Picnic cookbooks are relatively new. The first in 1915 was Linda Larned’s One Hundred Picnic Suggestions. Like the song from Gypsy, “You Gotta Have a Gimmick.,” new cookbooks, each striving for novelty, appear every year. Some are prettier than others. Some use photographs, line drawings, or copies of original art. Beard, J., Cook It Outdoors […] read more

Colter’s The Secret Garden Cookbook is mainly a collection of high calory, sugary and fatty foods. She starts with Burnet’s essential food path and never wanders far off. “You can trifle with your breakfast and seem to disdain your dinner,” Burnet writes, “if you are full to the brim with roasted eggs and potatoes and […] read more

Boxer’s “Food for Excursions” is mainly a collection of carbohydrates, sweets, and fatty meats. Her suggestions include Riverside Sandwich, Sausage Sandwich, Potted Shrimp Sandwich, Toad Hall Steak Sandwich, Stuffed Eggs, River-Bankers Lunch, hard-cooked Eggs with Nutty spice island Mixture, Sausage Rolls Leafy Summer, Lettuce Snacks, Cornish pasties, Hot meat pasties, Rabbit pasties, Easy Meat Loaf, […] read more

Fricassee is picnic food when dining indoors. It’s mentioned in Samuel Foote’s The Nabob (1772) and Mary Belson Elliott’s The Mice and Their Pic Nic (1809).  Had Elliott needed a recipe, she might have found it in Mrs. Rundell’s A New System of Domestic Cookery, Formed Upon Principles of Economy, and Adapted to the Use of Private Families (1806). Fricassee of […] read more

In “Picnics and Outdoor Meals,” Spry writes, “The nicest outdoor meals are those cooked on the spot,” and among the best are barbecues.” She does not like “grand picnics,” the kind for which everything is transported and served by staff. “This is not the best way to enjoy a picnic,” she asserts. Paradoxically the recipe […] read more

Among Clermont’s recommendations for traveling is a cold Perigord pie. It’s an expensive food ordinary folks might not afford, but a favorite of the posh Pic Nic Club of London. clermont’s text is a translation of Menon’s 1755 Soupers de la cour. Pâté de (Perigueux), A cold loaf for traveling. Take a farce with partridge […] read more

Unlike Sam Weller’s “weal pies,” Mrs. Beeton’s includes a recipe for a proper veal pie.* Veal Pie Ingredients.—2 lbs. of veal cutlets, 1 or 2 slices of lean bacon or ham, pepper and salt to taste, 2 tablespoonfuls of minced savoury herbs, 2 blades of pounded mace, crust, 1 teacupful of gravy. Mode.—Cut the cutlets […] read more

Lincoln’s Mrs. Lincoln’s Boston Cook Book: What to Do and What Not to Do in Cooking was influential, especially because Fannie Merritt Farmer was among her students at the Boston Cooking School. Specifically, Lincoln offers these “Picnic Dishes”: Woodlawn Chicken, Sweetbread Sandwiches, Potted Liver, Highland Eggs, and Chantilly Cakes (chocolate with coconut icing). But she […] read more

Picnic Ham is a staple cut of pork that’s cheap and needs extensive cooking or smoking. It is sometimes retailed as a picnic shoulder or pork shoulder since it is the entire front leg and shoulder. Retailers cut the meat in two, about six pounds, and may call it a Boston butt. The picnic ham […] read more

Child’s The Frugal Housewife is among the most popular American cookery and domestic manuals but has no specific recommendations for picnics. The 1830 edition does have a recipe for buffalo’s tongue; “Buffalo’s tongue should soak a day and a night and boil as much as six hours.” But the rising popularity of picnicking made no […] read more

Suggested contemporary picnic fare for jane Austen includes many dishes requiring extensive preparation. We know who does the eating, but who does the prepping and the cooking? Broccoli (served hot or cold) Salmagundi Oysters, Stewed and in Loaves A Pretty Dish of Eggs Sliced hard-boiled eggs quick-fried in butter seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and […] read more

Hazelton prefers picnics that are not spontaneous.. She  contends a picnic begins when you “invite the people and then figure out the food.”  “My idea of a good picnic, she writes, “is one that I can fix up at home and need only carry and unpack at the chosen spot. I loathe cooking out-of-doors, which […] read more

Tucked into Beard’s many cookbooks are informative and playful suggestions for picnicking. He writes, “Wherever it is done, picnicking can be one of the supreme pleasures of outdoor life. At its most elegant, it calls for the accompaniment of the best linens and crystal and china; at its simplest, it needs only a bottle of […] read more

Eliza Acton’s recipe for lobster salad is contemporary with Gilbert & Sullivan’s Thespis. Lobster Salad. First, prepare a sauce with the coral of a hen lobster, pounded and rubbed through a sieve, and very gradually mixed with a good mayonnaise, remotdade (remoulade), or English salad-dressing of the present chapter. Next, half fill the bowl or […] read more

David’s favorite picnic food is tian. She asserts that it’s simple for the experienced cook, especially if you have a tian, the Provençal earthenware casserole it is cooked in. You also need freshly baked bread, butter, cheese, and wine. David’s recipe is helpful: “The dish consists of gratin of green vegetables, spinach, and chard (blettes), […] read more

David’s books are suffused with references to picnics. She could be informal or according to her whims, something she adopted from her youth, which she wrote about in Summer Cooking, “Picnic addicts  [like herself] seem to be roughly divided between those who frankly make elaborate preparations and leave nothing to chance, and those others whose […] read more

Good advice for packing a picnic: “Pack the unbreakable items first, the French bread last of all.” See Cornelia Fogle. ed. Sunset Books, Picnics and Tailgate Parties. Menlo Park, California: Lane Publishing, 1982   read more

Toklas suggests that chopped roast beef and chopped chicken with mushrooms make the best picnic sandwiches. When these were not enough, Toklas and her partner Gertrude Stein stopped at restaurants where they might dine on Morvan Ham with Cream Sauce, three-minute veal steak, grilled perch with fennel, puree of artichoke soup or bouillabaisse. Toklas mischievously describes the picnic sandwiches […] read more

Leyel’s Picnic for Motorists is designed for an emerging market linking the joy of picnics with the pleasure of motoring. “There are many people with cars who make a regular habit of spending Saturday or Sunday in the country,” Leyel trills, “with a hamper of food, they are independent of hotels and can eat their […] read more

A fricassee is picnic food when dining indoors. It’s mentioned in Samuel Foote’s The Nabob (1772) and Mary Belson Elliott’s The Mice and Their Pic Nic (1809).  Had Elliott needed a recipe, she might have found it in Mrs. Rundell’s A New System of Domestic Cookery, Formed Upon Principles of Economy, and Adapted to the Use […] read more

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Partie de Campagne, an 1897 lithograph, depicts a couple going off to spend a day in the country. Lautrec makes a visual pun by having a dog run behind the conveyance known as a dogcart. According to French usage of the day, Lautrec prefers the euphemism for partie de campagne. Julia Child […] read more

For all we know, Jean-Baptiste Charcot’s chef on the Pourquoi Pas! Used this recipe for Crêpes Suzette when the crew celebrated Mardi Gras in Antarctica (1909). 2450— SUZETTE PANCAKES   Make these from preparation A, flavoured with cura9oa and tangerine juice. Coat them, like Gil-Bias pancakes, with softened  butter, flavoured with curacoa and tangerine juice. 2403— PREPARATIONS […] read more

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 […] read more

Roden’s Picnic appeared in England as Picnic (1981), then revised and retitled Everything Tastes Better Outdoors (1984). Her impetus is the belief that “There is something about fresh air and the liberating effect of nature which sharpens the appetite and heightens the quality and intensity of sensations.” Everything Tastes Better Outdoors (1984) is divided broadly into […] read more

Larned suggests any food is picnic food as long as it can be transported. The motorcar made this wish viable, if not practical, and One Hundred Picnic Suggestions is the first cookbook dedicated to picnicking. The cover shows a picnic basket, sandwiches, and thermos in the foreground and a motorcar in the background. Larned prefers foods and […] read more

Southworth’s The Motorist’s Luncheon Book hypes motor picnicking. “The love of the great outdoors grows with each new automobile,” she writes, “The friendly road beckons, the trusty motor champs at the brake.” It’s very like Ford Motors’s advertisements for the 1923 Touring Car and the slogan “Every day without a Ford means lost hours of […] read more