until January 8th, 1940 that the first
foods--bacon, butter and sugar--were rationed in Britain. Successive
ration schemes for meat, tea, jam, biscuits, breakfast cereals, cheese,
eggs, lard, milk and canned and dried fruit quickly followed. Almost all
foods apart from vegetables and bread were rationed by August 1942.
Almost all controlled items were rationed by weight, except meat which was
rationed by price. Game meat such as rabbit and pigeon were
not rationed, but were not always available.
Fresh vegetables and fruit were not rationed but supplies were limited.
Some types of imported fruit all but disappeared.
http://www.tastesofhistory.co.uk/Recipes/World-War-II/ See also 167 Wartime Recipes at
The Triborough
Bridge, known officially as
the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge since
2008, and sometimes referred to as the RFK Triborough Bridge, is a complex of three separate bridges in New
York City. The bridges connect
the boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx via Randalls and Wards Islands, which are
joined by landfill. The bridge complex,
which carries Interstate 278 and unmarked New York State Route 900G, connects with
the FDR
Drive and the Harlem River Drive in Manhattan, the Bruckner Expressway and the Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx,
and the Grand Central Parkway and Astoria
Boulevard in Queens. The three
bridges of the Triborough Bridge complex are: the Harlem
River vertical-lift bridge, the largest in the
world, which connects Manhattan to Randall's Island; the Bronx Kill truss
bridge, connecting Randall's Island and the Bronx; the suspension
bridge over Hell Gate--a strait of the East River--which
connects Ward's Island to Astoria in
Queens. These are connected by an
elevated highway viaduct
across Randall's and Ward's Islands and 14 miles (23 km) of support roads.
Also part of the complex is a grade-separated T-interchange on Randall's Island, which
sorts out traffic in a way that ensures that drivers pay a toll at only one
bank of toll booths. The bridge complex
was designed by chief engineer Othmar
H. Ammann and architect Aymar
Embury II, and has been called the "biggest traffic machine ever
built". The American Society of Civil Engineers
designated the Triborough Bridge Project as a National Historic Civil
Engineering Landmark in 1986.
Read more and see pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triborough_Bridge
See also http://web.mta.info/bandt/html/rfk.html
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1752
August 11, 2017 On this date in 1929, Babe Ruth became
the first baseball player
to hit 500 home runs in
his career with a home run at League
Park in Cleveland, Ohio.
On this date in 1942, actress Hedy
Lamarr and composer George
Antheil received a patent for a Frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication
system that later became the basis for modern technologies in wireless
telephones and Wi-Fi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_11
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