“Not in the least discouraged by this failure, returning to New York, he planned three dinners to be given by himself and two of his friends, to be the three handsomest dinners ever given in this city. Lorenzo Delmonico exclaimed, “What are the people coming to! Here, three gentlemen come to me and order three dinners, and each one charges me to make his dinner the best of the three. I am given an unlimited order, ‘Charge what you will, but make my dinner the best.’” Delmonico then said to me, “I told my cook to call them the Silver, Gold, and Diamond dinners, and have novelties at them all.” I attended these three dinners. Among other dishes, we had canvasback duck, cut up and made into an _aspic de canvasback_, and again, string beans, with truffles, cold, as a salad, and truffled ice cream; the last dish, strange to say, very good. At one dinner, on opening her napkin, each fair lady guest found a gold bracelet with the monogram of Jerome Park in chased gold in the centre. Now it must be remembered that this habit of giving ladies presents at dinners did not originate in this city. Before my day, the wealthy William Gaston, a bachelor, gave superb dinners in Savannah, Ga., and there, always placed at each lady’s plate a beautiful Spanish fan of such value that they are preserved by the grandchildren of those ladies, and are proudly exhibited to this day.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Well-boiled haricot beans, cold, are made into an excellent salad, as follows:--Put the haricot beans into a bowl, season with chopped parsley, green onions, salad oil, vinegar, pepper and salt, and slices of beet-root. Mix thoroughly.
Sources: The passage is from Ward McAllister, Society as I Have Found It, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Francatelli, A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes of 1852, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — ochre cloth, amphora stamp.