How can we find prices of popular items through the centuries to make comparison charts?

A "Food Thru the Ages " project sounds wonderful! Unfortunately, this is not a simple task. Determining accurate historic values of consumer goods is a complicated economic process--one which must factor in regional differences, inflation, labor costs and personal income. To make international comparisons one must also study the evolution of monetary systems and foreign exchange rates. This is why (for example) it is impossible to draw a simple chart of bread prices through the ages across all cultures. If you want to compare your local prices from one decade to another you will need to factor in the Consumer Price Index for your area. Numbers are supplied by the U.S. Department of Labor.

About food prices & weights

Did you know that in Great Britain that a penny-loaf was set by law? Karen Hess, culinary historian, explained "Bread was the staff of life in Tudor and Stuart England, more so among the poor than the rich.... Its importance was such that the Assizes of Bread, dating from 1266, took upon itself overseeing and pricing of the bakers. The price of the loaf was fixed; the weight was permitted to fluctuate in compliance with an official table that took into account the price of wheat and the extent of bolting. The finest regular loaf was the penny white, next the penny wheaten...and the household penny 100% whole wheat..." (Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, pps 17-18). You will find a link to the Assize of Bread and the Judgement of the Pillory (the punishment for breaking this law!) in the Food Timeline's teacher resources page, under the heading "laws".

If you want to make price comparisons in modern times you also have to pay close attention to changes in weights and measures. Package sizes/weights of popular consumer goods (candy bars, canned products, cereal boxes) vary greatly over the years.

Historic restaurant prices Old menus are the best place to find historic restaurant prices. The challenge is to find ones from the type of restaurant you need (Steak house? Family-style chain? Roadside diner? Seaside lobster shack? Railroad dining car? World's Fair?) in the place/time you are studying. Case in point: Delmonicos 1830s menus. This is not an easy task. Very few old menus are uploaded to the Internet. Start here: Menu collections

The Culinary Timeline has many links to restaurant menus.

Use Google to search for old menus...use keywords like "1902 restaurant menu" "st louis 1904 restaurant menu" "poland spring house 1884 menu" Be prepared to wade through several unproductive pages to get to the information you need. You may also have to try several years...the Internet will not automatically give you a menu for 1885 if you keyword 1886. If you are looking for 17th and early 18th century items use the term "bill of fare."

Web sites dedicated to historic events (World's Fairs, may include restaurant information. The

Restaurant biographies ( Remembering Woolworth's , Karen Plunkett-Powell, The Harvey Girls , Lesley Poling-Kemps [Harvey Houses] & company webs sometimes include historic menus. Local restaurant prices



, Karen Plunkett-Powell, , Lesley Poling-Kemps [Harvey Houses] & company webs sometimes include historic menus. Identify historic restaurants in your area that are still operating...they may be able to provide you with old menus/pricing information.

Local public libraries and historic societies sometimes archive old menus.

Local newspapers (on microfilm) can be used to find advertisements for holiday restaurant specials (Mother's Day brunch, New Years Eve buffet, Thanskgiving dinner). Delmonico's Bill of Fare, 1830s

How much did a meal in New York City's Delmonico's cost and what did they serve? Excellent questions. The original 1834 Delmonico's menu (bill of fare or carte) was a simple list of basic items. Not quite the extensive gourmet fare history associates with this particular establishment. The best discussion of this first Bill of Fare is reported in The "A Menu and A Mystery: The Case of the 1834 Delmonico Bill of Fare," Ellen F. Steinberg and Jack H. Prost, Gastronomica, Spring 2008 (p. 40-50).

Delmonico's 1838 menu was reprinted in the frontmatter of Lately Thomas' book Delmonico's: A Century of Splendor. This extensive menu reflects the gourmet glory of Delmonico's exquisite meals and wine service. Curiously? These menu prices were expressed in British currency. This stuns contemporary researchers expecting the new United States to eschew all things British. In context, it make perfect sense. We queried William Grimes, author of Appetite City about this phenomenon. He was kind to respond with this information: "The US used shillings and pence for quite some time, even after the revolution. Hence the cheap restaurants that served "shilling plates." The earliest Delmonico's menus reflect the period of transition from British-style coins to the US ones."

"Although French cuisine was gaining a foothold, the dominant cooking style in New York was still English, reflected in the profusion of oyster saloons and chophouses near the theaters, the markets and the centers of commerce...'Everything is done differently in New York form anywhere else....'...Any innovation that smoothed the flow was regarded as pure genius. Haly and Sabin's refectory on Nassau Street introduced the self-serve concept by arranging lighter dishes along a large table, allowing customers to pick and choose according to their pocket, their appetite, or their time. 'Here one can graduate his feeding precisely to his appetite, and can luxuriate from a penny's worth of bread and butter up to the full capcity of his purse.' the Tribune reported. 'Warm cakes morning, noon and night, good coffee, tea and chocolate, good steaks, etc. pies, cakes, etc. and one may fill with these for a New York shilling.'...For the present, New York's restaurants catered to every taste, at every price. In a fanciful sketch in the Broadway Journal in 1845, a 'gentleman in search of dinner' made a comic tour of the city's restaurants, driven from one dining spot to the next by a series of mishaps that whittled away at his bankroll of 'a half eagle and two shilling pieces.'...Reaching into his pocket to pay for an absinthe at the bar, the hapless gentleman realizes that one of the two shillings he gave the cabman was actually his half eagle. Suddenly, dinner at Delmonico's is off. He is now flat broke...Brooklynites who agreed paid a shilling at Bell's for roast meats (beef, lamb, veal or pork) or a shilling and a sixpence for roast fowl (chicken, goose, turkey, or duck)."

---Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York, William Grimes [North Point Press:New York] 2009 (p. 62-63, 71,72)

"The trend of the prices can be judged from two bills that have survived, rendered to 'J.O. Sargent' in 1840 and 1847, respectively...The 1840 bill was for four dinners (plus an incidental charge of 63 cents) at a total cost of $20.76. This works out to an average of about $5.00 per dinner...The 1847 bill was for six dinners, at a total charge of $55.50...The average cost for dinner this time was more than $9.00, though this increase might be attributed either to the fact that on two occasions, when the bill came to $17.88 and $12.00 respectively, Sargent entertained guests, or splurged on wines. The supplemental charges and costs of wines were what could run the check for a Delmonico repast up and up."

---Delmonico's: A Century of Splendor, Lately Thomas [Houghton Mifflin:Boston] 1967 (p. 45)

Charles Dickens Dinner, prepared by Charles Ranhofer, 1868. Unpriced.

How much would these meals cost in today's dollars? Inflation calculators provide general numbers. What we don't know? What size were the portions and how many dishes, on average, were ordered.

Breakfast cereal: the Kellogg's Corn Flake study

Pioneering breakfast cereal manufacturers (Kelloggs, Post, Quaker, Ralston) left an indelible mark on American tables. In addition to filling generations of hungry bellies, breakfast cereals provide viable insight into our nation's economic situation. How? Prices and sizes of breakfast cereal products reflect dietary recommendations, agricultural surpluses, supply shortages, and political purpose. We selected Kellogg's Corn Flakes for our breakfast cereal price study because it has survived a century of changing consumer tastes, two World Wars, price fixing investigations, Stagflation and (now) Agflation. It's one of the few constants in a churning bowl of changing norms.

About Kellogg's: In the beginning, Kellogg's patented foods were served exclusively to the residents of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. According to the records of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Kellogg brand cereals were introduced to the American public May 1, 1907. An interesting byproduct of this study was discovering the timeliness of Kellogg's advertising. In the earliest years, Kellogg's Corn Flakes were touted for their healthful properties as aids to digestion. During the Great Depression and WWII, Corn Flakes were promoted as meat fillers and milk extenders. In the 1950s and 1960s they were familiar, filling, and fun for afterschool and bedtime snacks. During the health-conscious 1970s these unpretentious flakes led the crusade. Ads laid low during the 1980s-1990s, when pre-sweetened cereals prolifertated. In the 2000s, as we warily watch American corn crops diverted to ethanol production, Kellogg's prices rise again. What story will these prices tell 10 years from now?

About these prices

This not a comprehensive scientific study. We selected one price for each year from various major US newspapers.

All prices were published by major supermarket chains. We puposely excluded prices published by drug stores, department stores, and discount clubs.

Many years there were several prices and different sizes.

To align these prices we recommend you calculate, whenever possible, the price per ounce.

Inflation calculators translate old prices into "today's dollars."

Sources: ProQuest Historic Newspapers, Star Ledger [Newark NJ], Daily Record [Morris County, NJ], FoodTown [Cedar Knolls, NJ].

How much did a box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes cost?

[June 29, 1907] "large size," 10 cents

[1908] no size, 10 cents

[1909] no size, 10 cents

[1910] no size, 9 cents

[1911] no size, 10 cents

[1912] no size, 9 cents

[1913] no size, 10 cents

[1914] no size, 10 cents

[1915] no size, 8 cents

[1916] no size, 8 cents

[1917] no size, 8 cents

[1918] no size, 8 cents

[1919] no size, 12 cents

[1920] no size, 11 cents

[1922] "large size," 12.5 cents

[1923] no size, 9 cents

[1924] no size, 8 cents

[1925] no size, 9 cents

[1926] no size, 10 cents

[1927] no size, 10 cents

[1928] no size, 8 cents

[1929] no size, 7 cents

[1930] 7.6 oz, 7.5 cents

[1931] no size, 9 cents

[1932] 8 oz, 25 cents/four pkgs

[1933] no size, 20 cents/three pkgs

[1934] 8 oz, 8 cents

[1935] 8 oz, 8 cents

[1936] 8 oz, 20 cents/three pkgs

[1937] no size, 7 cents

[1938] 8 oz, 13 cents/two pkgs

[1939] 8 oz, 13 cents/two pkgs

[1940] 8 oz, 11 cents/two pkgs

[1941] no size, 9 cents

[1942] 11 oz, 8 cents

[1943] 11 oz, 8 cents

[1944] 6 oz, 5 cents

[1945] 11 oz, 8 cents (also: 6 oz, 5 cents & 18 oz, 12 cents)

[1946] 6 oz, 5 cents

[1947] 13 oz, 17 cents

[1948] 8 oz, 12 cents

[1949] 13 oz, 19 cents

[1950] 8 oz, 16 cents

[1951] 8 oz, 13 cents

[1952] 8 oz, 16 cents

[1953] 8 oz, 15 cents

[1954] 8 oz, 25 cents

[1955] 12 oz, 19 cents

[1956] 8 oz, 29 cents/two pkgs

[1957] 8 oz, 17 cents

[1958] 8 oz, 18 cents

[1959] 12 oz, 22 cents

[1960] 18 oz, 27 cents

[1961] 12 oz, 23 cents

[1962] 18 oz, 27 cents

[1963] 12 oz, 23 cents

[1964] 12 oz, 29 cents

[1965] 12 oz, 25 cents

[1966] 12 oz, 25 cents

[1967] 12 oz, 29 cents

[1968] 18 oz, 39 cents

[1969] 12 oz, 29 cents

[1970] 18 oz, 38 cents

[1971] 8 oz, 21 cents

[1972] 18 oz, 37 cents

[1973] 12 oz, 25 cents

[1974] 18 oz, 43 cents

[1975] 12 oz, 45 cents

[1976] 18 oz, 69 cents

[1977] 12 oz, 50 cents

[1978] 24 oz, $1.15

[1979] 12 oz, 59 cents

[1980] 19 oz, 99 cents

[1981] 18 oz, $1.12

[1982] 18 oz, $1.25

[1983] 18 oz, 99 cents

[1984] 12 oz, 89 cents

[1985] 18 oz, $1.09

[1986] 18 oz, $1.39

[1987] 24 oz, $1.99

[1988] 18 oz, $1.49

[1989] 18 oz, $1.69

[1990] 18 oz, $1.99

[1991] 18 oz, $2.19

[1992] 18 oz, $1.99

[1993] 18 oz, $1.29

[1994] 24 oz, $2.19

[1995-1996] no prices found yet

[1997] 18oz, $2.59

[1998] 18 oz, $2.29

[1999] no prices found yet

[2000] 18 oz, $2.99

[2001-2003] no prices found yet

[2004] 12 oz, $2.99

[2005-2007] no prices found yet

[2008] 12 oz, $2.99

[2011] 12 oz., $3.79

[2012]12 oz., $3.79

[2013] 12 oz., $3.79

[2014] 18 oz, $4.19