For the Food Issue this week, I looked into the century-long trend towards menu description creep, from simple terms like "salad" in the early 1900s to the current florid menu at Mise En Place. In the process, I wasted a solid ten hours perusing images of menus from library archives. It's fascinating stuff.
Here's where you can go to waste an entire lazy Wednesday work day:
Los Angeles Public Library Menu Collection
Collectible Meals Historic Menu Gallery
NY Public Libraries Miss Frank E. Buttolph American Menu Collection
Alice Statler Menu Collection, City College of San Francisco
University of Washington Historical Menu Collection
This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2008.