10 Strange Foods from the 1920s on an NYC Restaurant Menu
By: Dana Jennings
Tags: Food, History, Culture, New York, Restaurant

10 Strange Foods from the 1920s on an NYC Restaurant Menu Dana Jennings Follow Jul 14 · 7 min read

Joe’s Restaurant in Brooklyn was a trove of interesting bites.

Source: Library of Congress

Imagine you’re walking the streets at dinnertime in New York circa 1920. You’re hungry, thirsty, and probably after one of three things:

An opulent dining experience Cheap cafeteria grub A speakeasy

The wealth gap was vast (sound familiar?), so you’re probably either ready to splurge or counting your pennies. And similar to present-day Americans, you’re probably tired of quarantining from the 1918 flu pandemic and ready to get out and nosh already. But don’t think you can easily toss back the booze to deal with the last couple years of tragedy.

Unfortunately, that’s now illegal.

But if you’re looking for a nice, sit-down meal on New York’s Coney Island, you might try Joe’s Restaurant.

Here are ten things on the menu that stood out as quintessentially 1920.

1. Minced Tongue Scrambled Eggs

I will admit I’m not someone who eats a lot of tongue. I’ve tried it once before, but there’s something about consuming an animal’s tongue with my own human tongue that sends me into a spiral. Although eating this body part is common in many cultures, I’d be hard-pressed to find this in an omelet in New York City today. However, going all the way back to American cookbooks in the 1880s, “tongue toast” was a simple little sandwich usually served open-faced. You could add all the same seasonings and vegetables you would with any other egg sandwich, and it would normally be served for breakfast or as an hors d’oeuvre.

2. Postum

In 1895, C.W. Post (of Post cereal fame) came up with a caffeine-free, roasted wheat beverage as an alternative to coffee. With sweet hints of molasses, Postum had the full-bodied flavor of coffee without the drawbacks like jitters, sleeplessness, and digestive issues. Now that I’ve intrigued you like one of their vintage coffee-shaming ads, here’s the bad news: Postum can be difficult to find if you don’t live in Utah, or another state with a religious population that frowns upon caffeine. But you can snag some on the product’s website if you can wait to have it shipped.

3. Chow Chow

No, I’m not talking about the wrinkly, pudgy dog breed (phew!), but a pickled batch of produce. If you live in the American South, you might already be familiar with this condiment that can be added to burgers, hot dogs, or other barbecued meats and fish. Similar to a relish, chow chow can be made with a variety of different ingredients, often depending on your region.

Outside of the South, the Pennsylvania Dutch make a mean chow chow, but the kind served at Joe’s also goes by the name “piccalilli.” Described by British brand Crosse & Blackwell as a “luscious tangy condiment,” this chow chow is made from onions, cucumbers, and cauliflower. The recipe goes back centuries and tastes delicious served on a sandwich or paired with a meat and cheese tray.

4. Shad Roe

In the early 1900s, Americans had a lot of caviar due to an over-abundance of sturgeon in the Hudson River. We had so much caviar that bars reportedly put out bowls of fish eggs instead of pretzels to keep their patrons thirsty. But if a bowl of fish with your beer sounds too good to be true, you’re right. We got greedy and over-fished the sturgeon, eventually hiking up the price of caviar. However we still had plenty of shad fish for restaurants to serve up the female egg sac. Joe’s offered this dish fried or broiled with bacon and fried sweet potatoes. I’ve never tried shad roe, but I hear the flavor is similar to sweetbreads.

5. Fer-mil-lac

Americans living during the pandemic of 1918 drank a lot of questionably healthy things to combat the flu. Though the worst of the virus in the US had tapered off in 1920, New York City did see one last wave in the first quarter of the year. Joe’s offered its patrons “Fer-mil-lac,” a beverage made from whole milk and a fermented culture from Bulgaria. According to the company’s ad campaigns, Fer-mil-lac was a type of miracle tonic “isolated from the milk pans of the Bulgarian housewives.”

After three horribly dark years of the virus killing at least 50 million people worldwide, it’s no surprise that restaurants would offer a drink that boasted miracle-like healing. Fer-mil-lac was said to work wonders on your gut bacteria and according to The Medical Economist, “guard the body against this danger, [e]nsuring a good digestion, a clear mind, and a happier and longer life.” What better way to get the twenties started off right?

6. Wine Jelly Pudding

Wine, jelly, and pudding. All pretty good on their own, but put together… well, I honestly can’t quite imagine what they’d taste like. After doing some research, I found only a couple recipes that could possibly emulate this 1920s dessert. Woman&home, a lifestyle publication based in the UK, provides a recipe for mulled wine pudding. This dish features everyone’s favorite wintertime boozy classic paired with red currant jelly, fruit, gelatin, and white bread. If I lost you on that last bit, think of this dessert as an alcoholic alternative to another English sweet treat, sticky toffee pudding, or the more common bread pudding that also has European origins.

Pudding in the UK is more like a sponge cake (Food Republic breaks the concept down nicely here), while Americans might picture those plastic cups filled with chocolatey goo you’d eat as a kid. So which one was served at Joe’s Restaurant in 1920? My guess is a bready dessert drenched in a sweet, after-dinner wine and topped with jellied fruit. And hopefully a dollop of whipped cream, for good measure.

7. Celery Tonic

Here’s a fun fact: the third most-common menu item in NYPL’s digital menu collection after coffee and tea is celery. The unassuming, mellow-flavored, blank canvas for dips was a common menu item in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Eateries in the ’20s offered celery as a side dish or a salad, though for most Americans today, a heap of celery that isn’t filler for your chicken wing take-out box might be hard to imagine.

Celery as a side snack is one thing, but I was surprised by the offering of celery tonic on the Joe’s beverage menu. Oftentimes called “celery soda,” or “celery champagne” if you sip with your pinky out, the tonic made famous by popular soft drink brand Dr. Brown’s was born in Brooklyn in 1868. The soda became a mainstay in New York’s Jewish delicatessens and eventually took on two new names: the formal “Cel-Ray,” and the not-so-formal “Jewish champagne.” I sadly can’t speak from experience, but it’s known to pair perfectly with pastrami.

8. Pickled walnuts

Walnuts added to baked goods in my house can be divisive, but one thing I’ve never argued about was whether a walnut should be raw or pickled. A bowl of pickled walnuts frankly looks like a bowl of black olives, but in 18th-century England, the brined fruit of the walnut tree was quite the delicacy. The nuts have to be picked from the tree while they’re still green, prior to developing their hard shell. Through the brining process the walnuts change to a dark brown color and can be ready to eat in as quickly as five days. An order of these tangy treats at Joe’s would only cost a cool fifteen cents.

9. Meat with New York or Boston Beans

This one made me scratch my head a little. I love the fact that Joe’s lets people choose their beans. As someone who prefers black beans over refried, I see this as a thoughtful courtesy. But what I’m not familiar with is what exactly are New York beans? Most people are familiar with Boston baked beans. This New England staple starts with white beans that are baked with molasses, brown sugar, salt pork (or bacon), and various other spices.

The few New York bean recipes I’ve stumbled upon seem to be made exactly like Boston beans, so it might come down to hometown pride. But what would be the difference if you ordered them on a menu? Were NY beans at Joe’s just beans without all the syrupy sweet goodness? If you have any insight, please share in the comments for my own curiosity.

10. Ferricite

Saving the best for last, the oddest thing I found on the Joe’s Restaurant menu wasn’t technically food at all. The bottom of the menu reads, “Take home a bottle of Ferricite — $3.00 per quart.” Spelled properly as “ferrocite,” or “ferrous fumarate,” a bottle of this would help diners in the 20s cure their iron deficiencies which were actually quite common. Food shortages during World War I forced Americans to ration what little protein they had and turn to less nutritious alternatives out of necessity. Between 1870 and 1920, adolescent girls were being diagnosed with chlorosis, a form of anemia that gave their skin a greenish tint.

Doctors prescribed iron salts and bed rest before Americans were able to adopt better diets. For those going out on the town to Joe’s, a pricey, three-dollar bottle of liquid iron might do the trick. For reference, the most expensive item on the menu was a five-dollar porterhouse steak to feed your entire family.

Joe’s also sold the “best brands of cigars,” for those looking to start the ’20s with a good time rather than a healthy one. Conveniently, those would only set you back between 5–20 cents.

If you’d like to see the full menu from Joe’s Restaurant, open for 50 years (1909–1959) on Fulton Street in Brooklyn, NY, you can check it out here.

Special thanks to the New York Public Library’s amazing “What’s on the Menu?” collection. It allows you to dig through foodie ephemera going all the way back to 1851. It’s a culinary historian’s playground!