Remembering the World’s First "Cold-Storage Banquet"

[Shel_B]

While we take refrigeration for granted, at one time the idea of refrigerated food scared people.

 

On October 23, 1911, some 400 guests sat down to one of the most pivotal meals of the 20th century. The setting was the Louis XVI room in Chicago’s Hotel Sherman, a “luxurious meeting place for the elite” that catered to swaggering politicians and mafiosi alike. There, under the cavernous, molded ceilings resplendent with gilt details, the mayor of Chicago, the city’s health commissioner, and other bigwig bureaucrats steeled their nerves for the world’s first-ever “cold-storage banquet.”

 

Neither the eggs in the egg salad, nor the apples in the apple pie were fresh from any farm. “Everything but the olives in the dry martinis was refrigerated,” says Nicola Twilley, who wrote of the banquet ...

 

Click Here to Read the Full Article

[liuzhou]

While I have no reason to believe that this banquet didn't happen, that it was the first to use refrigerated food, is definitely wrong . Food has ben refrigerated since ancient times - the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans all stored ice for refrigeration and built ice storage rooms. None of these cultures were unappreciative of the odd banquet or five. 

 

Prior to those classical times, food had been stored in ice for millennia. 

 

The banquet in the article may have been the first to use refrigerated food in America (highly unlikely), or perhaps the first to use foods refrigerated using mechanical refrigeration. 

Note: I haven't read Ms Tilley's book (but will if I can find it) but Gastro Obscura is not infallible.

 

 

 

PS: Were the cigars on the menu refrigerated? 

 

 

[Shel_B]

The point was that the food was stored a long time (more than a year in some instances) and using mechanical refrigeration, which was new and frightening to some people.  It was mentioned that refrigeration (by natural means) had been used before.

 

“Until we figured out how to use machines to make cold, we were reliant on this very ephemeral, unreliable thing that melted.”

 

In many areas of the United States ice houses had been used. As a kid, I encountered them in upstate NY in the 1950s. A couple were still in use at that time.

 

The ice was obtained by harvesting from frozen lakes and ponds during the winter months and was then stored in ice houses which were heavily insulation to keep the ice frozen through warmer months. Some ice houses were built underground. I'm sure the Egyptians, and even the cavemen, had similar setups, although the Egyptians and many early cultures also used other methods of preservation. And I'm sure both Atlas Obscura and Twilley were and are very much aware of the history of refrigeration, and stated as much in very bold type posted in the middle of the article, and which I copied above.

 

 I believe you're aware of all this.

 

Edited yesterday at 05:40 AM by Shel_B (log)

[liuzhou]

4 hours ago, Shel_B said:

 I believe you're aware of all this.

 

Indeed. And I read the article when it was first published a year ago. At that time, I thought the same as I do now. 

Freezing food was not so ephemeral as made out and remember, the climate was very different in ancient times. Natural ice is still available year-round in many parts of the world and I don't only mean the poles!

 

And that meal for sure wasn't the first banquet to feature frozen food. It was an early 20th century marketing ploy. Interesting though.

 

[Tropicalsenior]

7 hours ago, Shel_B said:

ice houses had been used.

We had an ice house when I was a kid. It looked very much like this one. It was probably built around 1902 when my grandfather built the main house. It was used constantly until the 50s when my parents got a refrigerator and no longer needed it for an icebox. We had a small lake on the property and every winter they would periodically harvest the ice with huge ice saws and pack it into the ice house in about 2 ft square blocks. It was packed in straw to keep it insulated. As I remember it was about 12 ft deep.

My Grandmother had a cold room that was about 12 ft below the level of her basement. Because it was below the permafrost level it was cold enough to store meat all summer long and during the winter it was as cold as a deep freeze.

One house that I lived in in Lake Tahoe had one 4-ft cabinet that had a cold shaft that went far below the permafrost layer. It was heavily insulated and kept things as cold as any refrigerator. I was told that house had been built in the 1890s.

So yes, long before the turn of the century, refrigeration was a common thing. Our ancestors were pretty ingenious people.

[Shel_B]

3 hours ago, Tropicalsenior said:

So yes, long before the turn of the century, refrigeration was a common thing. Our ancestors were pretty ingenious people.

 

There's a community ice house with which I'm familiar up north of Whithorse in Canada's Northwest Territory.  It serves a small indigenous community and has about 20 rooms - one for each family in the community. It's dug down below the frostline, I don't know for sure, maybe 40 feet below ground level. 

 

Even thugh the community has electricity and mechanical refrigeration, the use of the ice house keeps power usage down and cuts down on greenhouse gases. The Northwest Territory Power Company provides the electricity which is produced by Diesel generators, so you can see how the ice house is an important part of the community.

[FauxPas]

1 hour ago, Shel_B said:

There's a community ice house with which I'm familiar up north of Whithorse in Canada's Northwest Territory

 

I think you mean north of Yellowknife, NWT. (Whitehorse is in the Yukon Territory.) Maybe you are thinking of the ice house in Tuktoyaktuk? 

 

I lived in Yellowknife for a couple of years. I sent my brother a sweatshirt that said Univ of Tuktoyaktuk and below it said "Tuk U". It was considered witty at the time. There was no university there, of course.  🙂

 

[Shel_B]

20 minutes ago, FauxPas said:

 

I think you mean north of Yellowknife, NWT. (Whitehorse is in the Yukon Territory.) Maybe you are thinking of the ice house in Tuktoyaktuk? 

 

I lived in Yellowknife for a couple of years. I sent my brother a sweatshirt that said Univ of Tuktoyaktuk and below it said "Tuk U". It was considered witty at the time. There was no university there, of course.  🙂

 

Yes, that's the one. For some reason I frequently confuse Yellowknife with Whitehorse, at least when remembering as I certainly know the difference. In any case, I love the remoteness and sparseness of the general area. Explored it a bit when I drove to Alaska in '93. Thanks for the link. The pics bring back fond memories.

Edited 20 hours ago by Shel_B
Additional information (log)

[FauxPas]

5 hours ago, Shel_B said:

For some reason I frequently confuse Yellowknife with Whitehorse

 

Lots of people do! And Yellowknife is in the Northwest Territories (plural) while Whitehorse is in the Yukon Territory (singular), also confusing. 

 

Speaking of refrigeration, I dated a guy who owned a (commercial) refrigeration company when I lived up there. He was always good natured about the inevitable jokes about selling fridges to Eskimos (Inuit), etc.  🙂

 

 

 

Edited 15 hours ago by FauxPas (log)

[Shel_B]

7 minutes ago, FauxPas said:

Speaking of refrigeration, I dated a guy who owned a (commercial) refrigeration company when I lived up there.

 

That must have been cool ... <rimshot>