SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Imagine. It's 1881. You're in New York City. You're hungry, and you sit down for an exquisite meal at the celebrated Delmonico's. Your server hands you the passport to your meal - a menu.
(SOUNDBITE OF MAX MARINO ET SON ACCORDEON'S "REINE DU MUSETTE")
SIMON: What will you eat? Perhaps the bisque d'ecrevisse - crayfish soup with cognac and cream - or maybe the aspic de foie gras.
(SOUNDBITE OF MAX MARINO ET SON ACCORDEON'S "REINE DU MUSETTE")
SIMON: This 1881 menu, and tens of thousands of others, lives at the New York Public Library.
MICHAEL INMAN: The roots of the collection began with the collecting efforts of a lady named Miss Frank E. Buttolph.
SIMON: Michael Inman is the Susan Jaffe Tane curator of rare books at the New York Public Library. On New Year's Day in 1900, Buttolph decided to take a menu after she ate at a New York restaurant. She then became devoted to cultivating this culinary collection.
INMAN: Within a few months' time, she had obtained and then donated over a thousand additional menus to the library. And it was really at that point it became, as she herself admitted, pretty much the sole focus of her life.
SIMON: At the time Buttolph died in 1924, she had collected about 25,000 menus.
INMAN: To collect them, she proactively sought them out. She asked restaurants for examples either in person or, usually, by writing letters to them, and she would advertise in newspapers and trade publications. And she also promoted the library's menu collection in the press.
SIMON: Menus from restaurants, hotels, passenger trains, ocean liners, airplanes, state dinners and anniversary meals were all sent to the New York Public Library. And they had to be immaculate.
INMAN: She insisted that the menus be clean, pristine, not bent or soiled in any way.
STEPHEN LURIE: The collection shows us the exact period where dining changes from an elite-only, aristocratic imitation of the finest European dining towards what we know more today as the classic American restaurant.
SIMON: That's Stephen Lurie, a writer based in Brooklyn. He created a data visualization of a bunch of the library's menus for a website called The Pudding. Lurie says, look closely at these menus, and you can see the entire dining industry begin to change. Elaborate multi-course meals were being phased out.
LURIE: And so you start to have not only a la carte menus where you pick one or two things, but the presence and the rise of specials and combo meals and even takeout.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG'S "CORNET CHOP SUEY (FEAT. LIL ARMSTRONG)")
SIMON: Businesses were now appealing to the middle class, offering meals that were faster and cheaper.
LURIE: Of course, what happens later in the 20th century is the fast-food revolution that then mixes even more timeliness and affordability into our culinary mix. But this is really the first step.
SIMON: The library's menu collection kept growing long after Buttolph's death. They now have about 55,000 menus from the 1840s to the present. And Michael Inman of the library says people use the collection for all kinds of things. For example...
INMAN: Chefs who are looking for inspiration, perhaps. It's used by graphic designers 'cause they're beautifully decorated. They're used by filmmakers and theater professionals who are wanting to make sure that their production's props are period-correct. They've been used by economists who are looking for historical cost-of-living data.
SIMON: And if you have a takeout menu from your favorite dim sum place down the street, hold on to it. It could become an artifact one day.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG'S "CORNET CHOP SUEY (FEAT. LIL ARMSTRONG)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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