Christmas Dinner at the Maxwell House, 1879

The 1879 Maxwell House Hotel Christmas menu includes many familiar dishes but also a few dishes from the past such as prairie grouse, buffalo tongue, boar's head, opossum, and raccoon! Learn more about the Maxwell House Hotel below the menu.

Images courtesy of the Culinary Institute of America Digital Collection, http://ciadigitalcollections.culinary.edu/digital/collection/p16940coll1/id/12026

A little about the historic Maxwell House Hotel. 

In 1869, the Maxwell House Hotel opened its doors in Nashville, Tennessee. It was located at the corner of what is now known as Fourth Avenue North and Church Street.  Built at a cost of $500,000, it featured luxurious amenities for its time, including steam heat, gas lighting and baths on every floor.

The hotel was named after Harriet Maxwell Overton, the wife of one of the developers, Colonel John Overton, Jr, and was often referred to as “Overton’s Folly” before its completion due to skepticism about its success.

The Maxwell House Hotel served as both a social and political gathering spot and became a hub for prominent visitors, hosting seven U.S. Presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, William McKinley. President Roosevelt is credited with describing the hotel’s coffee as “good to the last drop,” which later became the slogan for Maxwell House Coffee.

The original Maxwell House Hotel thrived until the mid-20th century until the historic building was destroyed by a fire on Christmas night in 1961.

For more check the Special Collections Room at the Nashville Public Library: The Nashville Cookbook – Specialties of the Cumberland Region, pages xv-xvii, published by the Nashville Area Home Economics Association 1976. 

By: Paula Godsey