Tag: Food

The Bracebridge Dinner Menu

The Bracebridge Dinner at the Ahwahnee Hotel serves modern gourmet food, but with a slight nod to the Renaissance in how it is labelled. Sookie’s menu seems to resemble it very closely.

Soup – Butternut squash (pumpkin) soup topped with cream (?) and rosemary

Fish – Trout

Peacock Pie – not really peacock, usually duck, capon, or quail, or even small game like rabbit. It’s usually a breast fillet wrapped in pastry.

Baron of Beef – a mostly British term for what is otherwise known as a top sirloin roast (a double sirloin). The Ahwahnee seems to serve instead a beef steak of superior cut, and so does Sookie.

Salad – usually with some sort of festive addition, such as cranberries and walnuts

Plum Pudding – prune tart (Martha Stewart has a recipe for this, perhaps Sookie used it?)

Wassail – a traditional hot mulled punch, made with spiced apple cider

The Bracebridge Dinner

LORELAI: For the Bracebridge Dinner.
JACKSON: Geez, you guys are going crazy with this dinner.
SOOKIE: Jackson, I told you, this dinner is not just about food. We are recreating an authentic 19th century meal.
LORELAI: The servers are all gonna be in period clothing, they’re gonna speak period English. Here, look at the costumes.

The Bracebridge Dinner is an annual tradition which has been held at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park, California since 1927, when the hotel opened. The interior of the Ahwahnee was an inspiration for the hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s film, The Shining – a hint as to how Lorelai may have become interested in holding her own Bracebridge Dinner.

The Bracebridge Dinner is a seven-course formal gathering held in the Grand Dining Room and presented as a feast given by a Renaissance-era lord. It was inspired by the fictional Squire Bracebridge’s Yule celebration in a story from the 1820 work, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., by American author Washington Irving. Music and theatrical performances based on Irving’s story accompany the introduction of each course.

Tickets to the Bracebridge Dinner cost around $400 and are generally difficult to obtain, sometimes being awarded in a lottery system. In 1992, there were 60 000 applicants for the 1650 seats available. This could be the reason why the Trelling Paper Company from Chicago have decided to hold their own Bracebridge Dinner at the Independence Inn.

Sookie says they will be serving an authentic 19th century meal, but in fact it is a Renaissance-themed meal. There’s not that much authentic about the dinner really, however I’m pretty sure the 19th century one wasn’t either. It’s a bit of fun and frolic, not a history lesson.

Mushrooms

SOOKIE: You’ve got all the mushrooms? … The shiitake, the nameko, the chanterelle? The matsutake? The makeniya?

Shiitake: an East Asian mushroom commonly used in Chinese and Japanese cusisine, especially vegetarian dishes.

Nameko: a small amber-brown mushroom, very popular in both Japan and Russia for cooking. In America, sometimes called “butterscotch mushroom”.

Chanterelle [pictured]: one of the most popular of wild edible fungi, meaty and funnel-shaped with forked folds. They have a fruity aroma, rather like apricot, and a mildly peppery taste. There are several species native to North America.

Matsutake: a rare and luxurious mushroom which grows in East Asia, Europe, and North America. It has a distinctive odour that many find unpleasant, but is greatly prized in Japanese cuisine.

Makeniya: a mushroom variety that Sookie made up to test Jackson. He passed!

Altoid

[Paris comes back dressed as Romeo]
PARIS: What are you standing there for? Let’s go. You better start sucking on an Altoid.

Altoids are a brand of mints sold in metal tins. Created by the London business Smith & Company in the late 18th century, they became part of the Chicago-based firm Callard & Bowser in the 19th century. Their advertising slogan is “The Original Celebrated Curiously Strong Mints”. They are less widely available in the UK than in the US, although Marks & Spencer has an almost identical product called Curiously Strong Mints.

Why Rory had to suck on a breath mint when Paris didn’t even kiss her, I don’t know. Paris is very keen on hygiene though, and perhaps she wasn’t convinced Rory was clean enough.

(There is an odd sort of logic to Paris taking over as Romeo, because in Romeo and Juliet, Juliet was meant to marry Count Paris).

Chuck E. Cheese

LUKE: You running around with that kid.
LORELAI: I wasn’t running, he’s not a kid. We had dinner. You say Chuck E. Cheese, I’ll break your nose.

Chuck E. Cheese is a family restaurant chain specialising in pizza and entertainment such as arcade games and animatronic stage shows, founded in 1977 by a co-founder of Atari. The first restaurant opened in San Jose, California, and the mascot is a rat named Chuck E. Cheese. They are popular places to hold children’s parties.

“You’re gonna kill yourself in a couple of hours”

LORELAI: Taking pity on your burger?
RORY: Not hungry.
LORELAI: Honey, you’ve got to eat. You’re gonna kill yourself in a couple of hours, you really need your strength.

The timeline of this episode, already fairly wonky with a week that seems to have gone missing, goes completely bazonkers on the day of the final rehearsal. Rehearsal starts at 5 pm, and Lorelai says Rory has to kill herself “in a couple of hours” (yet another suicide joke in the show). So it seems as if it is 3 pm, and they are eating mid-afternoon burgers, perhaps a late lunch.

Yet not long afterwards, Lorelai makes plans for them to go shopping that afternoon, as if it’s midday, then Paul and his parents come in for breakfast. Lorelai and Rory are eating burgers for breakfast??? They always have eggs or pancakes on a weekend (muffins if they’re not hungry), they’ve never had breakfast hamburgers before. Is this brunch or a second breakfast or an early lunch? What the dink time is it?

Destiny’s Child

SOOKIE: Swear. Raise your right hand and say, ‘May Destiny’s Child break up if I count these blueberries.’
MICHEL: Pick another group.

Destiny’s Child, a girl group founded in Texas in 1990 under the name Girl’s Tyme, with a final and best-known line-up of Beyoncé Knowles, Kelly Rowland, and Michelle Williams. They signed to Columbia in 1997 under the name Destiny’s Child, and gained mainstream recognition with the release of their hit song, No, No, No, and their 1999 best-selling album, The Writing’s On the Wall. Their most recent album at this stage was Survivor, which came out in April 2001, apart from their Christmas album in October of that year.

The reason Michel might be particularly concerned that Destiny’s Child could break up is because the band announced they were going on hiatus to pursue solo careers in 2001. They reunited in 2004 for their fourth and final album, Destiny Fulfilled. After their 2005 tour, the group did indeed break up.

Somehow Michel is more worried about eating one or two extra blueberries on his pancakes because of the calories than he is with eating actual pancakes! Michel’s relationship with food is even unhealthier that Lorelai and Rory’s, and is certainly weirder.

Sock Hops and Clambakes

PARIS: I’d really like to get an ‘A’ on this assignment, and in order to do that I’m afraid you’re gonna have to discuss your sock hops and your clambakes some other time, okay?

A sock hop [pictured] was an informal sponsored dance event for teenagers in the 1940s and ’50s, commonly held at high school gyms and cafeterias, and often as a fundraiser. The name comes from the fact that dancers were asked to remove their shoes so as not to damage the varnished floor of gymnasiums. The name was dropped once sneakers became common, so shoes could be worn. What we’d call a “school dance” today.

A clambake is a traditional method of cooking shellfish, such as lobsters, clams, and mussels, by steaming them over seaweed in a pit oven. Vegetables such as potatoes, onion, carrot and corn can be added. Usually held as festive occasions along the New England coast.

The Ice-Cream Maker Wedding Gift

SOOKIE: A Musso Lussino 480!
LORELAI: Somebody sent me a Fascist ice cream maker?

The episode begins with Lorelai receiving a mysterious late wedding gift from someone who apparently doesn’t know her wedding with Max was cancelled. When Sookie and Rory persuade her to open it (in case there’s a card inside), it turns out to be a Lello Musso Lussino 480 ice cream maker.

This is a top-shelf ice cream maker, made in Italy, producing restaurant-quality ice cream in half an hour for the domestic market. It’s extremely expensive, costing almost $1000 today. Lorelai jokes that it’s a Fascist ice-cream maker, because its name sounds slightly like Mussolini, and of course Lorelai has to refer to it as Il Duce.

We never discover who sent Lorelai the ice cream maker. It seems reasonable to guess that it was Emily, trying to give Lorelai her gift anonymously. It’s certainly the kind of expensive gift she would pick out, and it’s thoughtful, because this ice cream maker is quick and easy to use – she knows Lorelai and Rory are not at home in the kitchen. It seems telling that just after she told Lorelai about the wedding gift she chose, refusing to say what it was, she asked them if they wanted ice cream.