So, although one cannot sit in La Tour D’Argent in 1952 and sample its famous duck dish Le Caneton Tour d’Argent, we can surely imagine what it was like when looking at the waterfowl-themed illustration displaying the night’s offerings. Firstly, Jim is keen to express that, rather than setting trends, menu design has generally followed them.

With over 6 million of the world’s best eBooks to choose from, Kobo offers you a whole world of reading. From extravagant bills of fare for royal feasts to delectable mid-century minimalist graphics, the gustatory customs of dozens of European countries are revealed in this encyclopedic design compendium. Despite all the claims of body positivity and female empowerment in recent years, is the ad industry more prudish than it lets on?As restaurants and dining experiences increased in the 19th century, the need for a more formal presentation of available items resulted in a range of printed menus that could be both extravagant and simple. Neben einem Essay des Grafikdesign-Historikers Steven Heller und Bildunterschriften des führenden Sammlers und Antiquars Marc Selvaggio enthält Menu Design In Europe Speisekarten aus wichtigen Sammlungen und Institutionen, die zusammen ein üppiges Fest für die Augen und ein historisches Dokument über zwei Jahrhunderte kulinarischer Traditionen ergeben. The second-class traveller on the Lusitania in 1913 was offered a lunch menu of simple fare clearly considered suitable for the less sophisticated palette of what was assumed to be a monoglot traveller. A poor condition book can still make a good reading copy but is generally not collectible unless the item is very scarce. As often happens with restrictions imposed as emergency measures, it was not reversed when the emergency was over, having proved too useful to the people in charge.

The Carlton Restaurant in Wiesbaden, which boasted an elegant Wiener Werkstätte-inspired green and cream design, offered an all-inclusive dinner for four marks fifty, with individual plates mostly at two marks fifty, though what this meant in terms of relative expense is hard to know. Liners were equally glamorous and, as Heimann points out, after prohibition was introduced in the US in 1920, a cruise on a European ship held an added attraction for American tourists. The prize for the most bizarre and off-putting association of ideas on a menu design also goes to France, for the dinners given to medical students by the manufacturers of Mictasol, ‘a tonic for urinary issues’, in the 1930s. One’s heart goes out to the organisers of a dinner in Leeds on behalf of the trade body of funeral directors in December 1919 to celebrate the end of the Great War.A series of illustrations by the Belgian artist Charles van Roose for the Compagnie Maritime Belge of figures based on the people of the Belgian Congo are less forgivable and are the nastiest things in the book, until the next page, which features the menu for the Deutsche Arbeitsfront ‘party cruise’ in 1936, adorned with jaunty swastika flags. Meanwhile at the Hôtels Splendide, Royal and Excelsior in Aix-les-Bains the same illustrative style creates a mood of icy chic: the impossibly tall, triangular diners, with snake hips and shoulders as wide as Wallis Simpson’s, gesture languidly and give the impression of people much too smart to eat. Liver sausage and boiled beef are presented, like all the dishes, in plain English and there is semolina for pudding. The book's coverage is deepest and most interesting from the 1920s to through the 1960s, and French menus are represented most strongly. Illustrations include a blushing Susanna and the Elders, in which Susanna’s crossed legs and downcast gaze suggest that the elders are not the only cause of her discomfort; a mannequin pis whose urine stream can hit a distant umbrella in the admiring crowd; and, most worryingly, a naked woman sobbing on her knees in front of an elderly gent proffering a phial of the miraculous cure.

Die Speisekarten sind nicht nur eine Auflistung von Gerichten, sondern stehen oft für ein unvergessliches Gourmet-Erlebnis und wurden manchmal mit genauso viel Sorgfalt und Liebe zum Detail präsentiert wie das Essen selbst. As physical items, menus seem to have taken permanent form only in the mid-19th century, replacing the handwritten list. Food is presented variously over the years as status, as style, as fun, as sex and seduction, and, occasionally, as necessary to sustain life.The menus, designed in Paris, sport a heady mixture of Art Nouveau tropes – curling branches, sinuous fruit and a severe-looking woman with a harp. A cultural anthropologist, historian, and an avid collector, he has authored numerous titles on architecture, pop culture, and the history of Los Angeles and Hollywood, including TASCHEN’s Surfing, Los Angeles. The text, which is replicated in English, French and German, takes a broad brush to ‘culinary history’, informing readers that ‘chefs were newly liberated from their ties to aristocratic families via the French Revolution and began preparing meals for private diners. Moreover, Jim adds, “it is interesting to note that after World War II, as dining out became more common, the range of menu design started encompassing all sorts of influences with the exception of photography which is absent for the most part. Taschen has released a new book that explores the visual history of menu design between the years 1800-2000.

Art Deco, with its flat planes and sharp lines and shadows, suited all graphics; it was a great age for posters and advertising art generally and it adapted itself to elegance as well as exuberance. In the case of the tangible menu, the ability to produce a simplified menu sheet that allows immediate pricing of item changes via the computer has eliminated the need of traditional graphics or offset printer.On the contrary, the small tarts I know under this name are delicious, made from short pastry with almond and raspberry filling. Setting off from Paris on 31 July 1912, in one of the Compagnie Wagons-Lits’ Grand Express Européens, it must have been thrilling to sit down to Potage Longchamps (pea soup), roast chicken and bombe glacée as the train rolled south. Some of the most elaborate menus are for such ceremonial dinners and are clearly intended to outlive the occasion and become treasured souvenirs.