The parties in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic novel were the stuff of legend, an intoxicating mixture of Champagne, bathtub gin and bootlegger whiskey, mixed with devastating characters, tragic romance and really great clothes.
Alas, for party planners yearning to know “What would Gatsby serve?” Fitzgerald provided plenty of boozy atmosphere in his Prohibition-era tale, but the menu details are sparse. According to the four most detailed food scenes in “The Great Gatsby,” you’ll be serving a lot of orange juice. Also pastry pigs, old sport.
Citrus, chapter three
Readers are introduced to the weekend routine at chez Gatsby through the eyes of Nick Carraway, Gatsby’s next-door neighbor and the book’s narrator. Clearly, scurvy is not a problem in West Egg:
“Every Friday, five crates of orange and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York — every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen, which could extract the juice of 200 oranges in half an hour, if a little button was pressed 200 times by a butler’s thumb.”
The feast, chapter three
It takes an army of caterers to adorn the mansion and prepare the food, but Fitzgerald’s evocative description offers few clues for actual menu planning — unless you happen to have a harlequin salad recipe in your repertoire:
“On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors d’oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold.”
Tea, chapter five
Gatsby convinces Nick to invite Daisy Buchanan to tea, but in the moments before she arrives, Gatsby begins to worry.
“‘Together we scrutinized the 12 lemon cakes from the delicatessen shop.
‘Will they do?’ I asked.
‘Of course, of course! They’re fine!’ and he added hollowly, ‘ … old sport.'”
Late night snack, chapter seven
Spoiler alert: Devastation and tragedy unfold. A couple colludes. Chicken is consumed:
“Crossing the porch where we had dined that June night three months before, I came to a small rectangle of light, which I guessed was the pantry window … Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table, with a plate of cold fried chicken between them, and two bottles of ale.”
