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REVIEWS AND MEDIA COVERAGE

THE GILDED AGE COOKBOOK

RECIPE: Dainty Tea Sandwiches

TV segment on KARE 11 Saturday, Minneapolis, featuring Dainty Tea Sandwich recipes from The Gilded Age Cookbook March 2, 2024

Want to throw a Gilded Age dinner party? Here's the book for you

By Sharyn Jackson / Star Tribune / February 28, 2024

Local Author Writes Gilded Age Cookbook

TV segment on WFMZ, Allentown, PA / Feb 21, 2024

Interview - Becky Diamond - Ever Wanted to Live in the Gilded Age?

Interview with Mandy Connell of KOA Radio in Denver, CO / Feb. 16, 2024

A Taste of the Gilded Age

Podcast with James Gardner of Your History Your Story / Season 9, Episode 3 / February 5, 2024

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THE THOUSAND DOLLAR DINNER

TWO FASCINATING NEW HISTORICAL BOOKS ON THE EVOLVING USA RESTAURANT SCENE

Social history and food culture offer up a fascinating parallel in the evolution of the US dining scene in two entertaining new books through the eyes of academic professionals with a trained palate. Charting the US's rise to culinary heights are food historians Paul Freedman, with 10 well known US restaurants, while stepping back in time, Becky Libourel Diamond spills the details on each course of the 'Thousand dollar dinner,' which let the US take on European kitchens for the first time. (more...)

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Omnivoracious: The Amazon Book Review: The Thousand Dollar Dinner": The Original Culinary Smackdown -Jon Foro on December 29, 2015

Between programs like Top Chef, Iron Chef, MasterChef, and Throwdown! with Bobby Flay, it's hard to swing a jambon at your television without hitting some kind of cooking competition. But the roots of this phenomenon are much deeper than you might think. In The Thousand Dollar Dinner: America's First Great Cookery Challenge, Becky Libourel Diamond recreates the night in 1851--menu and all--when a group of wealthy Philadelphians commissioned chef James Parkinson to outdo their New York counterparts in a contest of epic culinary proportions, resulting in a 17-course meal including braised pigeon, turtle steaks, spring lamb, and rare wines and liquors. Eat your heart out, Guy Fieri. With a side of Beef Tongues. (more...)

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The Thousand Dollar Dinner: America's First Great Cookery Challenge

by Becky Libourel Diamond Reviewed by Jana Siciliano on January 15, 2016 When I first heard the title of this book, I thought it was something of a joke. In this day and age of golden toilets and private planes at the whim of top CEOs, it would seem almost barbaric to imagine one of those captains of industry having a dinner that would cost merely $1,000. More is spent on liquor at a typical high-style event, and even the most average Joe can save up and enjoy a special chef’s menu at the nation’s hottest restaurants. Good food is still expensive and can be made more so by the way it is disseminated to the general public. However, THE THOUSAND DOLLAR DINNER is not about our disgustingly crass and money-crazy world. It harkens back to the origins of such living --- to a time when robber barons and other waistcoated fat men decided that they would take advantage of all the riches they could get their hands on and show the world just how remarkable they were, at least in the ways they would imbibe and ingest the things that most tenement-dwelling immigrants were not enjoying in their lesser realm. (more...)

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An Epic Epicurean Challenge, in 1851

Updated: JANUARY 14, 2016 — 3:01 AM EST by Drew Lazor, For The Inquirer. These days, if you want to impress your food-obsessed friends from New York with the culinary prowess of Philadelphia, you'd have no trouble dropping five figures on a ridiculously elaborate dinner at any one of this city's fine restaurants. But you might be surprised to hear that same boast was made by a group of well-to-do food enthusiasts from Philadelphia in 1851, and the bill from the resulting meal was in the same ballpark: between $1,000 and $1,500 (or between $29,000 and $47,000 today, depending on how inflation is calculated). This long-forgotten meal is deliciously dissected in The Thousand Dollar Dinner: America's First Great Culinary Challenge (Westholme Publishing), by local author Becky Libourel Diamond.

Top Chef in the 19th Century

The rehearsal dinner for the Gilded Age may mark the last time that Philly outperformed Manhattan—culinarily or otherwise. By ARAM BAKSHIAN JR. The Wall Street Journal Nov. 29, 2015 4:46 p.m. ET On a pleasant April evening in 1851, 30 wealthy, socially prominent New Yorkers and Philadelphians descended on James Parkinson’s Philadelphia restaurant at 38 Eighth Street, near Chestnut Street in one of the city’s more fashionable neighborhoods. They didn’t know it, but they were about to enjoy what would prove to be a rehearsal dinner for the Gilded Age. If they weren’t overweight when they walked in, they probably would be by the time they left several hours—and 17 lavish courses—later. (more...)

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The Thousand Dollar Dinner: America's First Great Cookery Challenge

By DIAMOND, BECKY LIBOUREL Library Journal Reviewed on DECEMBER 1, 2015 | Science and Technology ​In 1851, after being feted at New York's legendary Delmonico's restaurant, a group of Philadelphia elites returned the favor for their Knickerbocker friends, choosing the establishment of young chef James Parkinson to host the gala. The 17-course masterpiece Parkinson and his chefs presented cemented his city's reputation as the leader in American cuisine. (more...)

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MRS. GOODFELLOW

Alumna Blends History, Cooking in Debut Novel

News@Rider BY: SEAN RAMSDEN | Friday, January 11, 2013 Becky Libourel Diamond ’90 reveals the story of the once-renowned bakery and sweet-shop proprietor in Mrs. Goodfellow: The Story of America’s First Cooking School. Many of today’s most cherished American ideals drew their first breaths in olden Philadelphia: democracy, freedom from tyranny, and … lemon meringue pie? It’s true, and while the founding fathers are still widely studied today, the founder of the nation’s first cooking school, Mrs. Elizabeth Goodfellow – also the inventor of the tasty, tart treat – is a name unfamiliar to most. Becky Libourel Diamond ’90 transports readers to early 19th-century Philadelphia for a painstakingly researched glimpse into the life of the once-renowned bakery and sweet-shop proprietor in her first book, Mrs. Goodfellow: The Story of America’s First Cooking School.

Library Journal

Xpress Reviews: Nonfiction | First Look at New Books, June 29, 2012 Freelance writer Diamond has written a fascinating book about Eliza Goodfellow, a widow living in early 19th-century Philadelphia who owned a very successful bakery, ran the nation’s first cooking school, and maybe made the first lemon meringue pie. Diamond’s book gathers letters, research, old recipe books, and the diaries of Goodfellow’s students to reconstruct the woman and her world as well as the classes she taught—surprisingly, many young ladies saw it as a tedious requirement. Perhaps Goodfellow’s most well-known student was Eliza Leslie, who went on to write many popular cookbooks, and Diamond uses material from Leslie’s journals and recipe books to re-create the feel of being in one of Goodfellow’s courses. After placing Goodfellow’s school in the context of the American culinary landscape, Diamond goes on to examine the development of cooking schools as commercial enterprises in other areas of the Northeast. Verdict: Diamond’s book fills a large gap in American culinary history. Full of well-cited research, this book is easy to read and will appeal to anyone interested in cookery or early American history. (Reviewed by Carolyn M. Schwartz, Westfield State Univ. Lib., MA)

Endorsement from Dr. Glenn R. Mack, EdD President, Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts Atlanta:

Goodfellow combines methodical historical research, a compelling personal story, and surprising connections for the development of present-day cooking schools, which results in fascinating insights into the times of a nineteenth-century baker, culinary instructor, entrepreneur, woman, and widower. Making extensive and seamless use of historical sources such as maps, illustrations, insurance documents, architecture, archival materials, family letters, and photographs, Diamond cobbles together fragments of daily life for the inspiring and pioneering culinary figure of Elizabeth Goodfellow. The book merges narrative creativity and sound inquiry into chapters that explore the people, ingredients, dishes, cooking schools, and cooking techniques that bring the 19th century into relevance for the 21st-century reader. While Goodfellow’s students may have been from well-to-do families, her story underscores the demanding physicality of her culinary existence as a single woman and business operator not so long ago. It also places Philadelphia and regional cookery into the larger context of a developing nation with uniquely American trajectories. Diamond’s research serves as a wonderful source and model for those interested in the history of food, cooking schools, women’s studies, and labor. Diamond adeptly links a distinct chain of influences comprised of European traditions, Goodfellow, Eliza Leslie, and Fannie Farmer to the emergence of modern era of land-grant home economic programs, Julia Child, and celebrity chefs.

PENNSYLVANIA HERITAGE MAGAZINE

Summer 2012: Married and widowed three times, Elizabeth Baker Pearson Coane Goodfellow (1768-1851) owned a popular bakery and sweet shop in Philadelphia during the first decades of the nineteenth century. In addition to catering to the city's wealthy families and possessing a reputation of making the finest desserts and sweet dishes in the young nation, her business stood out from every other establishment in another way: she ran a small school to teach the art of cooking, the first of its kind in America. By assembling the many parts of a puzzle from old recipe books, advertisements, letters, diaries, genealogical records, and a host of primary sources, Becky Libourel Diamond has been able to provide a more complete portrait of this influential figure in cooking history. Mrs. Goodfellow: The Story of America's First Cooking School opens with what had been known about the illustrious cook - where and when she was born, her husbands, her children, and the location of her shop. The author takes readers on a journey through time to discover the types of foods that would have been available to Goodfellow and how she may have used them. Exhaustively researched and featuring an array of authentic period recipes, Mrs. Goodfellow is a delicious exploration of the life and legacy of one of America's most influential cooks. (Read more...)

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