Delmonico's NYC Wine List, late 1800s

If this is the book I think it is (one that I borrowed from a chef friend several years ago), it's important to, and has gotten published attention from, US food-history circles. The author became estranged from the Delmonico family and published the recipes, regarded by the family (if I recall the story) as trade secrets.

In fact, some years before that, Delmonicos had the ONLY restaurants in the US.

The Swiss-immigrant family is credited with introducing the modern concept of the restaurant to the US in the early 1800s (it made inroads in Europe slightly earlier; J.-A. de Brillat-Savarin talks about it in his famous 1826 book but again the subject got other publicity in recent years). Prior to that time, if I remember the details at this late hour (after a good restaurant meal of Pike mousse, ris de veau in Cbuttis, and pheasant two ways), the US had two principal types of public dining: one type was what the US now calls buffets, with offerings laid out; the other was the ancient hotel-and-inn dining rooms with fixed menus daily. The new concept became popular in NYC and the family opened further restaurants. The history (varying with source) of the origins of shellfish in a cream sauce "Newburg," derived from the name Wenburg (a ship captain and regular customer who had a fight there and became estranged from Delmonico's, says Morrison Wood, 1949; a former chef, says Larousse Gastronomique, 1988) is only one of several attributed to these pioneering US establishments.

In other words it's an interesting book.