Beeton’s picnic entry appears almost as an afterthought in the last chapter of Household Management. As with other formal dinner suggestions, the picnic is not a casual affair but a staged “dinner held in the “rough.” Where Beeton situates her picnic is left unmentioned, perhaps a public park, a garden, anyplace suitable for a group of forty persons. Maybe she had in mind a pavilion or a public picnic ground for hire. 
The entry includes an epigram of Tennyson’s “Audley Court,” a poem about a picnic. “We gladly quote passages like these,” she explains, “to show how eating and drinking may be surrounded with poetical associations and how man, using his privilege to turn any and every repast into a “feast of reason,” with a warm and plentiful “flow of soul,” may count it as not the least of his legitimate pride, that he is “a dining animal.”
“There, on a slope of orchard, Francis laid
A damask napkin wrought with horse and hound;
Brought out a dusky loaf that smelt of home,
And, half cut down, a pasty costly made,
Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret, lay
Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks
Imbedded and injellied.”
It’s not inconsequential that Tennyson’s picnic is a casual meeting of two friends, and hers is (ahem!) for forty persons. No one seems to have noticed (or cared), including modern Foodies who regularly ransack Household Management for picnic tidbits.
The book has 111 Bills of Fare, including breakfasts, luncheons, supers, plain family dinners, ball suppers, and evening parties, but only one picnic. If carried out as Beeton instructs, the picnic requires extensive preparation, staff, requisite transportation, and relative disregard for cost. Beeton’s picnic is not for the faint-hearted—or the people without means.
Bill of Fare for a Picnic for 40 Persons
- A joint of cold roast beef, a joint of cold boiled beef, 2 ribs of lamb, 2 shoulders of lamb, 4 roast fowls, 2 roast ducks, 1 ham, 1 tongue, 2 veal-and-ham pies, 2 pigeon pies, 6 medium-sized lobsters, 1 piece of collared calf’s head, 18 lettuces, 6 baskets of salad, 6 cucumbers.
- Stewed fruit well sweetened, and put into glass bottles well corked; 3 or 4 dozen plain pastry biscuits to eat with the stewed fruit, 2 dozen fruit turnovers, 4 dozen cheesecakes, 2 cold cabinet puddings in moulds, 2 blancmanges in moulds, a few jam puffs, 1 large cold plum-pudding (this must be good), a few baskets of fresh fruit, 3 dozen plain biscuits, a piece of cheese, 6 lbs. of butter (this, of course, includes the butter for tea), 4 quartern loaves of household broad, 3 dozen rolls, 6 loaves of tin bread (for tea), 2 plain plum cakes, 2 pound cakes,2 sponge cakes, a tin of mixed biscuits, 1/2 lb., of tea. Coffee is not suitable for a picnic, being difficult to make.
Things not to be forgotten at a Picnic.
- A stick of horseradish, a bottle of mint-sauce well corked, a bottle of salad dressing, a bottle of vinegar, made mustard, pepper, salt, good oil, and pounded sugar. If it can be managed, take a little ice. It is scarcely necessary to say that plates, tumblers, wine glasses, knives, forks, and spoons, must not be forgotten; as also teacups and saucers, 3 or 4 teapots, some lump sugar, and milk, if this last-named article cannot be obtained in the neighbourhood. Take 3 corkscrews.
- Beverages. — 3 dozen quart bottles of ale, packed in hampers; ginger beer, soda-water, and lemonade, of each 2 dozen bottles; 6 bottles of sherry, 6 bottles of claret, champagne à discretion, and any other light wine that may be preferred, and 2 bottles of brandy. Water can usually be obtained so it is useless to take it.
* Beeton’s encyclopedic The Book of Household Management is the short title for The Book of Household Management; Comprising Information For The Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and Under House-Maids, Lady’s-Maid, Maid-Of-All-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nurse-Maid, Monthly, Wet, and Sick Nurses, Etc. Etc. Also, Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda; With a History of The Origin, Properties, and Uses of All Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort It appeared serialized in twenty-four installments until published in 1861.
See Isabella Beeton’. Book of Household Management. S.O. Beeton: London, 1861; Kathryn Hughes. The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton (New York: Knopf, 2006)
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10136/pg10136.html
http://www.exclassics.com/beeton/beetintr.htm
Other large picnics are Ford Madox Ford’s “Banquet at Calanques” in Province (1938), Pierre Franey and Craig Claiborne’s Gardiners Island Chefs’ Picnic (1965), and Jacqueline Wheldon’s Mrs. Bratbe’s August Picnic (1965).