Booklist Review

A menu is an inventory full of promise. In some cases, it informs the diner as to what may be shortly anticipated. In other cases, a menu challenges with a list of edibles that force a diner to make decisions. For some diners, the choice may be obvious if that menu lists foods that provoke repulsion or threaten allergic reactions. The archives of the British Library have yielded a number of menus, here rendered in full color, from the last few centuries. These fascinating antiques offer insights into eating habits of bygone days. Royal banquets contrast with abstemious wartime menus. Menus from rail dining cars show what passengers expected from both the food itself and from service. Shipboard dining in first class catered to the expectations of aristocrats and barons of finance and industry; yet, even third-class passengers had plenty of dinner options that gourmets might find quite tasty. Menus for astronauts traveling the greatest distances of all tourists are sadly limited to prepack dehydrated nutrition. British food names that go unexplained in the text may perplex today's American readers.