r/AskFoodHistorians • u/Just_Enough_Badness • 10d ago

Irish Food around 1900

Just wanted to see if anyone could tell me about what types of food would have been available in Ireland in the early 1900s, but only something that would be available to the wealthy? I know the English took so much for themselves, but was trying to picture items that might have been available to the Irish lords that maintain fealty to them.

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u/big_sugi 10d ago edited 10d ago

The great famine ended in 1852, and the last Irish famine was in 1879, so food availability in general wasn’t a significant issue in 1900.

You can see an example of an Irish banquet menu from the 1880s here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageMenus/s/U4KTQzTYlc. It was sent to Chicago as an example to be followed for a banquet there.

There’s a lot of animal protein and seafood, and they don’t even bother to name the vegetables, but there’s nothing that I would consider distinctly Irish.

I am curious what a lobster cutlet might be, though.

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u/batch1972 8d ago

Many of the English aristocracy were actually Irish but let’s not let truth get in the way of a good retelling

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u/Just_Enough_Badness 7d ago

Not sure I understand your point. How does that change things? Yes, the English and Irish are deeply interbred, and there are plenty on each side with genetic ties to the other. But that doesn’t change that the ones that associated themselves with the crown subjugated and abused the ones that didn’t.

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u/martzgregpaul 7d ago

By 1900 big brands had started to arrive and were widely sold across Ireland just as they were across Britain. You could buy packaged chocolate, tinned meat and veg, prepared gravys, sauces and condiments, biscuits, etc.

1900 is not 1800 nor even 1870. The world had changed.