Great food has a history. Downton fan obsessed with the food of the era. Free recipes, cookbook downloads, served with a side of history
Toronto, Canada
Joined January 2012
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Trench cake: an eggless fruit cake from the First World War. Currants, cocoa and ginger, raised with vinegar and baking soda. Bake it today, share it tomorrow for Remembrance Day and Veterans Day. bit.ly/4BNbnSd
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Trench cake: an eggless fruit cake from the First World War. Currants, cocoa and ginger, raised with vinegar and baking soda.
Bake it today, share it tomorrow for Remembrance Day and Veterans Day. bit.ly/4BNbnSd
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Oliver served a guest her tea with the milk already in it. In front of the editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal. Agnes did not need that.
Here’s what a proper 1880s hostess did instead. #TheGildedAge #TeaEtiquette bit.ly/3UKwBzb
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140 years ago today, President Grover Cleveland accepted the Statue of Liberty for the nation. This season, he visits New York on @HBO The Gilded Age, and Agnes van Rhijn plans a formal dinner. The real Cleveland wanted a chop. bit.ly/4iltwxl #TheGildedAge
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Dating app burnout is real. 78% of app users say they're worn out. The 1880s fix: a Halloween party, a cake with a ring baked inside, and hope. bit.ly/4dOJu1E
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Half a can of pumpkin in the fridge? Cook the whole can in a skillet for 12 to 15 minutes before adding it to the batter. Less water, more flavour, no soggy loaf or muffins. An American cook did the same thing in 1858. #pumpkinbread
bit.ly/4so3tdt
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64% of Gen Z have tried tarot, psychics or love spells to fix their love lives. In 1886, you peeled an apple, tossed it over your shoulder and read your sweetheart's initial. Cheaper. bit.ly/4dOJu1E
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Potato salad with no mayonnaise sits in the sun all afternoon without becoming a problem.
It is also the version they would have served at the first Labor Day picnic in 1882. Warm potatoes, bacon, cider vinegar.
Recipe: bit.ly/4yC2U1R
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Nobody at the first Labor Day called it Labor Day.
The handbill advertised a "Demonstration of Labor, Mammoth Festival, Parade and Pic-Nic."
Sept 5, 1882, and the potato salad that went with it: bit.ly/4yC2U1R
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The first Labor Day was a Tuesday. Nobody got the day off. Workers gave up two dollars in wages to march past Delmonico's, then drank lager in a beer garden at 92nd Street.
September 5, 1882. What they ate: bit.ly/4yC2U1R
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Mrs. Patmore never made a frittata. The word didn't reach English kitchens until 1954.
The ratio that makes one foolproof, the real history, and whether anything like it hit the Downton table: bit.ly/3ShlBbh
#FoodHistory #DowntonAbbey
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A jar of Miracle Whip runs $4 to $6 now. Kraft invented it in 1933 to stretch Depression-era grocery budgets. Homemade costs pennies and takes 10 minutes: 2 egg yolks, pantry staples, done. Recipe: bit.ly/4wXdq38
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Today is Yorkshire Day. Downton Abbey's Crawleys live there (fictionally). The real history: a 1759 battle, a 1975 protest, and 4 foods that explain the county's reputation. Curd tart recipe included. bit.ly/4yTcbDs
#YorkshireDay #DowntonAbbey
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Sinner vs. Zverev coming up. One dish has survived the Wimbledon menu change since the 1920s though: strawberries and cream. Everything around it, from Dover sole to spicy pickled strawberries, has not. Here's the century, course by course: bit.ly/44NBoRQ #Wimbledon2026
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Wimbledon's 1920s lunch was Dover sole and roast beef, carved by liveried staff. This year it's venison tartare and shrimp in nduja butter. The strawberries and cream never moved. Full then-and-now: bit.ly/44NBoRQ #Wimbledon2026
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Strawberries and cream still cost £2.85 at Wimbledon. Everything else on the menu has changed in a hundred years.
The full then-and-now: bit.ly/44NBoRQ
#Wimbledon #FoodHistory
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America turns 250 this Fourth, but most of your cookout is younger than that.
Hot dogs, burgers, flag cake: all newcomers.
Ice cream, lemonade, iced tea: Gilded Age staples still on the table.
The then and now, with recipes: bit.ly/4eHF3Xg
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