BRIEF HISTORY OF PICNICS

Picnics were born in the sumptuous outdoor feasts that were traditions of the wealthy. Medieval hunting feasts, Renaissance country banquets, and Victorian garden parties: They’re all precursors of even humble cookouts in the 21st century. This wasn’t merely a European tradition. Similar outdoor feasts took place in Persia, China, and other non-Western geo locations.

The first picnics, in England anyway, were medieval hunting feasts: pastries, hams, baked meats, and more. They stayed much the same, though adjusted according to the wealth of a household, until the Victorian era, arguably the most refined era in the history of picnics. Nineteenth-century painters (Monet, Renoir, Cezanne) were brilliant chroniclers of picnics and outdoor entertainments.

Our rather curious English word derives from the French pique nique (the meaning is murky, except for the connotations around “picking”). It originally referred to a kind of potluck, typically indoors, where everyone brought something to eat.

The change in the sense of picnic from “potluck” to “eating outside” was noticeable by the 1860s. What survived was the mingled notions of “impromptu” with “informal”—still a strong implication in any modern conception of picnicking. (Although you can totally pull off a perfect indoor picnic that captures the same spirit and is just as fun.)

“I was brought up in a household famous for its fabulous cooking, and the memories of my childhood are full of one fine meal after another. But the most exciting of all were the magnificent family picnics. Huge hampers and baskets were filled with an endless array of delectable tidbits to be consumed in the great outdoors—on a wide sandy beach by the Pacific, or high in the mountains where blue and red huckleberries grew in abundance, or along some winding road deep in a canyon beside a rushing stream. For the cold food and drink, we stopped at an ice-house and picked up a large cake of ice which sat on the floor in the back of the car with the perishables on top. If we wanted anything hot, and we usually planned on coffee at least, we’d build up a fire in the open or if we were near woods that might catch from fire, we’d manage with a little alcohol stove.”
—from “James Beard’s Menus for Entertaining” (1965)

Source: Greatest