New Yorkers celebrating the holidays by dining out encountered menus with plenty of options more than a century ago, a far cry from the sparse holiday menus popular today.
DNAinfo New York dug into the New York Public Library's digital collection to see what people were eating during Christmas and New Year's in the late 1800s and at the turn of the century.
The answer, in short: a lot of meat.
Restaurants served up meat as an appetizer, an entree and even a dessert (mince pie was popular alongside sweet pies and cakes). There were menu sections devoted to cold meat, boiled meat, game and roast meat, among others.
Parts of the menus show the staying power of some traditions, like celebrating with Veuve Clicquot and oysters.
But others prove just how much tastes have changed, including the prevalence of green turtle soup as an appetizer or pipes full of tobacco to cap off a meal.
Green turtle was served as a New Year's Day appetizer in 1906.
For $1, you could have a feast on New Year's Day in 1906 that started with green turtle soup, included frozen egg nog and sweetbreads, and concluded with hot mince pie at the Park Avenue Hotel, on Park Avenue between East 32nd and 33rd streets.
A Christmas dinner in 1905 featured grouse, rail birds and pickled lamb tongue.
At the Wolcott Hotel on Fifth Avenue and East 31st Street, a large Christmas dinner in 1905 featured an entire section devoted to game — including grouse, rail birds and English snipe, among others. Diners could also order pickled lamb tongue and wash it down with a cup of straight buttermilk or cream.
Boiled meat was a popular item in the early 1900s — and diners could have meat for dessert, too.
In 1906, a restaurant known as M.F. Lyons at 259 Bowery on the Lower East Side served a New Year's Day menu that featured boiled turkey with oyster sauce and boiled Philadelphia capon (a type of rooster). To close the meal, diners could enjoy even more meat — with hot mince and pumpkin pie. There were also non-meat treats like a English plum pudding or chocolate eclairs.
Hangovers could be nursed with chicken broth in 1906.
Bone broth may seem very of-the-moment, but broths were a part of the Waldorf Astoria's New Year's Day menu more than a century ago. At a 1906 New Year's Day feast, diners could order chicken broth for 30 cents or clam broth for 25 cents. Meat was featured heavily on the menu — with a whole duck for $2 or a tongue sandwich for 25 cents.