Suburban Men at the Table: Culinary Aesthetics in the Mid-Century Country Book

Abstract

In an episode from Out of Town (1866), American humorist Robert Barry Coffin’s mid-century account of suburban domestic life outside New York City, Barry Gray (Coffin’s pseudonym and the book’s narrator) persuades his wife to have a group of his “artist friends” over for dinner. The prospect throws his wife into a state of nervous excitement as she contemplates what she should serve to the group of “ten hungry men” arriving from the city, knowing that they will not be satisfied with her traditional Saturday meal of “simple salt codfish and potatoes” (50). At the same moment that she exclaims her unwillingness to perform the task of hostess for such an occasion, an express-wagon filled with twelve hampers of food and drink arrives at their doorstep. The arrival of these provisions, ordered ahead of time by Mr. Gray, sets the stage for a banquet orchestrated by a man for his male companions. The delivery even attracts the attention of the local paper, and a journalist is sent to observe the party through a window. The published report (which Mr. Gray shares with his readers) focuses on the meal’s extravagance and wild nature, from the description of the “immense game-pie, composed of ducks, woodcocks, quails, and grouse” at the center of the table to the “jugged hare,” “boned turkey,” and “boiled ham, a round of beef, broiled spring chickens, ducksstuffed with olives, boned sardines, and other appetizing relishes” that surround it (59).