A 1922 cookbook, Good Housekeeping’s Book of Menus, Recipes, and Household Discoveries, contains sample menus for each month of the year. It’s fascinating how the word “dinner” is used in two different ways on a page with October menus. In the Sunday menu, it is the noon meal; while on the Monday menu, it’s the evening meal.
A Hundred Years Ago 
That’s how it was for us in Iowa, in the 1950s. Sunday dinner was at noon, but weekday dinners were at night. The commonality was that ‘dinner’ was the time when the entire family was present.
And we always had cheddar with our apple pie.
In central PA we called lunch dinner and the last meal supper. Where I live now it is lunch and dinner. When I was visiting a nursing facility back home, they were still using dinner and supper. It may go back to farming days when the middle of the day meal had to be heartier.
same in western PA when I was growing up.
My mother called it dinner, except on Sunday—central PA. My father, from Maine, called it supper. Going to a restaurant at night was “going out to dinner.” Confounding! But I do think the bigger meals for farmers was understandably at noon.
They must have been one of those big households with a maid . . . or staff
How did the women have time to do anything but cook and clean up?
Yes, so many fascinating things about this menu, Sheryl. I have never heard of porcupine pears or banana whip. Fun post.
Clam omelet. Must think about that one.
The prep for those menus would be impossible today.
I grew up in the South. The most formal and heartiest meal was dinner, so dinner was at night except on Sunday.
My grandmother always intoned “Apple pie with out the cheese is like a kiss without the squeeze!”
Lost me at the clam omelette! Clams give me the willies food-wise at the best of times but at breakfast? I would rather drink coffee and that makes me gag, lol (pregnancy leftover, burnt coffee).
How interesting! A lot of food and a lot of cooking and washing up! And a lot of calories to consume, not to mention that the clam omelet would give most people serious indigestion! My family always referred to our mid-day meal as dinner and the evening meal supper. My mother didn’t cook on Sunday, but somewhere along the way I picked up calling that meal Sunday dinner. I now use lunch for the mid-day meal and still cling to supper for the evening. My children have always referred to the evening meal as dinner, having picked that up from their father.