Historic SF restaurant menus show what people were eating on Thanksgiving 100 years ago

1941, Golden Pheasant, San Francisco: Thanksgiving dinner menu. The dinner cost only $1.25. 1941, Golden Pheasant, San Francisco: Thanksgiving dinner menu. The dinner cost only $1.25. Photo: Henry Voigt Collection / Getty Images Photo: Henry Voigt Collection / Getty Images Image 1 of / 20 Caption Close Historic SF restaurant menus show what people were eating on Thanksgiving 100 years ago 1 / 20 Back to Gallery

What was on the Thanksgiving menu in San Francisco before the great quake? And how much did early San Franciscan's pay for their feast? We went looking for archival menus from some popular restaurants of decades past and found a lot more than turkey.

Many offers included turkey, but also stuffed suckling pig with baked apples, crab meat cooked in butter and sherry, spiced peaches with salted almonds, and lots of plum pudding and mince pie.

Going as far back as 1891, we see several of the holiday dishes that were popular in bygone times when French and continental cuisine mixed with a little New England influence at the city's high-class establishments.

A 1939 menu from the Drake-Wiltshire Hotel perfectly reveals this combination of flavors as the items include everything from consomme royale and fresh fruit cocktail to French onion soup au gratin and baked Virginia ham.

"These menus are unwitting historical evidence," says Henry Voigt, who says he owns one of the largest historic menu collections in the U.S. "'Unwitting' because they were not meant to be saved. These are minor historical documents reflecting the history of everyday life. All the little things on the menu and things not on the menu shows you how people were behaving and what they aspired to be at that time in history."

Voigt points out that, on the menus from the late 1800s and early 1900s, turkey is included among the entrées but not highlighted as the centerpiece of the meal.

On an 1893 Thanksgiving lunch menu for the Pacific Union Club, roast turkey with jelly is among the offerings but so are a host of other hearty dishes including trout, suckling pig, duck, glazed ham, roast beef and chicken and shrimp salad. The decorative element on the menu is a lobster.

By comparison, a 1960 menu from the Sheraton-Palace Hotel features an illustration of a roast turkey and the Thanksgiving staple is listed atop the entrées.

"Turkey certainly figured prominently into the menu by the 20s...and I would guess it probably solidified during the First World War," Voigt says.

In some cases, these menus convey interesting times in our history. Voigt points out on his American Menu blog that in 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt decided to observe Thanksgiving on the third Thursday of November, instead of the traditional fourth, to extend the shopping season. You notice this change on a 1939 Drake Wiltshire Hotel menu as the Thanksgiving menu is marked with the third-Thursday date.

These menus also reveal how much San Francisco prices have gone up. The cost of Thanksgiving dinner at the Golden Pheasant in 1941? One dollar and 25 cents for a meal that offered lobster, steak and more than a dozen dessert options.

Click through the gallery above for a look at some of the historic Thanksgiving menus of San Francisco.