The history of the foodways of the ancient Greeks and Romans provide richtraditions on which European and North American societies have developed
their food preparation and service styles. In this chapter, we discuss the devel-opment of the banquet menu using illustrations from the three-course
medieval menu of 25 menu items served at the banqueting tables of England’s
Richard II in A.D. 1387 to the elaborate menu featuring oranges served by the
Archbishop of Milan in 1529. The transformation of the menu to the nine-course format that is the basis of contemporary menus occurred in 1867 in
Paris, followed closely by 8 + 7 course adoptions. European banqueting tradi-tions are reflected in American banqueting customs from pre-revolutionary
dinners to presidential banquets served at the White House in Washington,
D.C. The history of banqueting reflects the cultural changes in American ban-queting practices and the contributions of Thomas Jefferson to the evolution of
the White House banquet menu from the medieval format to the early-nineteenth-century French format of nine courses. Presidential menus show
the influence of personal style culminating in the contributions of Jacqueline
Kennedy, who brought the influence of the 1960s nouvelle-cuisine revolution to
the White House, reducing the menus to four or five courses.