What Did the Georgians Eat at a Dinner Party?

'What Did the Georgians Eat at a Dinner Party?'

The Georgian era was a time of luxury and decadence. At least if you were one of the fortunate few who were members of the upper class, gentry or nobility. From fancy balls to trips into the ton, life was good for the glamorous Georgian elite, and it’s easy to see why the period is portrayed so often in films and TV shows, like ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Bridgerton’.

One of the many extravagances the nobility enjoyed in this period was fine dining. Dinner parties were huge, complicated affairs with multiple courses served at once and strict rules of etiquette to follow.

In this video, Dan Snow takes on some of the weird and wonderful foods that would have graced a Georgian dining table.

First, he tries some Claret, a red wine from Bordeaux that was very popular at the time. Wine was an essential component of any social event in the Georgian calendar and there were strict rules governing what you could drink, when and with whom.

Next, he samples some white soup, a mainstay of Georgian dinner parties which crops up in Jane Austen’s novels. The soup, which was made from veal stock, egg yolk, ground almonds, cream, chicken and bacon, was commonly served at balls and is not exactly to Dan’s taste.

He goes on to try some venison pie, which is more to his liking. Meat made up a large part of the Georgian diet and venison and game were particularly popular, because they had to be procured from country estates and were therefore a status symbol.

Next up, he tastes some sweetly named but not so sweet tasting sweetbreads. Sweetbreads are offal from the thymus gland (throat) and the pancreas gland (stomach) of calves or lambs. Unsurprisingly, this is not Dan's favourite part of the meal!

Finally, Dan enjoys some juicy pineapple. Pineapples were a sign of wealth in the Georgian period because to get ahold of them, you'd have to be able to either ship them over from the tropics or grow them in England and therefore, would have to be extremely rich. Pineapples were so popular that businessmen opened pineapple rental shops across the country. Weird!
Do you think you’d be able to stomach a Georgian dinner party? What would be the dish you’d least want to try? Let us know in the comments!
And keep your eyes peeled for the next episode of ‘History Bites’ where Dan tackles a feast fit for King Henry VIII.

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