Epic Christmas Feast: Lost Recipes of the Grand Hotels

When you think of Christmas dinner, there's fantasy and reality.
Reality is: You'll have a mishmash of spiral-sliced ham and the
three-hummus dip tray from Trader Joe's.
Fantasy is ... well, this was ours: an epic feast from the turn of the century. We wanted food from an Edith Wharton novel, like grand roasts and a seafood course, all served on a table with lots of silver and gold-rimmed china. So we dug up dozens of hotel menus from library archives and chose the most evocative dishes we could find. Then our test kitchen brought them back to life.