Sybil Bruncheon's History On This Day… "Exquisite Eats & Treats"... February 11th, 1921....

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Former railway engineer and inveterate inventor, Cecil Trombeau from Harwich-on-Crouton decided that transporting people from place to place wasn't fulfilling enough. He had always aspired to become a fine restauranteur, but with the stratified society of the Edwardian age, there was really very little opportunity for a man of his standing to rub elbows with the glamour crowd. And so, on this day in 1921, Cecil began his "Tea-To-Your-Door" service, where he and his specially trained staff of "Butlers-On-The-Run" would deliver an assortment of exotic teas, cucumber and watercress sandwiches, and sweet little cakes and "dainties" to your home.... BY RAIL!!

Within a few weeks, they were being commissioned for lunches, tea parties, even dinner banquets. All the delicious food was prepared by the newly unemployed chefs and cooks from failing estates across the country. They were eager for work and excited by the new innovations that Trombeau was creating....and they did all the cooking on the trains in converted passenger and sleeping cars which were now falling victim to the proliferation of automobiles. His business thrived and spread, his reputation grew, and within a year, he was on his way to becoming a millionaire.

His clientele included the highest echelons of society who found the novelty of delicacies being delivered to their homes without maintaining an entire kitchen staff. And with the new invention of electric refrigeration, some of the dishes could actually be frozen to be eaten later. The one drawback was that there were still reminders of the railway origins in the whole operation. The Dowager Countess of Grantham pointed out that her Baked Alaska’s chocolate shavings turned out to be sprinkles of coal dust!… and that her "serving-person had horribly dirty fingernails!"....

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