Thanksgiving Menu at the Plaza Hotel in New York City (1899)

Above, we have the menu for an 1899 Thanks­giv­ing din­ner at the Plaza Hotel in New York. If you were a turkey, you had it rel­a­tive­ly easy. But the ducks? Not so much. On the menu, you’ll find Mal­lard duck and Rud­dy duck. But also Red-head duck, Long Island duck­ling, Teal duck and Can­vas-back duck, too. A duck in NYC was not a good place to be.

And, oh, those prices!  Not one item above a dol­lar. But let’s account for infla­tion, shall we? In 2021, one Red­di­tor not­ed: “I found a cal­cu­la­tor and it turns out that $.30 in 1899 equals $10.00 now. The Fried oys­ter crabs would be $24.99 now and a Philadel­phia chick­en would be $66.65. So, the cheap­est thing on the menu is Sweet but­ter­milk for $.10, but today would be $3.33.”

For our U.S. read­ers, enjoy your hol­i­day tomor­row…

via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent 

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Read 900+ Thanks­giv­ing Books Free at the Inter­net Archive

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Tips for What to Do with Your Left­over Thanks­giv­ing Turkey

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Comments (8)
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  • Dave Sours says:

    Sev­er­al items above a dol­lar, they just did­n’t use dec­i­mal points. The most expen­sive item was the can­vas back duck, at $3.50, fol­lowed by the roast Philadel­phia chick­en at $2.00. A cou­ple of oth­er dish­es come in at $1.75. What a selec­tion, though!

  • Daniel says:

    I was curi­ous about “reed-birds”. Found an arti­cle, which I can’t seem to post here as a link with­out run­ning afoul of your spam­catch­er. It’s eas­i­ly found in a search: it’s at theam­er­i­can­menu dot com, called “The Reed Birds-of San Fran­cis­co” Appar­ent­ly “reed birds” was a catch-all term for pret­ty much what­ev­er small birds were avail­able in abun­dance.

  • Lexi Grace Taylor says:

    This was very inter­est­ing I want to see more of this con­tent thank you very much.

  • Teresa Barnes says:

    Agreed there are quite a few things that start at 3:50 and go down to a dol­lar itself some­body did­n’t read the actu­al menu before they wrote the arti­cle

  • Myra Faulkner says:

    Very inter­est­ing menu.
    I enjoy read­ing about the way peo­ple
    ate in the past. Con­grat­u­la­tions to the chefs of that day. Keep arti­cles like this one com­ing. You have an audi­ence for this!

  • Valerie says:

    And bananas cost the same today.

  • joe bidenx says:

    The author must feel like a retard. How igno­rant!

  • Freddie says:

    I love stuff like this. Keep them com­ing please

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