A Unique New Year's Eve Party by Maya Corrigan

On New Year's Eve 170 years ago, a sumptuous banquet took place inside the mold for a full-scale dinosaur sculpture. Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, a natural history artist and sculptor, had a commission to create models of extinct animals from Sir Richard Owen, the paleontologist who coined the term "dinosaur." The sculptures would be displayed outside the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London. To publicize the soon-to-open exhibit, Hawkins invited 20 prominent scientists, businessmen, and newspaper reporters to a multi-course dinner on New Year's Eve in 1853. It was held in the belly of an iguanodon mold. To accommodate the guests, a stage was built around the dinosaur.

Public domain image of the dinner in a dino

The lavish meal included three soups, three fish, three game meats, turkey, ham, chicken, pigeon pie, and a variety of sweets, fruits, and nuts. The wines served with the courses--Sherry, Madeira, Port, Moselle, Claret--made for a merry and somewhat boisterous gathering. 

The banquet was covered in multiple newspapers, attracting the publicity Hawkins wanted. The weekly satirical magazine, Punch, described the dinner in a piece entitled "Fun in a Fossil" (1854 volume 26 page 24). The article ended by congratulating the guests "on the era in which they live; for had it been an early geological period, they might perhaps have occupied the Iguanodon’s inside without having any dinner there."

Though the Crystal Palace burned down in the 1930s, the sculptures Hawkins created survived the fire. You can see them today in London. They are not wholly accurate, but they represent the limited information known about prehistoric reptiles in the mid-19th century. The Victorians apparently also knew little about the perils of eating to wretched excess. 

Most of us will mark the New Year in a simpler way. If you haven't yet decided what to prepare for this New Year's celebration, consider making some easy dips. The recipes for guacamole and for bean dip that I previously shared on this blog require only three ingredients each. My sleuth's granddad in the Five-Ingredient Mysteries loves these recipes because he can make both dips with just five ingredients: avocado, salsa, lime, canned refried beans, and cheese.  

WISHING YOU A HAPPY AND HEALTHY 2024

How are you spending the last day of 2023? Any New Year's Eve plans?

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mystery series. It features a young cafe manager and her young-at-heart grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes. Maya has taught college courses in writing, literature, and detective fiction. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit her website for book news, mystery history and trivia, and easy recipes. Sign up for her newsletter there. She gives away a free book to one subscriber each time she sends out a newsletter. Follow her on Facebook.

A PARFAIT CRIME: Five-Ingredient Mystery #9

Set in a quaint Chesapeake Bay town, the latest novel in Maya Corrigan’s Five-Ingredient Mysteries brings back café manager Val Deniston and her recipe columnist grandfather – a sleuthing duo that shares a house, a love of food and cooking, and a knack for catching killers.

At the site of a fatal blaze, Val’s boyfriend, a firefighter trainee, is shocked to learn the victim is known to him, a woman named Jane who belonged to the local Agatha Christie book club—and was rehearsing alongside Val’s grandfather for an upcoming Christie play being staged for charity. Just as shocking are the skeletal remains of a man found in Jane’s freezer. Who is he and who put him on ice?

 After Val is chosen to replace Jane in the play, the cast gathers at Granddad’s house to get to work—and enjoy his five-ingredient parfaits—but all anyone can focus on is the bizarre real-life mystery. When it’s revealed that Jane’s death was due to something other than smoke inhalation, Val and Granddad retrace the victim’s final days. As they dig into her past life, their inquiry leads them to a fancy new spa in town—where they discover that Jane wasn’t the only one who had a skeleton in the cooler.

 

Library Journal: "Thanks to Val’s and her grandfather’s talent for exposing the truth, even a “perfect crime” will be uncovered...a satisfying read and a riveting murder mystery with a sweet ending."

 

Read an excerpt and see where to buy A Parfait Crime  

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