200 Year Old Accounts of Harvard Food Show Pie and Pigeons on Menu

Apple pie was a favorite New England dinner dessert two hundred years ago. The antiquity or the apple pie tradition has been confirmed by the discovery of the only known volume of the so-called "buttery books," consisting of the records of the college butler, from 1722 to 1751, in the Harvard University archives in the College library. This unique collection of "buttery" accounts has been selected for possible display in connection with Harvard's Tercentenary celebration next September.

From the day Harvard opened in 1686, until late in the 19th century, the college butler was the official in charge of the college pantry, buying food and supplies and selling to students and sometimes officers; and during all this period the butler undoubtedly kept a rough set of accounts showing expenditures by students and faculty members. Of all these 350 years of "buttery books" there apparently remains only this one volume, covering about thirty years.

One of the early Harvard customs, previously unknown and first revealed by this "buttery" ledger, was a "quarter dinner" held in the college four times a year down to 1765. The college butler prepared these meals. For one meal, in August, 1729, according to the "buttery" entry, the butler purchased milk, eggs, sugar, flour, nutmeg, "legg" of mutton, pork, squash, butter, pigcons, bread, apple pie, and wine. This meal cost 1 pound, 8 shillings, 7 pence, or about $7.15.

Another dinner, served in October, 1725, included pork, cheese, "fowle," butter, "beafe," carrots, turnip, apple pie, and wine, and cost 22 shillings, or about $5. Apple pie and wine almost always were on the dinner menu in those days, the ledger shown.

The Harvard student of two hundred years ago was fed in a manner closely resembling that of the English colleges, the "buttery" books reveal. Close to the main dining hall there was a pantry, managed by the butler, where students might order extra or special portions of choose, ale, butter, bread, jam, and the like, if they desired. When such an order was filled, the butler marked the purchase against the student's name listed on a record sheet tacked to the wall. Many of these record sheets are bound up in the "buttery" ledger.

Attending Harvard in the period covered by this newly discovered kitchen account book were students who later became famous, among them Samuel Adams, Governor of Massachusetts and delegate to the Continental Congress; Artemas Ward, Commander-in-Chief of the Massachusetts troops and delegate to the Continental Congress; Samuel Langdon, President of Harvard; Jonathan Trumbull, Governor of Connecticut; James Bowdoin, President of the Constitutional Convention and Governor of Massachusetts; Thomas Hutchinson, Governor of Massachusetts; Thomas Clap, President of Yale; and four other delegates to the Continental Congress, Robert Treat Paine, William Ellery, Thomas Cushing, and James Otis