Food from the Fair

It was larger than Disney's Magic Kingdom. It housed over 1,500 buildings, including eleven "palaces," one of which alone required nine miles of walking to see all its displays. Among its 70,000 exhibits were the world's largest pipe organ, a giant bird cage housing every species in the nation, and the Liberty Bell, shipped in from Philadelphia for the occasion.

The St. Louis World's Fair of 1904 was the largest and arguably most impressive of them all. And this was as true from a culinary standpoint as any other. The fair offered 130 places to eat, including a restaurant that seated 5,000, another perched 150 feet above ground on a Ferris wheel, another where diners could watch a re-enactment of the Boer War, and still another that catered to people suffering from indigestion (Mrs. MacMurphy's Restaurant for Dyspeptics).

Perhaps the most popular attraction was "The Pike" (where we get the phrase "coming down the pike"), a mile-long strip of cafes, restaurants and other concessions. As the St. Louis Globe-Democrat noted, it was both possible and proper to eat continuously from the time the fair gates opened until the time they closed.

Pamela J. Vaccaro, author of a new book which is the definitive treatise on the subject, notes that food was important to the fair from its first to its last days. As she points out, the very inception of the fair occurred in the context of eating when fair president David R. Francis first proposed the idea over lunch with his colleagues in the St. Louis Business Men's League. Moreover, securing the resources needed to put on the fair required thoroughly wining and dining supporters.

Food was not only plentiful at the fair (Brazil, for example, brewed 5,000 complimentary cups of coffee every day), but many exhibits revolved around it as well. Baker's Chocolate built a replica of its factory inside the Agriculture Building, the makers of Log Cabin Syrup constructed an actual log cabin filled with thousands of cans of its product, the state of Missouri displayed a 3,000-pound round of cream cheese, and California showed off a 10-foot-tall bear made of California prunes --14,265 of them, to be exact. There was even a bust of President Theodore Roosevelt carved from butter and a depiction of Lot's wife carved, appropriately, from a solid block of Louisiana rock salt.

The fair's greatest culinary claim to fame, however, was its alleged introduction of many foods still enjoyed today, among them the hamburger, the hot dog, the club sandwich, peanut butter, iced tea, Dr Pepper, flavored coffee, puffed rice, cotton candy, the popsicle and, most famous of all, the ice cream cone.

Some of these claims are clearly erroneous. Hot dogs, for example, had previously been a hit at the 1893 Columbian Exposition; iced tea was already on the menu in turn of the century Pullman dining cars; though making its world debut at the fair, Dr Pepper had been concocted some 13 years earlier; and peanut butter, though invented in St. Louis, was being sold there as early as 1890. Though hamburgers and club sandwiches were certainly popular at the fair, their origins are unclear.

But what about the ice cream cone? Though the government had formerly issued a patent for a flat-bottomed, edible ice cream container in 1903, legend has it that the conical version was invented at the fair when an ice cream vendor ran out of dishes and substituted rolled waffles from a nearby waffle stand. Alas, there is wide disagreement about who should get credit for that inspiration as there were some 50 ice cream stands and over a dozen waffle sellers at the fair. Perhaps the ice cream cone was merely a culinary accident waiting to happen. There is little question, however, that it happened at the St. Louis World's Fair and became perhaps the greatest of its many delicious legacies.

St. Louis Frozen Custard

This recipe for frozen custard, another St. Louis favorite, is adapted from "The World's Fair Souvenir Cook Book" which sold at the fairgrounds for 50 cents.

Ingredients:

1 quart milk

4 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla

Directions:

Heat milk in a double boiler. Beat together eggs and sugar and stir into hot milk. Cook one minute. Strain, cool, and add vanilla. Freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions.

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