Henry Voight has always had a love for food and wine.

So when he retired after a career as an engineer and business executive, he started collecting historic menus dating back to the 1840s.

He has more than 10,000 menus in his collection.

“Menus tell us how people have dined outside the home over time, and they are pretty much the only documents that do so,” said Voigt.

The exhibition, A Century of Dining Out, The American Story in Menus 1841 to 1941, features more than 200 pieces from Voigt’s collection.

The pieces are on display at the Grolier Club in Midtown, the nation’s oldest and largest society for lovers of books and the printed word.

Voigt begins the exhibition in 1841 when menus began to trickle into use in the United States.

“The expansion of the railroads brought about the development of the modern hotel, and with the hotel came dining rooms, and with dining rooms people began to eat outside the home,” said Voigt.

Among the highlights are menus from 1861 and 1862 from Taylor’s Saloon, one of the grandest restaurants that catered to women in New York.

There are also menus from President Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural ball in 1865, and a birthday celebration for Mark Twain.

There are examples from the Gilded Age, like a four o’clock lunch at a private residence in Michigan in 1885.

The exhibition also consists of military menus, like a Christmas menu from West Point in 1886.

The menus indicating how things changed for Americans during prohibition, and the depression.

Voigt says it not only reflects what people are eating, but what they are doing, with whom they are doing it, and what they valued.

“It’s really a mirror of American history, a 15 degrees slice through history if you will, looking at history through a different perspective,” said Voigt.  

A Century of Dining Out is on the menu at the Grolier Club from April 26 through July 29.