Order Your Copy of “The Gilded Table”

Gilded Table coverFood his­to­ri­an and St. Louis author Suzanne Cor­bett takes read­ers on culi­nary trip back in time via The Gild­ed Table, Recipes and Table His­to­ry from the Camp­bell House, a new, four-col­or book filled with menus, recipes and din­ing cus­toms from the Camp­bell House Muse­um, St. Louis’ best-pre­served Gild­ed Age mansion.

This 224-page, hard-cov­er pub­li­ca­tion spot­lights the food, culi­nary tra­di­tions and social deco­rum of 19th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca through the pri­vate home and social life of Robert and Vir­ginia Camp­bell, who were at the time, one of St. Louis’ and Missouri’s wealth­i­est cou­ples. Their lux­u­ri­ous par­lor and din­ing table wel­comed the likes of Pres­i­dent and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant; William Tecum­seh Sher­man; Chief Red Cloud of the Oglala Lako­ta and engi­neer James B. Eads.

The book pro­vides an inti­mate glimpse at how the wealth cre­at­ed by Robert Campbell’s rugged wilder­ness life as a pio­neer­ing fur trad­er trans­formed into a wealthy lifestyle of sump­tu­ous din­ners and high soci­ety events dur­ing the 1860s and 70s, a piv­otal peri­od in St. Louis and Amer­i­can history.

4.7-FP1-Asparagus-Vinaigrette

Aspara­gus vinaigrette

Fea­tured are 178 recipes from Vir­ginia Campbell’s orig­i­nal hand­writ­ten col­lec­tion which dates to 1840, along with dish­es from the Camp­bell-owned South­ern Hotel, con­sid­ered one of the finest lodg­ing estab­lish­ments of its time.

Lav­ishly pho­tographed and illus­trated (page sam­ples below), The Gild­ed Table fea­tures more than 130 food and arti­fact images, includ­ing Mrs. Campbell’s ornate din­ing fur­ni­ture, Old Paris chi­na col­lec­tion, Water­ford crys­tal and elab­o­rate ster­ling serv­ing pieces. The book’s culi­nary focus is enhanced by Corbett’s telling of the Camp­bell fam­ily’s glit­ter­ing din­ner par­ties and exten­sive phil­an­thropic efforts.

Click below to order your copy of this spe­cial publication—available for ship­ping to your home or held will-call in the Camp­bell House Muse­um Store. Books are usu­al­ly shipped with­in 2 days of the order. 


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Reviews of The Gilded Table

Stewed Celery & Celery Hearts with Hollandaise from "The Gilded Table"

Stewed Cel­ery & Cel­ery Hearts with Hol­landaise from “The Gild­ed Table”

If those lav­ish table scenes at Down­ton Abbey make you want to trip back in time, wait until you read Suzanne Cor­bett. She prac­ti­cal­ly pulls out a chair for you at the nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry ban­quets of the Camp­bells. Lav­ish only begins to describe what you’d expe­ri­ence. Robert and Vir­ginia Camp­bell ruled the St. Louis social scene through the Gild­ed Age. This is social his­to­ry at its best — the table as the can­vas of a piv­otal Amer­i­can city com­ing into its own.”
- Lynne Ros­set­to Kasper, host of pub­lic radio’s “The Splen­did Table” from Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media

Camp­bell House is a spe­cial place — it’s a St. Louis orig­i­nal. There’s so much his­to­ry sur­round­ing the Camp­bell fam­i­ly … and so many mem­o­ries, espe­cial­ly those his­toric din­ners when the table was always impec­ca­bly set with all the sil­ver ser­vice. It was a time of ele­gance and a time when peo­ple dined. It’s impres­sive and some­thing worth see­ing and pre­serv­ing and “The Gild­ed Table” cap­tures that time.”
- Vin­cent Bom­mar­i­to, Sr., leg­endary St. Louis five-star restau­ra­teur, own­er of Tony’s

 


Sample Book Pages

Click on the links or pages below to view sam­ple pages from the book in PDF format. 

GT-Contents-1 Table of Con­tents — 2 pages (PDF, 1.9mb)

Preface Pref­ace — 2 pages (PDF, 676kb)

GT-1-1Chap­ter 1, Pre­serv­ing House and Table (selec­tion) — 6 pages (PDF, 2.7 mb)

RecipeIntroRecipe Intro­duc­tion — 1 pages (PDF, 1mb)

ChickenFricassee Brown Fric­as­see Chick­en — 1 page (PDF, 2.1mb)

RomanPunch-1  Roman Punch — 2 pages (PDF, 2.3mb)

WashingtonCake-1 Wash­ing­ton Cake — 2 pages (PDF, 1.1mb)