The Market Assistant
July 12, 2019 7:14 AM   Subscribe

If you find yourself suddenly transported back to 1866 New York, you may have some questions. Chief among those, of course, is the primary concern - "What should I eat?"

Thomas Farrington De Voe was a butcher and later Superintendent of Markets in New York City. His legacy includes the publication of The Market Assistant, a compendium of just about any foodstuff you could purchase in the markets of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, how to prepare them, and some musings on (then) modern food culture. If you want to know how beef was processed in the mid-19th century (or what skunk tastes like), this is the book for you.

Credit to this recent episode of Cooking Issues for bringing it to my attention.
posted by backseatpilot (7 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
I love the specificity of the subtitle:
EVERY ARTICLE OF HUMAN FOOD
posted by carrioncomfort at 7:19 AM on July 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


Thank you for this! I'll go through and read the PDF later!

So many game birds. If you live in a major East Coast city now, game birds are much thinner on the ground, despite the fact that every building is surrounded by pigeons.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:29 AM on July 12, 2019 [2 favorites]


If fiction from around then is any indication, you want the canvasback duck, which he seems to agree with.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:33 AM on July 12, 2019 [2 favorites]


If fiction from around then is any indication, you want the canvasback duck, which he seems to agree with.

And the terrapin. Don't forget the terrapin. And Madeira that has gone round the Cape.
posted by Hypatia at 7:35 AM on July 12, 2019 [3 favorites]


Sort of relevant.
posted by Bee'sWing at 8:23 AM on July 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


Never mind the what. The question is, where?
posted by BWA at 10:56 AM on July 12, 2019


Huh. ...canvasbacks taste different from other ducks. Their meat is a rich crimson, their skin a pinkish buff, their fat a ghostly ivory.

*edit: added link
posted by porpoise at 2:57 PM on July 12, 2019


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