5 Picnic Tips from 1910

Don’t you love picnics? Barring grass allergies, what’s not to love? A sunny day, a green lawn on which to lay your blanket, and carefully-wrapped delicacies to be shared between family and friends. It makes me happy just writing about it.

What’s more, it’s May 31st…prime picnic season. If you need to brush up on your skills, look no further! Today I’ll share some invaluable picnic pointers from the New-York Tribune, dated May 26th, 1910.

I must mention that I found this article under a section entitled “Of Interest to Women” beside the article “The Graduating Frock: It Ought to be Simple, but Should Also Be Lovely”. I could not seem to locate the accompanying “Of Interest to Men” section, ha. (For the record, I’m all for simple and lovely).

5 Picnic Tips

1.“Dishes and napkins of paper are to be preferred at picnics to china and linen, which have to be carried home and washed.”

I think we can all agree on this. Disposable plates and cups came out in 1904 and were clearly quick to gain in popularity.

2. “When starting out for a picnic, do not forget to take along the can opener, if you have a can to open, or the corkscrew, if you are to serve root beer, or some matches, if you intend to light an alcohol lamp.”

Not until 1959 was the “pull-tab” or “pop-top” invented by Ermal Fraze to open cans. In that case, you definitely needed the corkscrew. As for the root beer, in 1910, they still mean root beer made from roots such as sasafrass or sarsparilla root.

The flavor from the sasafrass root comes from Safrole oil. This oil was banned for mass consumption by the FDA in the 1960s after trials showed that lab animals given Safrole developed liver damage and cancer. In other words, if you choose root beer, please just grab an A&W off the shelf.

3. “If a chafing dish is carried along, creamed lobster or chicken may be prepared at home before starting and then reheated at the picnic grounds.”

Presumably this dish would be reheated using the alcohol lamp from tip 2? Friends, if creamed lobster was considered informal picnic food, what did formal dinners in 1910 look like? (I’ll look into it.) I can’t approve of this tip. My suggestion is a chicken salad wrap and I have a good recipe if you’re interested!

4. “Some picnic lovers like to carry bonbons and candy, by way of sweets, instead of cake. Most people, however, enjoy cake, and plenty of it, at a picnic.”

Yes, yes, yes. Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, please, or maybe vanilla cake with strawberry frosting? These go splendidly with lemonade (or wine, if you twist my arm). Brownies and lemon bars may be more user-friendly but…cake…cake. Is it the hard “c” sound? Just like picnic, the very word makes my mouth water.

5. “Lemonade, raspberry shrub and other beverages which must have fresh water added to them just before serving are not desirable for picnics unless one knows the character of the water supply.”

No one knows the character of the water supply? Oh dear. It turns out that the first continuous use of chlorine in the U.S. for disinfecting water didn’t take place until 1908 in Jersey City, NJ. In fact (not to ruin your appetite) the first sewage treatment plants in the U.S. didn’t come about until 1890.

Picnickers in 1910 still had to watch out for typhoid and other germs in the water from brooks and wells. In fact, the Safe Drinking Water Act was not passed by Congress until 1974. Up until then, there were no national standards for water quality and…we’re still working on it.

I enjoy picnics so much that I often do abbreviated ones with my girls on our front lawn. My husband bought a small plastic-like picnic blanket that we call the “lona”. When I’ve had all the craziness I can stand inside, I usually entice one or the other girl to read books on the lona with me.

In case you’re wondering, lona is the word my husband uses in Spanish for ‘thing you put on the ground outside’.  We’ve all adopted this word since it’s shorter and easier than “picnic blanket”. We are that efficient.

Let me take up no more of your precious leisure time. You’ve got a picnic to plan, surely! If you’re in the area, and so inclined, we would love to picnic with you at the Kensico Dam, the West Point picnic area, or wherever your favorite spot may be.