establishment in the whole countryside. Not only did it supply the Commencement dinners and other academic feasts,—some of them surprisingly elaborate—but it was often requisitioned (especially before the local taverns amounted to much) for anything resembling a banquet in the community at large. Thus it provided the entertainment for the Assembly of Elders in 1643, and in 1655 cooked and sent out Tutor Mitchell’s wedding supper.[1] It was a perfect godsend to the American commissariat during the Siege of Boston, while its regular patrons had deserted it, and probably fed most of the Yankee militia in Cambridge.[2] By this date it was located in new and enlarged quarters—the east basement of the present Harvard Hall—and was equipped to serve two hundred men, an absolutely stupendous number. The storage of its supplies required no less than three cellars, one for meats, one for general provisions, and one for cider.[3] Its fame spread far and near.
- ↑ This semi-public use of the college kitchen seems also to have followed the English tradition. Even to-day, most of the kitchens at Cambridge and Oxford, on request, supply meals not only to the professors but to the townspeople in general.
- ↑ Jonathan Hastings, the College Steward, as the man most versed in matters of the food supply, was appointed temporary “Steward to the Army” on April 20, 1775. Henshaw’s Orderly Book, Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xv, 87.
- ↑ So late as 1863 the ruins of its apparatus were still visible. The kitchen door was at the east end of the basement, and the site of the kitchen pump close by was easily recognizable. Harv. Magazine, x, 126. The greater size of the eastern basement windows is observable to-day.
